View from the Sixth Floor

           

            Wednesday was my first day of missing the foodbank, since I started going last April. I had to work at OCADU from late morning to early afternoon, which covers the time that the foodbank is open, so I’ll have to go on Saturday instead.

            I got pretty wet riding my bike through the rain to downtown, though not as slopping soaked as I have been in the past and I was glad it wasn’t freezing rain. For part of the ride I kind of zoned out in thought, so time passed a little quicker.

            At OCADU, I knew from reading the models sign in sheet earlier in the week that my old friend and band mate Brian Haddon was working that day at the same time and in the classroom next to mine, so I waited in the lobby for him. Everyone tends to arrive much later than I do though, so I went upstairs. I was working for Sarah Sniderhan, who is someone new for me. She kind of reminds me of the characters played by Sara Gilbert, on Rosanne and The Big Bang Theory. She has that same kind of frowny face that can make one think she’s unfriendly. She didn’t need me right away, so I went to the washroom and on the way back, ran into Brian, as I thought I might. We chatted for ten minutes but them we had to work.

            I posed shirtless for a painting class, gazing out the raindrop jewelled sixth floor north window, looking along McCaul Street’s slow sometimes orange leafed tree-lined slant to College Street and at the further north high-rises on Bloor Street, with their tops disappearing in the mist. There’s a nice view from that window of a colourful little stretch of old attached houses at the corner of D’Arcy and McCaul, just north of Dundas. One has to ignore the ugly top of the AGO building, which obviously was not designed to be seen from above.

            On my breaks I read George MacDonald’s “The Princess and the Goblin”. The princess herself is annoyingly sweet but the timeless all knowing magical great grandmother holds my interest whenever she pops up, so far.

            After class I stopped by to chat with Brian, since he was scheduled to work for another shift. It seems he’s gotten quite a bit more work than me at OCADU this year. He suggested we get together sometime soon for beers.

            Though it was still raining just as hard on my way home, since I was still wet from the morning, I didn’t feel that much wetter by the time I got home. I was glad to peel everything off though and get into something dry.

            That night I watched Buster Keaton’s silent film, “Go West”. This seems to be the first feature length film that he both wrote and directed. It begins with him dragging all of his possessions on top of a bed on wheels into a store to sell them. The owner offers him $1.20 for everything. After the transaction, Buster prepares to leave, opening up the drawer of a dresser to take a few personal items, but the storeowner indicates that he’s already bought it all, so if he wants those things he’ll have to pay for them.

            Buster goes looking for a freight rain to hop. He stops and looks at the Canadian Pacific car, but moves on to take the New York Central. He arrives in New York but the bustle of the streets is so chaotic he immediately goes to catch a freight train going west. After the jostling though, he ends up in possession of a ladies purse, containing a tiny purse sized gun. He is in a boxcar full of barrels of potatoes and he’s in one of the barrels, but they all start rolling and falling out of the train. He ends up in the middle of the desert and wanders onto a ranch to get a job as a cowboy. He’s wearing a cowboy’s outfit, complete with gun holster, so he puts the tiny gun in it. He’s not much of a cowboy but one cow befriends him when he removes a stone from her foot, so she follows him everywhere. When the rancher insists that she has to go to the slaughterhouse, he first tries to buy her but doesn’t have enough money, so he enters a poker game. He catches one of the guys cheating and accuses him. The man says, “Smile when you say that!” By this time, Buster Keaton was already famous for not smiling, so he is shown trying his best to smile. He even tries to lift the corners of his mouth with hands and can’t do it. To save Brown Eyes, he sneaks onto the train. Meanwhile a rival rancher has arranged to ambush the train, to stop the cattle from reaching Los Angeles. There is a gunfight and in the end the train heads on with only Buster and the cattle on board. In Los Angeles, the train stops on the other side of town from the stockyards. To keep the rancher from being ruined, Buster gets the thousand cows to follow him through downtown LA. For some unexplained reason though, in the middle of the city, they stop following him, so he contrives to put on something red to attract them. He finds a red devil costume, complete with horns and tail, and all the cows chase him as he runs to the stockyards. The rancher is so grateful he lets him keep Brown Eyes.