things i will not miss

More suitable to my temperament, I will now reflect on the things I just will not miss about this city.

1. Walking down the street. I don't know what it is about people in this city but they just don't get out of the fucking way. Seriously. Just go to my left (your right). Simple rules of traffic will suffice. This is something people to whom I mention it either can't see it at all or recognize it as a fundamental part of the Toronto experience. It's maddening.

2. Rudeness. Seriously. I have not experienced this level of rudeness anywhere else. I'm from what could be described as a gruff American city. I have been to New York - and lost in New York - many times. Never, ever have I experienced the blatant coldness that permeates this city. This manifests in a number of ways. For one thing, people just don't acknowledge one another (see above). People cut in front of you in line - A LOT. The tacit norm is that one is expected to be "polite" and not mention it. Mentioning rudeness is rude. There really is just no sense of community or cooperation here. Again, I don't think this is a function of it being a "big city." My experiences in New York have been so much more congenial than they have ever been here.

3. Grey skies and long winters. In other words, the weather. I does not agree with my constitution. I like warmth. One notable difference from Baltimore is that it's oddly a little dryer here, meaning it doesn't seem *as* cold as it is. But it's cold. And what Torontonians consider hot is as laughable to me as my being in a down coat when everyone else is in a t-shirt. I know that Toronto's climate is the mildest in Canada. It's still difficult for me.

4. For it being such a big city, everything closes really early. This one's self-explanatory.

5. Veterinary costs. They are seriously prohibitive. This means that people do not spay and neuter their animals which means that the feral cat population is astronomical. It's heartbreaking. One can "fix" their animal for under $50 in Baltimore. It made animal rescue much easier.

6. Cost of living. While we're at it, everything is more expensive here. I would happily pay more money for things if I thought it was because I was absorbing externalities. But that's not the case. I'm sure there's a reason that everything costs more, but I'm not into it.

7. The Beer Store. I simply cannot stare at a wall of labels and choose a beer. That shit makes no sense to my tactile little mind.

Seriously, how is anyone supposed to understand their booze given this display?

the way it should be

When moving, it is not unusual to reflect on how one is living her life and dream about the how one will live her life once the transition is complete. I am, in particular, reflecting on the over-bureaucratized nature of modern life.

In the past week, I have had the pleasure of tying up all the loose ends of my life in Toronto. This includes doing my taxes (yay refund!), going to the dentist, getting my eyeglass prescription updated, preparing to sell my shit, having quality time with friends and so on. It also involves dealing with the various bureaucratized entities that dominate modern life. Case in point - fucking cell phones. I'm a smart gal and I know that if I *really* put the effort into it, I could probably figure out my contract. But, jeez, it's a phone, why should it be so hard. As a result of my ignorance, I ended up with an astronomical phone bill, one that nearly took my breath away. Dealing with canceling the internet was similarly frustrating. For a moment (okay for about 24 hours), I felt so trapped by all this fine print. My shoulders ache and I just don't remember feeling so overwhelmed with dealing with the specifics of my life.

I remember when I "launched" out of my parents home. I was so worried about how to manage my bills. The extent of the bills was a landline-based phone, a BGE bill, my car payment, and my rent. None of them had inexplicable hidden fees that required I call the company and be put on hold forever and fight with customer service and so on. These companies rely on people being too busy to check their bills or too frustrated to make the endless necessary calls to figure out all the superfluous charges that they encounter on their internet, cell phone, hydro, and other itemized bills. It's a fucking scam. And it stresses me out to no end.

The thing is, with the internet and phone, much of this is in service of being in constant contact. I'm not entirely sure I like that. I am a pretty anxious person who is prone to being scattered. I don't think I have a diagnosable case of ADD, but I also think that the fractured, confusing nature of contemporary existence does not suit my temperament. Weirdly, I don't know how to stop it. I actually wonder how I used to spend my time before the internet. I want to rethink my connection to connection when I move home. I feel like my life could be so much fuller.

