Church of the Holy Trinity, Friday gathering

Caucasian male, 60, with wavy grey hair and moustach, wearing black pants, black t-shirt, and blue silk shirt, sitting in a leather chair at a small wooden table, surrounded by a semi-circle of guests there to hear him read and discuss his latest book.

The Jesus Sayings: The Quest For His Authentic Message, Rex Weyler (House of Anansi Press)

Page 110-111:

The image satirizes religious pretension with a counterculture sense of humour. For Jesus, spiritual awareness is not something to boast about. It starts with the smallest seed, invades highly structured society like a weed, and provides protection for innocent creatures. As we assemble Jesus' most likely original oral teachings, we can start here, with the lowly mustard seed.

Once a week, yellow school buses lined up outside the elementary school. She watched from the tarmac, clutching her hopscotch puck, as the buses filled front to back, the neighborhood's children dangling their heads and hands out the open windows. She waved as they pulled away, her best friend bouncing and clapping, en route to the promise of free bibles and doughnuts, and a 25¢ treasure taped under the seats of 100 lucky souls.

Spadina streetcar, 1 1/2 seats

Caucasian male, late 20s, very tall, wearing blue knit cap, light blue hoodie, and green jacket with red and white cross-stitching on the arms. He puts the book down every few minutes to crack his knuckles and look out the window.

Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer (Anchor)

Page 174:

Walking past the moose bones, I approach the vehicle and step through an emergency exit at the back.

The longest she'd ever spent locked in a car was at the drive in with her father. A film about a group of scientists stuck at the bottom of the ocean played on the screen. A watery monster slid like slick silver through the submarine making its way toward the toes of the mechanic. Her father shifted in his seat, an old spine injury ignited that morning when he hitched the trailer to their car, filling it with massive bags of ice. She looked back through the rear window, the tarp tightened, and wondered if she was the only kid at school who double dated with her dad and a 120 lb buck.

Spadina streetcar, pancake pale.

Caucasian woman, late 20s with long brown hair, pink and green stripes down each side, wearing long, worn leather black coat and chunky black boots, face pale with powder, eyes lined in thick liquid.

The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls (Scribner)

Page 32:

One night a few days later, I suddenly woke up. The air was hot and stifling. I smelled smoke and then saw flames leaping at the open window. At first I couldn't tell if the fire was inside or outside, but then I saw that one of the curtains, only a few feet from my bed, was ablaze.

It's not hard to imagine the drop from her second floor window. She's played it out, confident that she could kick out the screen, sit on the ledge, and shimmy herself around to face the wall. Dangling by her fingers, her body stretched to its limits, the drop would be minimized to only a few feet. The worst she'd suffer is a sprained ankle, if that. That's why she told her baby girl to stay at her grandmother's for the night, why she bought an extra pack of Marlboros just in case he finished his pack and there wasn't anything left to leave lit on the sofa cushion after he'd fallen asleep and she'd gone up to bed.

Spadina streetcar, scanning and laughing.

Caucasian woman, mid 30s, wearing glasses, gray hat, black and white checkered coat, Sorel Caribou winter boots, and carrying a lululemon bag and red knapsack.

Wild Ducks Flying Backward, Tom Robbins (Bantam)

Page 115:

Radical problems call for radical solutions. Conventional politicians are too thickheaded to conceive of radical solutions and too fainthearted to implement them if they could...

She was surprised to see him walking alone in the city. He was taller than she'd expected and on foot. She'd only ever seen him pictured on a bike. Even from the waist up, she'd always imagined him sitting on his 12 speed: during a press conference; addressing the House; bounding down the stairs of his three-storey house, braking hard for his aging mother-in-law, pulling his eldest onto the handlebars for a quick spin to the Kim Moon Bakery, a bag of red bean buns a late morning snack. He passed her, chin straight, eyes forward, his Olympian beret too snug for his head, a gift, she thought, perhaps from the medalist. She watched his heels roll off the pavement and up onto the sidewalk, readying his outstretched hand to greet the man who sells the custom fedoras from a wheelchair in his shop's doorway. Then he disappeared down a side street, his shoelaces tripping under rubber soles.

----

See you Tuesday!

Spadina streetcar, fixed and frozen.

Caucasian woman, late 20s, with long brown hair under knitted purple hat, wearing long black and white checked wool coat, knees tight together, elbows in, shoulders tensed.

The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz (Amber Allen)

Page 64:

That is why whenever we make assumptions, we're asking for problems. We make an assumption, we misunderstand, we take it personally, and we end up creating a whole big drama for nothing. All the sadness and drama you have lived in your life was rooted in making assumptions and taking things personally. Take a moment to consider the truth of this statement.

