i missed the first bus but caught this instead

there, standing inside the bus shelter and looking into the dark window-scape in front of me, i could see two people together -- a man, sitting, and a woman, standing close, in contact. he seemed to be nuzzled against her stomach, his head leaning against her -- warmth and comfort, before my eyes. and then i noticed how their oneness was more than just my reading of this scene, how their forms blurred, merged below the waist. i shifted on my feet slightly, then saw that as she stood, solid, on the sidewalk outside, he didn't. i looked over my shoulder and saw him in the flesh, seated alone on a bench inside.

so much for the tender scene. should i have then been disappointed?

looking back to the window as the bus arrived and the people around me began to move, i saw her hand stroke his hair before she turned away.

2006-01-15

I was in a midtown street scene. A well-known street, but small, the kind that usually has more foot traffic than cars; lined with small but busy storefronts. Amalgam of the Byward Market and Bloor Street. This time, the crowds dominated everything. I was with someone, maybe family, and we seemed to have to go with this crowd. At least I thought so. As I made my way down, I realized that--
with everyone moving the same way,
with no cars driving,
with groups of people running about the middle of the street to some hard purpose,
with most of the shops boarded up,
and most of all, with those demolition charges,
danger was upon us; this was some kind of evacuation, being played out by its own twisted rules.

We found ourselves in a line for something. Once we got near the front, we saw that it led to some guy in front of a store that he and his buddies had seemingly broken into; they were selling cigarettes, but just a few at a time. I sheepishly shrugged when I got to the front and he offered me a couple out of a pack. My companion and I both declined; neither of us smoked. He looked ready to swear up and down and rail against our obvious stupidity, but thankfully no one on this street had time for any unnecessary words.

Further down, some kind of home-made tower of demolition charges was being set up near a storefront. I gathered that it would be to block the street with rubble once everyone had got past this point, or once there was simply no time left -- what were we running from, anyway? -- but the people setting up these demo charges weren’t soldiers or people in uniform -- come to think of it, I hadn’t even seen any cops.

Right in front of us, a couple of people were setting up a smaller column of demo charges. This seemed to be some kind of paper/cardboard box structure, with I-guess-explosives inside somewhere. It was leaning up against another building. The person lit the bottom of this paper structure. It caught fast, but no one in the little crowd seemed ready to move away. I yelled at my companion, who got too close, seemingly unconcerned. I got her further away, then it blew. Kind of anticlimactic, really -- it didn’t even damage the storefront, but it knocked over a lamppost -- and the way it fell, it almost hit me. So much for my concern for safety.

dream last night

I’m with a group of friends; we’re all flaked out around a couple of picnic tables behind this building on the top of a fairly large hill overlooking the city, kind of like the Wormhole picked up and deposited in this high place. Most of the people are just like the Wormhole crowd, but Kiera is there, too. She’s never met them before, and I’m so glad to be introducing her to this gang.

A large swarm of hot-air balloons is coming in our direction from the city. They’re moving pretty fast, too. Reminds me of that balloon festival in Ottawa, but these are a strange sort of balloons -- smaller, faster -- racing hot-air balloons, not the large lethargic ones. One of them comes down towards us and lands on a raised platform at the edge of the summit just beyond the trees. As it nears, all of us recognize the two people inside -- intrepid adventurer friends, sometimes with us, mostly gone out into the wide world beyond the horizons. They land and come over to talk with us.

As we all talk and hang out, just exchanging pleasantries, Kiera and I look at the balloon. It is a small, extremely functional affair, the balloon itself round and completely transparent. Kiera makes a few remarks to the ballooners that demonstrate more than a layman’s knowledge of their machine. Then she goes into the building behind us. I follow, finding myself in some kind of restaurant or lounge. She is talking with a bunch of her Ottawa friends inside. I don’t feel like I fit in with this group at all, so I go back outside to my friends at the tables.

I sit down and start listening. The ballooners say that they’ve come here to offer their services to the people that run the place behind us -- they say it’s a prison and that’s just the way it is, I guess. They want to offer day trips over the city or something. Why prisoners would be allowed on those, I don’t know. In any case, we all see through that explanation and know they’ve come to break someone out. This is understood across the board and our conversation turns to prison breaks that we know of. The one that comes up is the story of a guy who just came into this very place incognito and walked out with a prisoner. I wonder who they’ve come to break out of here. For that matter, I don’t know whether or not we ourselves are inmates here.