He sat, defeated, against his now-defunct car. The sun reflected off the hot tarmac as though it were a mirror, blinding him as he grimaced. With face contorted in a futile attempt to beat the sun, he looked first west and then east. The vacancy of the horizon suggested the advent of unwilling solitude on a stretch of unfamiliar highway hours from home.
After a moment of struggling to make out little more than the shimmering waves of heat lying low along the road in the distance that straddled him, he slowly let his head fall into his hands with brows furrowed and eyes shut tight. He rued the moment.
Begrudgingly, he lifted himself off the ground. He supported his clumsy rise with her body—an unlikely source of aid, given the circumstance. Standing upright, with shirt glued to his back as only perspiration can adhere, he again surveyed the landscape. His fears were confirmed as he lay his hands on her for support.
I am alone.
(more…)
Music has an incredible power. This is common knowledge. Music can instill emotion just as easily as it can trigger floods of forgotten memories. And like everyone else, I too am deeply affected by music. But my love for music is strange in that I happen to feel obscenely strong emotions from music that very few actually listen to. Thus, I present an experiment: “Aural.”
Turn your speakers up. Turn the lights off. And read.
People usually balk when I say that the music that moves me most is “trance.” They usually say something along the lines of, “Oh, you like techno.” Trance is a very different beast than most electronic music, and yet it is incredibly hard to pinpoint why exactly. I have a terribly tough time trying to articulate the reasons why I like trance. That’s why I’ve decided that I’m going to try a small experiment here.
(more…)
There once was a girl who had an apple tree. Every day, she would visit the tree. She’d climb his limbs, swing from his arms, and nestle in his trunk to sleep in the sun.
For 10 summers, she continued the ritual. She’d return every summer to see him—her tree. Until one year…
(more…)
The Spring of ‘86
Waves crashed on the coast’s dark banks. “White sand is overrated,” I’d heard more than a few times already in my days. Ultimately, there were more wrongs than rights—on the trip, and in life.
The wind playfully carassed my burnt face as I lay peacefully on the beach one day, her fingers draping down my cheek to my neck before being drawn away. How good her touch feels, I thought, even if it was phantom and fleeting. No one stepped in to take her place as she drew calm and left the beach. “Ca va mal,” I responded to her abscence in the spirit of the vacation. But she was already gone, and my words fell to the soft, hot sand below. (more…)
Jakub stood uncomfortably by the door at the end of the subway car. The TTC was never a particularly comfortable ride, he reflected, though it certainly was component enough—compared to the GO Train, at least.
While the TTC served its purpose, he couldn’t escape the feeling Toronto’s line paled in comparison to his native Métro. He laughed to himself as he remembered his home. Ironic, he found it, that the only thing he really missed about Rue St-Denis and his old haunt was the damned subway.
Nevertheless, the ride home remained as medicinal in the Anglos’ world as it was in the Francophones’. He’d grown to love public transit in the city, if only because it gave have time to collect his thoughts and afforded him an ever-shuffling array of people to watch. He relished the short break from the workaday world.
He was not afforded the same luxury today, however. He’d come to realize he had an ailing condition. The disease he suffered from became clear as he was soon confronted by a sea of striking, suited business-women and gorgeous university girls who frequented the Yonge line.
He felt malnourished. (more…)
