Comfortable stranger

Yesterday I took a walk to the post office in the Business Depot off King Street. Crossing the Queen Street bridge westbound over the Don River, it occured to me that I was walking in the footsteps of my dad's dad, who never owned a car. He used to walk or bike or take the streetcar to his job as a shipper-receiver in a brown brick warehouse on Berkeley Street, smack dab in the middle of the old twentieth century.

When I came out of Business Depot, I was in the no-man's land between the information age and the industrial age. I could see the building my grandfather used to work in; at least, I was pretty sure that was it. I called my dad on the cell phone just to be sure, and yes, it was: a square, plain edifice at 2 Berkeley Street, now made over into lofts and called "Berkeley Castle," which made my dad laugh. There's really only the faintest echo there now of the gritty industrial life of old Hogtown, my grandfather's whole world.

I chatted a bit with my mom & dad on the cell as I headed back. But by the time I hung up, I wasn't just walking home. I wandered. I ambled. I strolled. I even meandered a little. At a certain point, I realized I was looking up at buildings - up above the storefronts and the signs to the actual mass of the buildings and the shapes of their sillhouettes.

Seeing the sky at that particular angle reminded me of walking around cities in Europe in my backpacking days. That's the way I always looked at places that were completely new to me. It's the walk of the comfortable stranger, one who is in the space but not of it. I was observing everything with completely fresh eyes, without expectation or prejudice.

It's a waking meditation. And meditating as you walk through the world makes the world completely new. Even the fading memories of my grandfather's dirty old town had the dust blown off them, when I walked through my neighbourhood the way I walked in Europe.