Posts tagged with "Ottawa"

Transitway Six

Thumbnail: Transitway

On days like this, it’s bet­ter to wear light cloth­ing, and throw on a hood­ed wind­break­er. The rain out­side is just a driz­zle, so it’s com­fort­ably cool. Pay no atten­tion to the hydraulic hiss of the wind­shield wipers, or you won’t be able to help hear­ing them through the qui­et parts of every song. Window seats are prime. There are few­er dis­trac­tions from peo­ple walk­ing down the aisle.

The 95 goes from one end of the city to the oth­er, straight through the heart of Ottawa. Every stop is a mem­o­ry. Old haunts. Past lives.

Here was your first apart­ment. Sometimes you’d find Christie wait­ing for you here on the bench­es between class­es. How long ago those days seem, how imma­ture and rel­a­tive­ly inno­cent. The next two stops are on the edge of the uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus, four years of scat­tered tru­an­cy. Two stops lat­er is where you use to buy a medi­um caramel cor­ret­to every morn­ing after an exhaust­ing night with Louise. Your old gov­ern­ment office is anoth­er two on. The con­crete build­ing looks so for­eign now, and you won­der if the same peo­ple are still inside. Another few stops is your last apart­ment, before buy­ing the house, the end of bus rides home every day.

Music nev­er meant so much.

You pass by con­struc­tion sites, fin­ished build­ings, see the evo­lu­tion of the city.

Every stop can be traced to a dif­fer­ent point, a dif­fer­ent girl­friend, a dif­fer­ent path in your life.

Six years of expe­ri­ence, six years of shift­ing, ever-chang­ing ani­ma.

Six years passed.

Six years lived.

Six years grown.

Winter City Nights

The back of Social

A shot of the rear entrance of Social, a restau­rant I’ve only dined in once, but have passed by, wish­ing I was inside, many times. I like how the mood in the shot is warm, against the implied cold from the Christmas lights. One could sit here at any time of year and soak up the seren­i­ty, where a song by Sigur Rós (at night, when it’s com­fort­ably crowd­ed) is as rel­e­vant as a song by Edith Piaff (par­tic­u­lar­ly in the fall, when the skies are grey) is as rel­e­vant as a song by Iron And Wine (dur­ing the ear­ly days of sum­mer, when it’s still cool in the evening).

The Begging Landmark

One of the more inter­est­ing local land­marks is a pan­han­dler who has his prac­tice set up on the Mackenzie King Bridge. I start­ed notic­ing him ever since I came to this city, every time I walked up the bridge to the Rideau Centre. I’ve seen him in stills in the uni­ver­si­ty news­pa­per, or in pass­ing while tak­ing the bus along the tran­sit­way. Ever since win­ter start­ed though, he’s been wear­ing a very blue, very “Toronto Maple Leafs” toque. I won­der if some­one gave it to him, or whether he pro­cured it him­self, using the change giv­en to him by his fel­low cit­i­zens and Sens fans.

It’s a dan­ger­ous thing to be wear­ing such a high pro­file hat in this city. Especially when one is so easy to find.