story #10: a walk around the block

location: prince arthur crossed by st. laurent

I decide to go for a walk.

I walk up my street half with confidence, half with uncertainty, with these corresponding perfectly to my steps over the plowed and snowy sections, where the 2 old trees laugh at the impossibility of fitting a snow plower in between (but I don't know it then that my experience is tied to my setting, and I take it as a malfunction of my disposition that day.) I turn on Prince Arthur, the section where commercial fronts are barred and taped. One store in particular has had a shoe sale for 4.5 years now, yet has no customers and has no clerks. The shoes are have never stepped on these pavements of their own neighbourhood. And yet, they are granted their status as a regular sight, a welcomed landmark in their neighbourhood.

I turn on St. Laurent as I keep my eyes on the lookout for black ice. I catch the sight of many familiar shoes, and a quick glance up confirms the recognition of the man from the store, the friend from the cafe, the classmate from 2 years ago, the co-shopper with the box of groceries, the stranger seen just earlier today following the same routines as mine.

And at each encounter, I attempt to remember who they are and what they mean to me, and in the process fall in the memories of multiple encounters of this stranger-now-turned-familiar-neighbour. And I see the familiar thought in their eyes, in the brief catch of their gaze, that they are following the same thought trying to piece my presence in their history. And so, I keep walking now with the heightened sensation of being seen as the sight that I am and have been, passing these streets and sitting at these cafes for the 4.5 years past. And while I think I am not even known to myself, as I could never relate to myself even 2 mere years ago, my presence exists and is recorded here in this neighbourhood.

I am coming to realize that I am not just an observer who floats around these streets, that I am not a reporter who has taken up residence in an apartment, that I am not a hired actress taking my steps in this play. I see these stories as my attempt to salvage my memories that I fear I might lose alongside my retrospection that has prejudice against the younger versions of myself. If I ever try to corrupt my memories, I shall always remain in the memories of the many here: the regulars of these cafes, the aisles of the grocers, the trees of the pavement, even the shoes of that abandoned front. For I have been a part of this fabric, the fabric that I have loved and hated so dearly, that I have attempted so stubbornly to preserve in a mixture of salted ink and wrapped pages.  And yet, sometimes it is the simple action of the instinctive walk around the block that you are reminded of how much you know, and belong to, the neighbourhood itself.

At this thought, a man stops my pace to wave at my eyes, and upon my gaze waves an apology: "You look like someone I know!" Perhaps, I do belong here.