001 / Do I (still) speak Toronto?
September began with a storm unlike any I’d ever seen. It came on quietly: a day’s slow-gathering clouds collecting on the horizon as I sat by the window of my favourite little writing spot on campus—not writing, notably. Just observing the storm gathering its party, and listening to the faint murmurs of members of my cohort discussing their upcoming film.
The first thunder took us by surprise, as it always does.
“Was that…?”
“Did you hear…”
“It must have been…”
Then the lightning, brilliant and violent across the ashen sky.
The hail was a real surprise: golf-ball sized things that confirmed our decision to stay put, even with our other friends only a dozen metres across the path in the opposite cottage. Even when the power cut out and plunged us into near-darkness.
Especially when our phones blared with an emergency alert, advising us to stay put. To seek shelter in basements, if possible. We complied. Down we went, to the haunted basement. I was in the habit of greeting the basement ghost when I arrived each day. I’d yet to get a response.
All the same, when the opportunity came to escape to join our friends across the way, we took it. We passed a few hours playing games, drinking beer, and eating takeaway pizza, as the storm ebbed and flowed about us.
When we emerged, the clouds were peppered pink like cherry blossom. The air was soft. The sky seemed to laugh. Storm? What storm?
As though the roads weren’t devastated in its wake. I was driven up to a flooded underpass by a friend, and then collected on the other side of the newly-formed river by my roommate. In my neighbourhood alone: cars, abandoned haphazardly across the road, as though the start of a disaster movie; trees, many metres tall, crashed across three people’s yards; electrical wires hanging precariously.
A fleeting moment, but its impressions remained on the city.
Everything feels fleeting at the moment. The very people I’d spent that evening with were strangers to me just two months previously. The roommate that rescued me has left, and won’t return until after I’m gone. And the precarious question of what next? hangs on the horizon.
When it’s all over, these six months back in Toronto will feel fleeting. But they will leave their own impressions on me.
I visited a dear friend and her four year old—my Canadian nephew, if you will—the other week. We were talking about speaking other languages, and I explained that I speak another language.
“Yeah…” he said, as though it were obvious. “You speak Toronto.”
I’ve had to learn to speak Toronto again these past months, after two years away. Or, maybe, I’ve learned to speak a new dialect, one that meets the person I am here now, rather than the person I was when I left.
Another dialect to inform where I go next. Impressions to shape me. Because every moment, however fleeting, is another to shape the person I was, I am, and will be.
Welcome to the new era. I’m glad you’re here with me.
All my love,
Suzey
On Rotation
📺 Adults (FX) – a show that claims to be about Gen Z but is undeniably written by a millennial. Or maybe I’m just nostalgic for a time in my life I didn’t realise was already over.
🍿 A Talent for Murder ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ – a deliciously stylish little thriller, if you ignore a rotten 10% of poor dialogue. I think it would have benefited from having the “imagined” sections set in the ‘50s, but maybe I’m biased. An editor friend docked it two whole stars for an embarrassing crossfade towards the end. I was more generous. I caught an early screening at TIFF; releases later this year.
🎵 Embarrassed to admit that top song of the month continues to be GIRLS by Kid Laroi. Desperately seeking something new to listen to as I tackle a script rewrite. Suggestions welcome