Scarbitecture

            On Tuesday during song practice my E string broke, so I spent at least ten minutes replacing it. I more than made up the time though by just singing one verse and one chorus of most of the songs.

I worked on editing my book, “Paranoiac Utopia”. I removed one poem altogether, took out most of another and reworked a few more. Some years ago I thought this book was finished but now parts of a lot of the poems seem lame to me.

            I took a siesta in the early afternoon and woke up an hour and a half later feeling very hot. It was a hot day but this felt like I’d left the oven on and I could smell burnt air. I got up and found that I'd left the kettle on the stove since before I'd gone to bed. It doesn’t happen often but when it does it’s scary.

            When I took my bike ride that same smell and that same sensation of being near a hot stove often came to me in certain areas that I rode through. When I smelled food cooking I felt like I was standing over the pot.

            Just south of the railroad bridge on Brock Avenue there was a boot in the middle of the road. On the other side of the bridge and about a block north there was a running shoe also in the center.

            On the Bloor bike lane going through Koreatown there were about seven cyclists in a row in front of me. I called out to the first one that I was passing on his left but he had buds in his ears and probably couldn’t hear me. I said it a couple more times and then just swerved out onto Bloor Street and rode until I was past the line of bikes.

            I stopped to use the washroom at Woodbine, splashed some cold water on my sweaty face and continued on.

            On Birchmount just north of Raleigh I stopped to take pictures of an industrial building with curved corners that looked like it might have been built in the early 60s. I’ve noticed a few similar buildings in Scarborough with kind of an art deco feel. I turned right on Parnell, which is another industrial street. Running south off Parnell is Jeavons where I found another interesting building that houses an envelope company. The structure is shaped like a wedge that is narrow at the entrance and then widens gradually to the back. I went back up to Parnell and continued east a block to where it ends at Edgely, then pedaled back down to Raleigh, across to Birchmount and south.

            Lost in thought, I overshot Danforth by a few meters and had to walk back across the street to head homeward. In Greektown another cyclist passed me fairly quickly. I came up behind him at the Broadview light and I left a space the length of a bike between my bike and his. Then a guy wearing a fat Foodora backpack parked his fat mountain bike in the space that I’d left. When the light changed he shot ahead of the guy that I’d stopped behind. For some reason they both slowed down at around Castle Frank and I passed them. Some riders are sprinters that get tuckered out in the long ride.

            I stopped at Freshco because I’d run out of fruit sooner than I expected. I had just been there on Monday but I thought that I had enough.

            When I got home there was a message from Nick Cushing asking me if Bike Pirates sells road bike fenders. I knew they had them second had but I since they were still open I thought I’d pop down there anyway to find out if they have new ones but I found out they only have used. On my way home I ran into my upstairs neighbour David, who was wearing a Ghostbusters t-shirt. He told me he’d knocked on my door earlier because he wanted to give me some food. He came later to bring me a long meatball sandwich and a can of Labatt’s Blue. I asked about that camera battery he hadn’t given back to me yet and he said he’d give it to me. I followed him to his place and got it. I thanked him again for the sandwich, we bumped fists and then he exclaimed, “I'm boiling!" It still was pretty hot even though it was sunset.

            I watched an episode of Mike Hammer, Private Eye. The story begins with a masked burglar with a limp with high tech equipment stealing a new microprocessor from a software developer. When the security guard catches him he stabs him. Meanwhile, a former burglar named Herman whom Hammer had put away twice is treating Hammer to dinner because he is now a successful computer expert as a result of courses that he took while in prison and he says he owes it all to Hammer. The next day, Herman is arrested for the theft and the stabbing but Hammer steps up as Herman’s alibi because they were together at the time of the burglary. The security footage though shows that the thief has a limp exactly like Herman’s. An attractive insurance investigator named Toby, who is working for the software company insists that Herman is guilty and bets her body against Hammer's hat that she will prove it. Hammer discovers that Herman had been in prison with another burglar named Frank who was also a talented mimic. Frank turns up dead. Toby is also killed and in the end Hammer discovers that while Herman did not perform the burglary of the software company, he had been behind it and was in possession of the chip. The problem was though that the microprocessor was useless. The software company had hyped it as the next big thing and had hired Herman to steal it from them because its return would send their stock through the roof, then they would cash in by selling. Hammer leaves his hat on Toby’s grave.