The closet was not a misunderstanding. There had been drinking, there had been spinning. There had been seven minutes starting from now. But two years before there had been a misunderstanding. It had been seconds and she was not who he'd been expecting as he waited in the dark for another girl to join him, the girl he was dating. Based on that misunderstanding they now stood in the light of the closet and looked at their watches.

Bloor Line, ready to hit the pavement.

Caucasian male, early 20s, tall, thin, wearing long black coat, black dress pants, and black leather shoes. He rests against a rolling cart of cardboard boxes, fast and cheap deals, a sidewalk salesman.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, Stephen R. Covey (Free Press)

Near the beginning:

This Personality Ethic, I began to realize, was the subconscious source of the solutions Sandra and I were attempting to use with our son. As I thought more deeply about the difference between the Personality and Character Ethics, I realized that Sandra and I had been getting social mileage out of our children's good behavior, and, in our eyes, this son simply didn't measure up. Our image of ourselves, and our role as good, caring parents was even deeper than our image of our son and perhaps influenced it. There was a lot more wrapped up in the way we were seeing and handling the problem than our concern for our son's welfare.

He shares his father's lingo. He's a problem solver dealing in solution sales. He can't text you on your Blackberry, and he won't be expensing this lunch. But sitting across from you, chatting in between sips of syrup soda and bites of soft shell tacos, he's pretty sure you're going to agree this clock radio is the perfect retirement gift for your boss.

Bloor Line, standing out from the crowd.

Caucasian male, early 50s, with long face, wavy, grey hair parted down the middle, "I Am Salman Rushdie" button pinned on North Face jacket, wearing red jeans and white sneakers.

The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins (Mariner Books)

Page 150:

So, we have seen that eyes and wings are certainly not irreducibly complex; but what is more interesting than these particular examples is the general lesson we should draw. The fact that so many people have been dead wrong over these obvious cases should serve to warn us of other examples that are less obvious, such as the cellular and biochemical cases now being touted by those creationists who shelter under the politically expedient euphemism of "intelligent design theorists."

As a boy, he'd stood in the woods watching. The man was the first redhead he'd ever seen naked, the second man. His body hair was shocking, not in mass or texture. It glowed, back lit by a low morning sun. This minister had started dating his mother. His minister. They were bathing in the lake, thinking him still asleep. This was the first redheaded naked minister he'd ever seen, he thought, and went back to bed.

Spadina Streetcar, in to work on a snow day.

Caucasian woman, late 20s, with brown hair parted hard on the side, wearing black jacket with hood, blue jeans and Red Wing Engineers.

Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (33 1/3), Carl Wilson (Continuum)

Page 32:

If you have never heard Celine Dion in French, it's hard to believe it's the same singer. Her cadences are much more supple and controlled, her interpretations more detailed. Gone is the blank persona that reduces many of her English songs to vocal stunt work, replaced by what can only be called soul.

Sleep came easy for the first time in a long time. Morning feels like morning, sun hitting her cheek peripherally, coffee a taste of bitter, the salt and sweet of croissant distinguishable, tummy free of stress, and shoulders of fatigue. The words nestle into place, a conscious gathering, meaning, for the first time in a long time, coming easy, coming home.

Spadina streetcar, drained.

Caucasian male, late 20s, very pale, wearing black warf jacket, dark blue jeans, black baseball cap, and silver link watch.

Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80's , Hunter S. Thompson (Simon & Schuster)

Page 15:

They know me here. When I came back last night I saw the hotel bell captain standing out in the middle of Post Street in a sleazy black kimono, jabbering blankly at oncoming traffic...so I stomped on the gas and swerved left at him, just to test the basic reflexes.

He's a rugged guy, always has been. His roommates rib him about his books, how he manages to read over the volume of the television kept loud to hear the game in every room. What is he, gay? He resolved to loosen up, coming back from the holiday break, his curly locks shorn into a close cut, his glasses replaced by contacts, and agreeing to step in as a blind date for a house party that invited half the women from their year. He did the shots, drained the keg, and, until just now, when he felt the blood drain from his face, forgot that there'd been another man in the room.

Bloor Line, looking for a little "me time"

Black woman, early twenties, with wide face and slim build, wearing fitted black winter jacket and blue scarf threaded around her neck. She's surrounded by plastic shopping bags: one from the LCBO, another holding two items heavily wrapped in tissue and newspaper. On her lap, a knock-off designer purse, two sets of gold handcuffs secured to the handle.

My Friend Leonard, James Frey (Riverhead)

Near the beginning:

I met Lilly on my second day. I was standing in line waiting for detoxification drugs and she was standing in front of me. She turned around and said hello to me and I said hello to her and she asked what happened to my face and I shrugged and told her I didn't know and she laughed. I saw her and spoke to her later that day and the next and the next and the next. The treatment center had a policy against male/female relationships. We ignored the policy.

