It is already mostly dark when we exit the building onto King’s College Circle. The sun has set over Convocation Hall, and the grass of Front Campus is soaked with recent wastewater and earlier rainwater.This is a fictionalized account of an interaction I had a while ago. Some experimental prose on my part.
- Cand, April TDK8
A friend bids me good evening as he turns eastward for home, and I walk through the mudded grass on the walk towards St George station. The girl says that she is underdressed for the season; I say that I should have brought my gloves.
By the time we reach Hoskin Avenue it is now fully dark and we are now speaking about language. The girl says, I’ve ended my flirtation with the German language. I had a fifty day streak, but it is gone now because I have too much to do this semester and I do not understand the cases.
I say that surely you can handle the cases if you have done Latin because there is no ablative or locative or vocative, but I also say that German requires dedication. She says, I am well past my time of prime language acquisition, it will be almost impossible for me to reach native speaker levels. I reply, honestly, that it depends on whether one has an ability for languages or not, which one will never know unless one keeps at it. I say that I went the first twelve years of my life without hearing the sound of German and here I am now. She says, I dislike coming back to a language and realizing that you have become rusty at it, it is a gross feeling. I say that it is the same for me, but some languages lend themselves to situations, outside of which they ring false in our ears.
The girl asks me: what is your favourite out of all the cities you have visited and lived in? I say that I am not good at answering these kinds of questions, that I cannot pick, but as a boy some years ago I would have chosen Toronto without hesitation because I would have missed home. She says Toronto has too many modern buildings, is too variable, does not have a character, not like the cities of Europe. I wish her a happy Thanksgiving and a good evening. We board our separate trains.
The platform at Bloor is overfull. It is clear that a train is running much behind schedule. When it does arrive, it is quiet and packed. When it leaves the station, it is still quiet and packed. It moves at a speed which, if it were to move slower we would hear the creaking of the rails, and if it were to move faster we would hear the roar of the carriage wheels. The crowd is thick, and unusually silent, save an old man and a younger woman. His sister? A friend? If not, a lover. The familiar tones would suggest so. They speak of taking the train up to Sheppard station look do you see Sheppard Yonge on the map but before that there’s Eglinton station where a lot of people live and we are thinking of going to Scotland oh you haven’t been to Scotland yet? oh no but we would take a trip from London to Edinburgh-or-is-it-Edinborough on the train and then down to Glasgow where you can then get to Belfast and from Belfast you could take the train down to Dublin and wouldn’t this all be so fun? yes it would! you know Barry is a full time cruiser now but I think it would be too boring for me and oh did you know that there used to be a supermarket here called Summerhill Market and there are now four of them and it is so small but it has a lot of nice things like meat pies and steak and kidney pies but they cost forty five dollars but anyway it is the best place to get food gifts for people and
I think that the girl may have been speaking metaphorically. I spoke as if we had been speaking honestly, and I hope that she had done the same. I try to button my coat with one hand as I walk up Yonge Street but it will not close. My hands are already getting cold.