I was listening to a CBC show called "Ideas" about dogs. There was a 3 part series about how dogs think and how people think about their dogs. A growing "concern" among those who think a lot about dog behavior is the way in which people attach to their dogs and relate to them as proxy children. To some dog behaviorists, this is somewhat antithetical to what dogs "need" from their people. One author suggested that the tendency to treat pets like people and to develop serious emotional bonds to pets is somewhat a reflection of the fractured nature of modern resistance. Whereas people used to have community, religion, or extended family to meet their emotional needs, the fact that contemporary life makes many of us too busy to attend to those ways of being fulfilled, people now turn to their pets to gain that contact and intimacy. I see this very much in my relationship with my cats. This is not to say that I want to change the close relationship I have with the animals in my life. This is, however, a concern that I have in the sense that I know I rely on my cats to relieve the pressures of life. I wonder if it's a reflection of the fact that most humans are living their own over-busy lives and we don't connect as fully as we could. I want that to change.

things i like

There are a few things that I'll really miss about Toronto. This post is about the physical city, not any of its specific inhabitants.

1. Air conditioning. Actually, I love the restraint in its use. Nothing is more irritating to me than having to carry around a sweater all summer in the US because every retail outlet, from big box to mom and pop, thinks that it's a good idea for customers to have to see their breath inside because it's hot outside. Aside the environmentally unsound nature of blasting the AC, it's simply irritating. Don't get me wrong - on a super-hot and muggy day, I appreciate a cool space. But the extent to which Americans abuse the AC is actually offensive to me.

2. Kensington Market.

I like Kensington not because of its "weirdness" but because it's in walking distance and I can get an amazing array of fresh produce, dairy, bread, and tortillas several times a week. It's something that I'll miss a lot when I move to Baltimore. I'll especially miss the organic produce shop owned by the guy who often blasts Ethiopiques and other amazing music from the store.

3. Walking/biking/public transit culture. Like when I lived in San Francisco, it's perfectly acceptable, if not perfectly normal, not to have a car. In fact, having a ride somewhere just seems odd. I am hoping to carry that feeling of "it's normal to walk, bike or take the bus/light rail" in Baltimore. There is definitely *something* about the structure of feeling that guides wanting or not wanting a car. Here, I have no desire whatsoever for a car. Of course, this is largely contingent on access to resources. I am praying someone opens an amazing grocery store where the Hampden Food Market used to be.

4. Downward Dog Yoga and Delia Triolo Yoga - I am so blessed to have such amazing practice spaces. While these spaces are called "mysore" classes, they are actually mostly "open" practice spaces that aren't reserved for Ashtanga only. This inspires much controversy in the blog-o-sphere. But I have to say, I have learned so much in the nearly three years I've been practicing in Toronto. I feel like I've built the foundation for a practice that will sustain me for the rest of my life. I am hoping I can replicate that kind of space in Baltimore - one in which I don't have to teach the yoga but also take advantage of the wealth of knowledge that my Baltimore family of yoginis have.

5. Health care. I am a broken record about this. It's *that* important.

transitions part 2

Despite moving into a better neighborhood and apartment in Toronto, something about this city just didn't resonate with Chris. He wanted to move back to Baltimore. He was miserable here. So I got it in my head that we needed a project and we decided to buy a house. It was really the last year that we would have been able to buy one. Chris made a "grown-up" salary the prior year which made him able to procure a loan. There's no way in hell he'd have been able to get a loan the next year. We found a dinky little weird house in Hampden for under 100k and Chris moved back almost exactly a year ago today.

The house was clearly in need of work, but I don't think either of us anticipated just how hard it would be to get the house together. It wound up being a complete gut/renovate and the burden has certainly fallen primarily on Chris's shoulders - both emotionally and financially. He's fully funding this life we will have together and that brings about some complicated feelings for me.

