D: The milk goes sour

It's been a long, tiring and somewhat eventful weekend, to thje degree that I've got plenty of material for this blog. In fact, I've got so much material that I may up pulling one of my recent tricks and splitting it into two entries to carry the load, although that may short-change oe of them (not a problem since actual interesting material here is hard to come by.) The weird trade-off for having such a busy weekend is that I end up a bit too tired to really write about it.

Friday afternoon it started snowing. Just like the meteorologists figured. We can back up a bit, but the day wasn't all that noteworthy. I got through my tutorials with varying degrees of awareness and participation. I had a moment in the Innis Cafe - eating a sandwich I had brought from home - which I thought at the time would be the big soul-searching topic of my next entry - this entry. The moment has passed and I don't think it anymore, and so this entry is going to be light on soul-searching, but here it is.

I was observing everyone around me and avoiding doing my readings. At the table across from me were these four people, two guys, too girls. One really preppy guy, one toussle-haired hipster. One girl was seemingly shy and inwardly drawn, the other free-spirited but down-to-Earth, with expressive clothes and sensible wire-frame glasses. I was thinking about how these people at that table were the archtypes of your typical University cross-sectioned student body. I eavesdropped intentionally or not although I can't remember the exact matter of their subject, I began to wonder where I really was and where I belonged. I haven't met people like these; they were probably grad students and I've largely just encountered Frosh. They still seemed to have drifted in from another dimension although they were more or less the people I somehow expected to have met since arriving at the school. It left a weird, bitter taste in my mouth. But besides that, any deep revelation I may have kept in my back pocket for just such a blog as this not long after disappeared and thus felt so much less important.

What does seem more important was that I ran into Chris & Cary's mom, Linda, on the subway. It was a very particular and deliberate coincidence that brought us to the same TTC car. Never mind the details of how she came to be in Toronto for the afternoon. I wasn't supposed to be on that subway train. I had gotten off the subway at Queen's Park after getting on at St. George. There's only one reason for this when one is headed from St. George to Union and it's not a very good reason. I wanted coffee. I was very much falling asleep in class so I decided to get a little pick-me-up because caffeine is apparently my only link to functionality these days.

I bypassed a very reasonably-located Tim Hortons at the St. George station for no particular reason. It wasn't any further out of my way than the Queen's Park Tim Hortons, in fact it may have been more convenient. The coffee sure as hell wasn't any better or worse. And although the coffee was a whim, it was a whim prior to boarding the subway; I decided right after class a coffee was in order. So why on Earth would I, rather than get a cup of coffee and ride to Union, opt to ride two stops to Queen's Park, dash off the train, get a cup of coffee and then re-board the train for four stops? My only answer is, because I could. Because for the month of March I have my metropass, which I lacked in January and February due to the abbreviated nature of the months, I've been using it. I've been taking the subwy from Museum to St. George (one stop) between classes when need be just to save walking effort and coldness (since it sure as hell doesn't save time.) Somewhewre along the lines I decided I liked the feel of the Queen's Park Tim Hortons. I don't mind the St. George one either but I feel like, with one line and five cashiers, the service is less friendly than (if equally efficient to) Queen's Park's three cashiers and each with a line.

It was after getting back on the TTC at Queens Park, actually as I was getting off at Union, that I noticed among the anonymous crowd a hint of recognition. I nodded, she said, "I thought that was you. Headed back to Oakville?" We got to talking and got on the train.

I don't know how many of my friends' mothers I would actually bother to converse with. Pat's mom is a nice person but I've only met her about twice. Conorton's mother is also quite visible to his friends but Mrs. Ferguson relates differently from other peoples' mothers. One afternoon in summer, after a lengthy writing session for "No Way My Life," I stayed for dinner and Chris' parents variously struck up conversations with me about Sheridan and my future at U of T. Around this time I understood suddenly that these people know me. That's the same sort of vantage point that causes Linda to serve plates of baked goods, brie and bread and other hors d'oevres when Cary or Chris host gatherings. That's why, instead of, when seeing her on the subway, saying, "There's my friend's mom" and shrugging and turning the other way, I engaged her in conversation.

I mentioned my philosophy class and she talked about recent readings she'd seen on neuroscience. The typical pattern of the conversation was that she'd ask me a question, I'd answer, and then she'd use something I said to swerve the subject completely. The bulk of the conversation seemed to regard poetry, of which she at one point in her life was a prolific student. She told me the story of her dissertation on W.B. Yates and how she seemed to learn academics isn't really much of a career. Mind you I don't think we were always conversing on the same level. It's not rare that someone will mistake me for someone more intellectual than I actually am, but it's been increasingly rare that that person should be demonstrably smarter than I am.

The conversation went on, much to the tedium of the person sitting across from us. He tucked his head under his cap and attempted to sleep and I don't blame him. The most preferable setup on the GO train is that everyone is quietly in their own worlds with iPods and/or Metro or whatever. If someone does happen to be conversing, hopefully they won't be right across from you, and hopefully it'll be about something interesting to eavesdrop on.

She asked, not in an accusatory way but just curiously I suppose, why we always seem to wind up in her basement weekend after weekend for Risk. I reasoned that Ryan, Chris and I probably know far fewer people left in Oakville each than out of it. We kind of need to stick together. When I went on my way, she said she figured she'd see me later that night.

The snow had started falling by now, sometime before we got to Oakville. It came down in small bits very rapidly. More snow did not feel like what we needed.

The evening wore on and Risk did not actually look likely. I decided to take a turn back at writing and return to my hokey little autobiography project (if you like ths site you might love that book.) I stayed up until about 2 AM writing over 3000 words on the summer of 2004. As you might imagine I've got plenty of material since that's when this blog was started so I've got a clearer mental image of how things went down. SWP gives me the unintentional but obvious and useful benefit of remembering thigs I would have forgotten and being able to keep them in order (the first 65,000 or so words of the book are largely my best guess at the chronology of my own life.) I also spoke a bit with Lauren, who was being held captive by Pirates in Hong Kong but is probably home safe by now. Meanwhile the snow kept falling.

After dinner, we went out to the LCBO and I bought something that was not Stella, but some other import beer for like three or four dollars cheaper.

Much of saturday was null, vegging out on the couch in front of Degrassi with a microwaveable Philly Cheeseteak. Early in the day I had made the foolish decision that it was indeed worth leaving the house to get a Tim Hortons breakfast sandwich. I enjoyed the sandwich, but not the effort and coldness, wind and snow, in getting there. I actually spent 50 cents to catc ths bus back home. The marvels of a GO pass. Why would I drive?

And so nothing much happened that day. And then, as I'm relaxing in front of the TV after dinner, I get an MSN message.

I'll leave it at that (oh the suspense!) until tomorrow, when I have time and energy to write out the entire story, such as it is.

So until then, please keep on rockin'
-Scotto