When asked, she'll say that she didn't know the office had set a cap on Secret Santa gifts, that, truth told, she'd gotten the gift for an aunt and uncle who were no longer attending Christmas dinner, that she'd have hated to see it go to waste, that bottle of Veuve Clicquot, those NovaScotian crystal toasting flutes, a night with a special lady, perhaps New Year's Eve.

Oh. He doesn't have a girlfriend?

Spadina streetcar, prepped for holiday potluck.

Caucasian woman, late 30s, wearing a large knitted ski sweater and hat, large leather carry-all hoisted on her lap, edging into the next seat.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, Richard P. Feynman (Basic)

About halfway through:

And then we have this terrible struggle to try to explain things to people who have no reason to want to know. But if they want to defend their own point of view, they will have to learn what yours is a little bit. So I suggest, maybe incorrectly or perhaps wrongly, that we are too polite.

She stamps her feet on the soaked runner, looks up in time to see her young colleague holding her purse in the elevator door. There are five people inside including "those women" from the floor above, the ones who look at her, then each other. And she knows one day it will be just them and they'll tell her, tell her to just take the stairs, it's not like she couldn't use the exercise. She lunges into a half-spirited jog, her breath catching in her chest in a huff, the candied smiles of her carefully arranged shortbread snowmen falling to their shoulders. Mute.

Bloor Line, jacket off.

Asian male, mid 20s, wearing a green "cargo" jacket and grey scarf, the book's dust jacket removed, spine still visible in gold, block letters.

The ABS Diet: The Six-Week Plan to Flatten Your Stomach, David Zinczenko (Rodale)

Page 5:

When you have good abs, you're telling the world that you're a disciplined, motivated, confident and healthy person--and hence a desirable partner.

They met the day he stepped between the doors, in time, and came face-to-face with her forehead, the left temple to be exact. He snapped his gum, his breath freshly minted. But because he chewed loudly, mouth jawing open and closed, she reached up, pinching his lips together--and smiled.

Bloor Line, hiking her low cut jeans.

Caucasian woman, early 20s, wearing white jeans, white puffy jacket, French tips and Uggs, her foundation a shade of Ski Bunny.

The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown)

Page 82:

What linguists call speech rate--the number of speech sounds per second--equalizes. So does what is known as latency, the period of time that lapses between the moment one speaker stops talking and the moment the other speaker begins. Two people may arrive at a conversation with very different conversational patterns. But almost instantly they reach a common ground.

There are spots on the back of her pink bathroom door, like soda pop flecks, raised and syrupy. She hasn't washed them off. She knows they won't peel back or come away with one wet swipe of a dampened paper towel; and she won't try. They've been there since she moved in, reminding her of another pink bathroom door, her grandmother's. And what she thought was soda pop she now sees as something that exists quietly, only between pink bathroom doors.

Spadina streetcar, off at U of T.

Caucasian female, early 30s, wearing black jeans, black and white sneakers, and a worn brown suede jacket, headphone cords snaking up her back out of the side pocket of an orange courier bag.

Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel (Houghton Mifflin)

About page 101:

Then one night, when I am babysitting for our neighbours downstairs, my father calls. Mommy must have told him where he could find me, which I think is a stunning display of maturity on both their parts since they can barely talk without hostility surfacing.

The jacket cost $20, bought across the border at an army surplus store. Heavy brown suede, the cuffs worn into a smooth crease from years of rolling. It zips up the front but not over her chest. It’s a man’s jacket, after all.

She adjusts the collar constantly, snapping it high even though it’ll fall limp almost immediately. It came with a receipt in the breast pocket, $5.00 of gasoline at a station one town over, and a crumpled tissue, inside a chewed up piece of gum, red, Big Red, and the filter of a Marlboro. A day’s worth of breath wrapped away.

Yonge Line, en route to welcome someone home.

Caucasian male, early 30s, wearing glasses, blue jeans and a blue polo shirt, a cotton ball bandaged loosely to his inner elbow.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Charles C. Mann (Vintage)

Page 148:

To Fenn, the small pox historian, the squabble over the number of deaths and the degree of blame obscures something more important. In the long run, Fenn says, the consequential finding of the new scholarship is not that many people died but that many people lived.

He was 28 and tired. Sitting on the steps outside the hospital, he peeled back the lining of a cafeteria muffin and took a long bite. He turned the muffin a quarter turn and picked at a piece of the lining baked under the lip. It was done and he didn't have to feel anxious anymore, didn't have to wonder each time he left the room, would this be it? His father was off stewing in some corner of the hospital and that was fine. The sun was shining and there was an unseasonally mild breeze. He felt life pouring back into him, enough to carry him through the next stage. Then he remembered she was gone and he tucked the muffin into his jacket pocket without thinking.

