The Wine-up Across from the Line-up

            Saturday morning when I got up it was so muggy that during yoga three oil companies tried to float rigs on my sweat. I flipped over before they could start drilling.

            It cooled down and dried up a bit during song practice but it felt like it was going to be a hot day so I wore sandals to the food bank. There was a steady stream of cars heading east along Queen and I couldn’t cut across to 1499 as I usually do, so I went to the lights at Sorauren and pushed the button to cross. I assume the increased flow of traffic was of people headed for the Caribana parade.

            The last person in the food bank line had marked their spot with a recyclable shopping bag that looked like the kind sold at Freshco. A young woman came shortly after me and as she positioned her cart I made sure she knew that I was ahead of her. She left her cart there and moved to the other side of the sidewalk. I told her she was wise not to stand close to the building and she agreed, saying that she learned her lesson last time she was there. That was the time when a pigeon dropped a stream of shit all along the line and she'd gotten pooped on a bit as well.

            Across the street near the corner were two young women wearing matching peach coloured costumes with similarly hued plumage at the back. Our door person Marlina approached them with her phone and they gladly posed for her. A few minutes later a car pulled up and they removed their feathery tails to put them in the back, get in and drive to the parade.

            Shortly after that a group of four young women, also dressed for Caribana but not in matching garb, except that they all wore gold hoop earrings large enough to pitch a baseball through, were hanging around and taking shots of one another with their phones. In one pose, a young lady with a particularly generous derriere began to wine in profile while another girl stood behind her. They eventually crossed the street and walked down Beatty.

            A group that looked like they just got off a bus came walking east on Queen. They consisted of a mixture of middle-aged African Americans and some elderly people of East Indian descent. One woman who sounded like she was from Buffalo asked the woman whose cart was behind me in line whether the parade would be going by there. She shook her head and they continued on.

            The large and talkative Tammy and the frightfully skinny and almost as chatty Brenda were smoking together on the steps of 1501 Queen. Brenda mentioned something about someone looking like a drug addict. Tammy said, "No offense but you look like a drug addict.” Brenda laughed and responded, “I am a drug addict! I’m addicted to pot." Tammy said, “I look like I smoke pot.” Brenda assured her, "I eat all the time!” and suggested that she just has a different metabolism.

            I read another page and a half of Flaubert’s "The Legend of St Julian the Hospitaler". The whole section just described the young Julian's love of hunting and how cruel he was to the animals that he brought down, such as just cutting off a living bird’s legs and indifferently riding away. A lot of stories of saints are like that because if they set them up as having begun as bad guys it gives their enlightenment more impact.

            When the line started moving, the two people that were ahead of me, still hadn’t come to move their cart and bag, so I moved them ahead by pushing the cart and kicking the bag. After a couple of moves they both came to claim their places.

            From the shelves I got a tube of Pringles; a tin each of chickpeas, tuna and spicy refried beans; and a package of five peanut butter fudge bars, but I didn’t realize until later that they were Atkins diet bars containing sucralose, so I won’t open the package and I’ll return them to the food bank next time. The Atkins people tend to suppress the fact that Atkins had several heart attacks leading up to his death from a blood clot in his brain. His wife refused to allow an autopsy.

            They only had the kind of cereal that is served hot, so I didn’t take any. Generally I tend not to even eat hot cereal in the wintertime because it’s too mushy.

            I didn’t take any soup or pasta either.

            At Angie’s dairy and meat station, I think she gave me extra yogourt because I turned down the milk. I also got a pack of four single servings of cottage cheese and the usual three eggs. In addition to the usual meat offerings there was a bag of chicken fingers and a pack of frozen, sliced honey-maple ham.

            Sylvia gave me two red potatoes, two carrots, a green pepper, four Roma tomatoes, a seedless cucumber and a cantaloupe. She didn’t offer me any of the kale and I didn't ask because it was yellowing.

            The bread being offered were just several crusty white loaves, so I didn’t bother.

            Outside on the traffic signal box in front of the food bank someone has pasted a poster with a black and white copy of the picture of a young man wearing a t-shirt with the message “Art is Dumb". The original colour version of the same photo can be found online and it's an ad for No Fun Press, which is a Toronto dealer of clothing, bags, hats and pins that are printed with irreverent messages. For instance they sell socks that say, “Eat shit" and a cuddle teddy bear wearing a t-shirt with the message "Fuck off" among other items. Their slogan is "Negativity is our specialty".