I stopped by Alex Farm cheese on the walk home and asked for 2 ounces, the monger said he couldn't, it would have to be 4 ounces minimum. I agreed, but somehow the compromise set me back a full ounce. I guess it is hard to gage the weight as behind the counter they are so used to slicing proportions. The Ossau Iraty and creamy Charlevoix are still coming down to room temperature, so more for later... with tiny little black cured olives.
Friday night.
Rob is busy Fridays now, so I thought I might just head to the Gardiner Museum or AGO after work. At the corner of Yonge and Dundas, instead of walking to the gallery I headed underground. Dithering still... south to Museum? Instead, I went north to Bloor, and when the doors opened it was to an announcement that there was no subway service between St. George and Broadview due to a police investigation. Shuttle buses were on their way.
Good thing I didn't wait for the shuttle bus. I walked a good forty minutes without seeing a single one. People were passing me as I walked my moderate pace. Along the way, I realized how many memories there were along this strip of road. 121 Bloor Street East, I loved that job and location. The bar where I would go for a few beer after work on the corner of Church. The apartment building where I went to a party in St. James Town. The Necropolis.By the time I got to the Broadview bridge it was closed entirely to civilian vehicles. Two big firetrucks, five or six police cars, paramedics, yellow caution tape.
What was going on? An officer at the crossing said a jumper. I wondered aloud why a jumper would close down the subway for so many stops; usually the clean up crew is fast and efficient.
A stranger passing said he knew someone whose job it was to clean up the mess when people jumped in front of trains. Human remains could be left all along the tracks at different stations. The guy he knew, his wife found out he was having an affair, so she jumped in front of a train herself, just so her husband would get the call and have to find her that way. She lived. To this day her husband is taking care of her.
It was very eerie along the bridge. People looking over the side onto the highway below, others walking briskly on their way home. More police cars. Officers looking through a fence at the side of the bridge. Had someone crawled through and somehow jumped to the traffic below? The bridge is so well cordoned off now, there is no way to make it through the barriers, and there were no signs of damage to the stays.
I tried to get more information from an officer about what was going on but all he said was, he couldn't say.
A very grey day, but the rain was holding off. The thing about suicide, as I learned from an early age, it is always an option. More than a few people I love have chosen that way. I can only speculate their reasons. I'll never really know the whole story and can only see facets, fragments.
When I got to Broadview I stopped in at a flower shop and took a deep breath. They had a huge crimson heart on the wall, built of flowers and butterflies. Such ephemeral creatures.
Another block to the cheese shop. Why not? It is sometimes the small pleasures that make life worth living.
Twice in 24 hours I came across 'life is a verb'... once as a title of a book and another in a social media post of quotable quotes:
“Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it - that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.” Steven FryWell, here are my verbs for Friday night: I am eating cheese, listening to music, enjoying a cocktail.
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