Spadina streetcar, a familiar face.

Caucasian woman, mid 20s, with long brown hair tucked into a knitted cap. She leans against the window, breaking into frequent smiles. Is it the text or that certain thing she can't get off her mind?

The City of Words, Alberto Manguel (House of Anansi Press)

About page 126:

Not only through censorship of whole languages do totalitarian governments enforce restrictions on thought: by using certain words in specific contexts and by making up words to denote assumed rights and privileges, the impression can be created that what is being said in this new vocabulary is intrinsically true simply because words exist to say it: the words democracy, freedom of speech, equality, liberal are all good examples.

When she was 10, she sat with her best friend, cross-legged inside the mid noon glow of a blue pup tent, placing the first syllable at the end of each word, an "ay" tacked to the beginning, encoding a long list of all the boys they'd let kiss them on the mouths.

Bloor Line, sitting to avoid the path of an overstuffed purse.

Caucasian woman, late 20s, with wet brown hair solidly parted down the middle, the ends tucked behind her ears slowly drying up to the root. She wears grey dress pants and a white blouse. The top of a stainless steel spoon peeks out from the side pocket of her bag, bundled in a paper towel, tongue streaked.

The Iraq Study Group Report: the Way Forward - a New Approach, The Iraq Study Group, James a. III Baker, Lee H. Hamilton

Page 75:

RECOMMENDATION 44: The most highly qualified U.S. officers and military personnel should be assigned to the imbedded teams, and American teams should be present with Iraqi units down to the company level. The U.S. military should establish career-enhancing incentives for the officer and personnel.

While answering the phones yesterday, a woman on the other end of the line was mean. She transferred her, cutting off the tail end of her missive and waited, still waits, for the polite exchange with her manager, a few "helpful" suggestions.

Spadina streetcar, casual among business attire

Caucasian male, late 50s, with scruffy white hair, wearing a short sleeved blue dress shirt and khaki shorts, with white tube socks and brown leather shoes.

Wish You Weren't Here!: The Black Cat Anthology of Travel Humor, Cecil Kuhne (Black Cat)

Page 157:

There are two theories to bush flying. One, go with a pilot who has never crashed, reasoning that they never--knock on wood, rub rabbit's foot, keep fingers crossed--will. Or two, go with an "experienced" pilot, one who has crashed and lived, because at least they know how to crash and survive.

He glances at the man beside him punching at the buttons of a mobile phone, his thumbs opposing an upsetting and urgent message. He looks down at his own thumbs, covered in tiny green cuts, his greatest nemesis a yard of weeds.

Bloor Line, done in, shoulders sore.

Middle Eastern male, late 30s, very tall, wearing dark blue dress pants and light blue shirt. His frame is thin, his belly large and round. He pulls his lips in tight, sewn, and white-knuckles the overhead bar.

The Halo Effect:...and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers, Phil Rosenzweig (Free Press)

Page 103:

Does this mean that all company performance is just a matter of luck? Is it roughly equivalent to someone who flips a coin and gets heads ten times in a row, but stands no greater chance to flip heads on the eleventh try than anyone else? Not at all. Success is not random--but it is fleeting.

Wincing, he struggles to rub at the knot below his shoulder blade, rolling his neck twice once way, then the other. He sighs loudly and crumples his brow, sharing an empathetic smile with floor. He shakes his head. Almost a year to the day. They finally got him business cards.

Arts and Letters Club, The Alcuin Society 2006 Awards for Excellence in Design in Canada, Part Two

Caucasian woman, early 60s, with pale complexion, painted lips and spiky, red hair. She empties her white wine glass and excuses herself from conversation, inching between an end table and the outstretched legs of a napping member, scotch glass slipping toward the end of his grasp. She brushes the front of her slacks and crosses the lobby into the gallery of books.

Faces on Places: A Grotesque Tour of Toronto, Terry Murray, designed by Ingrid Paulson (House of Anansi Press)

Page 93:

The most recent example of overtly Canadian content appeared in 1956 on the Crown Life Insurance Building on Bloor Street East. Reliefs appear at the western and eastern ends of the building -- a deer family on the former, and a polar bear family on the latter.

Her grandson has a game small enough to carry in her palm. She plugs in a small disc and he helps her select the levels. She picks a weapon, the bow, and a sight appears. The dials up the audio. She hits the button and thunnng she's high-fiving an eleven year old as a pool of pixilated blood pools at the feet of her stag.