morning commute
When summer arrives I get some daylight for my morning commute walks to work. I get to see more and more minutes of daylight up to the solstice, and then it begins to taper off again. I always enjoy it while it lasts. Before it returns to the long months of walking in darkness.
One portion of the street I walk is high enough and unobstructed enough to see part of the Toronto skyline. On a clear day for a few minutes I can see the CN Tower way off in the distance.
Beside it now is the tallest building in Canada standing there like a middle finger to everyone who can't afford a place to live, and to all of us who can barely afford groceries. Just what we need, right, another 106 stories of housing that is unaffordable to the majority of the population.
I can also see the Absolute World towers downtown Mississauga. The ones that earned the nickname Marylin Monroe towers. More tall buildings have rose up in the area, making the negative space between the Marylin towers look like a huge hand with its index finger pointing down to the ground. There has to be something symbolic about that. We're going down, man.
One morning as the sun was rising I thought, the end of the world sure makes for pretty sunrises. Is that smog wafting northward from our deregulated neighbour (are they great again yet?). We are not innocent when it comes to environmental protection either. Better maybe, but better does not mean good when compared to the worst. Maybe that is smoke from wildfires, and not smog. Maybe both.
How many PPM's does the crap in the air have to be to make the news? I don't know. It doesn't count until you can taste it. Until you can smell it. Until your eyes are red and watering. Until that tickling in the back of your throat makes you cough. I could see the haze. It was fucking wonderful. It made the light sort of eerie, pastel, apocalyptic, with the sun just moments from rising above the horizon. I felt strange. Like a dream.