Last Walk of 05/06
We meet in the Hart House Map Room. Four seasoned psychogeographers and twenty curious U of T students, brought together by a Student Union rep who thought it’d be a good idea for us well-worn wanderers to share some of our worldly wisdom with this next generation. Or at least give ‘em a couple hours entertainment.
Hart House itself, with its myriad of staircases and passages and other unknown corridors, seems a likely enough place for discovery, though we stick with convention and make for the outside.
There we face our first challenge of the night, to decide which way to turn. I explain to the group that the trouble with a directionless walk is deciding which path to take. Of course, it doesn’t much matter which way we go, as long as we keep the trip moving. With exchange students from Paris, Tokyo and Taiwan and new arrivals to Toronto from small-town Ontario, there are several claims of ‘I don’t know where I’m going’ and similar blank expressions. And despite my insistence that not knowing where you’re going is the perfect qualification for leading a psychogeographic walk, I’m at the front of the pack when we make our way towards Queen’s Park.
Then we walk to the newly opened Pharmacy Building, the blue-green fluorescence and floating orbs catching the collective curiosity. Somebody says that there are classes in these orbs, and so we decide to check it out, ascending our way to the entrance of one particular seminar room. Very cozy, except that opening the door sets off an aggravating beep, and that’s enough to ward off these hesitant student explorers.
Till Vince steps forward with initiative and decides that we should take turns leading our way, a sort of passing of the conch, and so it goes that we find ourselves back on the street, west on College, south on McCaul, across Baldwin till we enter a labyrinth of alleys.
Where we find a back alley garage, stacks of rickshaw frames piled on top the roof, a sort of sculpture installation that we can’t quite see. A few steps later we pass a row of well-kept rickshaws parked in the alley, and this gives rise to the following conversation:
Vince: “I didn’t even know there were rickshaws in the city.”
Me: “Yeah. You can sometimes see them on Front Street. Real tourist-like.”
Japanese Exchange Student: “How do you say this word?”
Me: “Rickshaw.”
Japanese Exchange Student: “Reek-shaw?”
Me: “Yes.”
Japanese Exchange Student: “This is the same, like in Japan. Reek-shaw.”
Me: “Oh.”
Japanese Exchange Student: “It’s the same.”
Me: “Oh.”
It goes like this for a little while, with everybody having something to say about it, until we don’t, and just sort of stand there for a while, listening to trees blow and a car idle in the lane behind us, and share this odd particular moment.
Later, when we arrive at the steps to The Gladstone Hotel, a woman we have not met enters our circle and asks what it is that we’re up to. I start into my psychogeographic babble, before catching myself and putting the question to the rest of the group, preferring for the word from these wandering newbies. It’s Vince who says it best; that he never knew there’d be so much to do when there really wasn’t much of anything to get up to. Or at least he says something to this effect. In any event, we trade smiles and email contacts and well wishes, before making our separate ways back into the night.
Posted by Eric on 10.05.06 @ 12:37 AM EST [link] [No Comments]
