We shared a table with a Canadian couple the other night, Saturday, waiting for the parade to start.\u00a0 He was already four scotches in and still seemed mighty sober.\u00a0 She was adjusting her scarf, watching out for him, watching out for herself, the plum limit inside her glass falling down slowly.\u00a0 A slightly older couple from Toronto, one of those Train A and Train B type unions leaving lives set far apart only to meet and scream one alongside the other due to speed and time and distance and the merits of divorce.\u00a0 I guess you could say the same for us, only we were looking for an empty seat in a bar full of people waiting for the parade to start. <\/p>\n
I say waiting to start when I mean waiting for it to meet up with us.\u00a0 It had started an hour an a half ago, breaking open with a cheer, the condensed floats and marchers taking their first steps forward and widening the separation between each unit.\u00a0 A full spectacle widening into phrases.\u00a0 It must have been slow going for them down Royal Street, bottlenecked by their own spectators.\u00a0 A parade here in the city moves in a straight line down a predetermined path, but it can still be subject to friction.\u00a0 Flame-hatted devils slow down to pass trinkets to open hands.\u00a0 Bearded ladies pause to pose for pictures.\u00a0 Wide floats wait for the eager, rubber-neck-lean-in crowd to self-govern and realign.\u00a0 It all takes time, and those of us at the far end of the route, the Canadians and us and the fifty or so others twisting cocktail straws and counting out dollar bills chat and turn at every flash of light and think of it as waiting for the parade to start.<\/p>\n
The Canadians, though, have their own way of looking at things.\u00a0 They have been walking in unordained, unplanned paths, speculating their own spectacle, walking close together.\u00a0 As if they were powering the landscape along with foot-motion, as if they were causing the city to move around the fixed point of their own awe.\u00a0 When they stop the city stops.\u00a0 When they push off with the balls of their feet, feel the strain in their calves, the storefronts grudge then budge then start to slide easy again.\u00a0 There is the strain only when you stop and have to start again, when you have to leave something bright and pretty behind in anticipation of the next bright and pretty thing.\u00a0 The city is a parade itself, sparkling streamers hiding whatever is underneath that hauls it forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe music always seems to be above our heads,\u201d they say to us.\u00a0 They mean like coming from the balconies.\u00a0 They mean like slow afternoon radio on speakers hung up in shop ceiling nooks like fly paper.\u00a0 They mean like in a parade when you are standing in a gutter and the brass band is marching along the apex of the humped street, the high median.\u00a0 The barrier of people between you and the band, all the backs of their bobbing heads and upthrust hands blocking any view of the marchers, only allowing sightlines to their instruments: the big bell of a tuba oscillating like a summer fan, the dancing edge of a trombone, the top end of a bass drum jumping up above the surface when the big man holding it tosses it up to readjust the weight across his chest.\u00a0 The sounds scatter and bleat but somehow Be Unite, spread in distance across half a block but locked together in time.<\/p>\n
See, we are getting what the Canadians mean, now.\u00a0 We\u2019re no longer strangers split into two halves of the table now that an hour has passed and the parade along with it.\u00a0 We are trading rounds and comparing idiosyncrasies, but of course they keep pushing the ball back over to our side\u2014\u201cNow you, now you!\u201d\u2014being the visitors, not wanting to miss out on expert testimony, explanations of things fully seen but half-understood.\u00a0 All four of us know that Toronto is an absent in-law now, out of sight and out of mind, better off left excused and tucked into bed.\u00a0 They gain courage, gain relevance knowing that a few places they\u2019ve visited are, yes, Places the Locals Go when it is not Carnival, when it is not as loud.\u00a0 The things they\u2019ve tasted taste good to us as well: it\u2019s not a sham in that place, not a doppelganger of some real experience in a truer part of town.<\/p>\n
We leave the bar and join them for another impromptu lap.\u00a0 We make four left turns around the same block before realizing it and we laugh and joke that we were just gaining momentum, terminal velocity, and we walk diagonal through an intersection, join up catty-corner with a separate crowd, fall in with their pace headed towards blues guitar doorways.\u00a0 The man wraps his arm over my shoulder.\u00a0 His girl and my girl are walking two steps ahead of us, laughing at a comment that will have to wait for us to catch up.\u00a0 He leans in and wonders what it\u2019s like to live in such a historical city.<\/p>\n
\u201cShit,\u201d I say.\u00a0 \u201cI weren\u2019t here for most of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a lot like this, I guess, a lot like tonight: free-wheeling and music-filled and booze dreamy.\u00a0 Except for when we have to work, of course.\u00a0 Except for when we are waiting for our cars to be repaired.\u00a0 Except for when the bills are overdue, for when a yelling match breaks out at a cashier\u2019s counter, for when tensions rise faster than that sixth sense, Common, can react.\u00a0 It\u2019s very much like this all the time except for when the rain falls for four days straight and can\u2019t find a place to escape down the drains because of all our laziness and trash and wasted taxes.\u00a0 We all have a great time just like we are tonight except for when we hear a gunshot in the next yard over and know that we have a pretty good feeling who just fell and why but have no defense against it except prayer.<\/p>\n
History is for the pedants and the tourists.\u00a0 Time hanging back or catching up, time beating one-two or hushing three-four?\u00a0 Time shining in the day or lining in the night?\u00a0 Time is for the rest of us and an answer to a problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We shared a table with a Canadian couple the other night, Saturday, waiting for the parade to start.\u00a0 He was already four scotches in and still seemed mighty sober.\u00a0 She was adjusting her scarf, watching out for him, watching out …<\/p>\n