This is my last day in Toronto”¦ again.
Last night, I hung out with old friends, one of whom I see each trip here, and a few others whom I haven’t seen in years. We hung out in the gay ghetto. Unlike my walk through there with James there on Sunday, where I thought “Good riddance!” about the whole place, I felt a fondness and affection for all of it””the trysts, the dramas, and the times with friends who were never the object of the adventure, but are now clearly the treasure from those years.
But it was kind of a paternal, knowing sentiment I felt. I would never go back to that life. There is, however, a real comfort in stitching my past into this future I’m living. I bumped into an old flame on the street, very happy to see him and pick up the connection, but completely unconfused about how that will fit in. People each belong to different parts of my heart, but that one predominant patch of real estate””the home where Craig lives””is protected land.
And this is the thing about the past and the future: My habit is to leave the past behind, or to find something not-right about it as a way to propel me forward. Increasingly, though, I see that I can move forward and carry my past lovingly with me.
People do this with work all the time, finding some horrible flaw in their employer or work situation that motivates them to make a change. Why not just skip the drama and go, to build on that past without the demolition work?
That said, my Toronto-clock has run out. It’s been lovely, and I’m glad to know I’ll be back, but my energy for this place has run down and it’s time to go back to Scotland. I want to see the big, open, green fields of Caithness, to stand at a sea-cliff made of jagged, up-pointed layers of rock, hearing the sea crash against it, to watch and hear those birds whose names and cries I’ve learned: fulmars, kittywakes, razorbills, guillemots, shags, oyster-catchers.
I need to be in the home I’ve made with the person I love, and to get back to my other creative work””feeling rejuvenated and refocused after my Canadian vacation and the time spent here in this dynamic workplace.
Toronto has some new subway trains without the doors between the cars; now you can see all the way down the straw-like train as it curves and judders its way through the subterrain of the city. There are so many people sitting on the indestructible red faux-velvet seats or hanging on to the jungle-gym of brushed metal poles””all tottering back and forth as the train bumps along.
I look at these folk and wonder what we’re all doing. This is the big question of my life, which I’m quite convinced is insoluble: “What’s the right thing to be doing right now?” As one course I did put it: There’s nowhere to go, nothing to do. This is it.
“Surely there’s something to do with it!” says a voice in my head. Yeah, and that’s art. Or goals. But I can’t make myself believe that it matters, ultimately, except as a game of understanding, and for finding the pleasure of present-moment awareness.