April 30, 2004

The city is a strange wilderness of concrete when seen from the roof of the Uptown Parkade. Last evening, Fraser and I climbed six breathless floors to the top of the Parkade and stared down on Waterloo like a strange pair of gargoyles, our nostrils flaring in the strong wind. Up there everything was maddeningly satisfying — the setting sun, the swirling traffic, the robin eggs smashed on the parapet — and we drank it all in until we were too melancholy for words.

And wordless we followed the train tracks towards Kitchener. Fraser stopped at every ditch along the way to look for rubbish and broken bricks, and I watched him in awe. I love people who search for meaning in those things I don’t understand, things which magically fit together to create a whole. The industrial landscape, with its rust and decay, was our playground for the evening.

I headed back Uptown alone after the sun set, and the sky was so saturated with colour and emotion that it made my eyes hurt. It was night by the time I returned to Waterloo and climbed back to the roof of the Parkade to watch the city in the dark until security came. The Parkade, it seems, is private property. Someone is taking away my city inch by inch.