First, the liberal feminist in me is all - Get out of grad school and get a real job bozo. You shouldn't rely on a man to pay your bills! I am feeling very guilty about not paying my fair "share" of the expenses or shouldering my fair share of the burden. I have contributed to the house in a number of ways, of course. My father is living on peanuts to help us with this house. My friend has been instrumental in guiding us through this process and is planning on building us our staircase for free. My networks allowed us to do this, for sure. But that's not my actual labor or my "real" resources. At the same time, the anarchist/socialist in me bristles at hearing myself measure resources in such blatant monetary terms. Chris recognizes the joint efforts required for getting this project off the ground and creating our dream home. But mainstream financial ideologies get in. I can't help it.

Second, I worry a lot (I could end the sentence there really) about how to make enough money when I get back while at the same time getting my academic work done in a timely fashion. All this for a "career path" that could well be a dead end and that I'm quite frankly ambivalent about in the first place. I know that it's a bad idea to make major life decisions in such a state of flux. So I live in this purgatory. I know, however, that I'll have to sit down and make some major choices and have some pretty intense conversations with Chris (once we actually have a couch again).

Ah, first world problems.

transitions part 1

I turned in the second draft of my comp. Now it's time to make piles - what to keep, what to sell, what to give away. It's also time to reflect, as most transitions result in taking stock.

My time here in Toronto started out kind of rocky. The city is heavily populated by students and the apartment stock gets pretty competitive around the beginning of each semester - which is of course right when we were trying to find an apartment. Chris was definitely not a fan of Toronto and nothing I could do could convince him to like it. Despite that, he chose York over CUNY (thank goodness) and we decided to pick up and move here. Trying to find a place was ridiculous. There was a huge line for most apartments, they were pretty pricey, and the level of ass-kissing and personal scrutiny was, well, humiliating. Of course, Chris and I don't play nice in that way. Not that we were dismissive, but we both have a hard time engaging if it's not genuine. It's the reason we both don't do well in crowds of strangers. Inane small talk eludes us.

Because the west side of Toronto is coveted, we moved to Leslieville - a "dangerous" east side neighborhood. Chris liked its pre-overrunbyhipsters Brooklyn-ish feel. And our rent was cheap. But when we got there, the apartment wasn't ready and it looked nothing like the landlord said it would (he just bought the house and was planning renovations). The place was dark, dank, and cold. The upstairs neighbor smoked like a chimney and the smoke would come through the vents. It was gross. Given all these variables, plus the fact that it took me a good hour and a half on a good day to get to campus, I was in no place to produce anything approximating good academic work.

The "drama" of Toronto was exacerbated by the fact that our union, CUPE 3903 went on strike about two months into my first semester of my PhD. I was *just* getting a groove and BAM! we were out on the pavement - literally. About a week before the strike, my chain-smoking 24-year old upstairs neighbor was killed by a stray bullet while smoking outside a local bar. Oh, and the entire economy collapsed. The world felt like it was shifting under my feet and I couldn't hold on.

One of the great things about the strike - trust me on this one, it was very difficult for me to glean good things from this debacle - was that I met a lot of people who I wouldn't have ordinarily met. That part I liked. But, the strike itself was a fucking joke. The strategizing was all wrong. Frankly, a lot of grad students are really good at deconstructing but are too rooted in ideology to intervene effectively. It just wasn't clear what the union - and the membership - was trying to do with this moment. Furthermore, it wasn't clear that the strategy team could fully account for our ridiculous demands at a time where people were losing their jobs to a frightening degree. In short, we played it all wrong and we were a joke, even in left circles. It was really disheartening and it colonized my energies and destabilized my commitment to left politics in Toronto. In that way, I really felt like I was alone.

Right around the time the strike ended, our new upstairs neighbors informed us that our house had bedbugs. Fucking bedbugs. That was that for me and we decided to move. I just couldn't handle another thing to have to handle, if you know what I mean. So about the time that we were wrapping up our first semester after remediation, Chris and I had to pack up and move across the city. We found a lovely apartment on the cusp of Little Italy and Little Portugal - near Kensington Market. It's bright and pretty - and I am still living here. Sadly, the building, a beautiful 1920s apartment building, was bought by a new company and is being turned into condos. I got out just in time, actually. Ah, the wheels of "progress" just keep turning.