It took me a week to get comfortable with the idea, but last night I think I told some Torontonians I'd actually move to Toronto for work.

Unfortunately, as of 2:24am, July 27, I am no longer particularly interested.

Walking Landsdowne Ave. just minutes ago, I was pointlessly hit in the face by two passing male rollerbladers. My mouth tastes like blood and sulfur. My upper lip isn't quite split. My right eye is swelling; tomorrow will tell if I'll be able to see out of it. I hadn't said or done anything, but these two fellows, one after another, saw fit to hold their arms out, possibly aiming with their fists specifically, and hit me in the face, and then call me "faggot," regardless, and ignorant of, any sexual history they might have known about. I had no idea who they were. I hadn't said a word to them, and had actually moved out of the way. They were out of sight soon after questioning my heterosexuality.

I crossed Landsdowne to ask a man who had seen it all if he had seen it all, and if there were any obviously split or bleeding spots. I felt a pain in my left temple, my upper lip was definitely swelling already, and my eye, well, it felt salty and sore. But the man was talking on his phone. Did you see those two guys on rollerblades? I asked. Yes. Do you see my lip split anywhere? No. Did you see them hit me?

"No, I'm not talking to you. There's a guy talking to me." This man was so uninterested, he had to explain to his friend on the phone at 2:24am that it didn't really matter what he was hearing from someone who had been pointlessly punched in the face by two strangers. Thanks, pal. He didn't even stop talking, despite the fact that my bloody hands were cupped around my nose to stop my blood from going on my shirt.

There's nobody to call the police on; it's just two assholes on rollerblades, and, as nice as it would be for someone to recognize that description, it probably won't get them any more hurt than I was, by a long shot.

So, thanks, folks, for making me think I might enjoy it here. It doesn't take much to cancel that thought. A split lip, bruised head, and swollen eye almost do it for me, but I've got two days left. Do your best.

Toronto, July 22.

I know I missed Ottawa, and the rest of Montreal. This one was easy to write first.
Had I slept at all, it would have been a horrifying way to wake up.
The guy above me has rolled over a few times. It's about 10am. "I'll kill you. Fuck you. Oh, I'll kill you." After rolling and sweating all night, and sleeping just long enough to have instantaneous nightmares just long enough to tap my greatest hopes and fears at the same time, I'm listening to someone with a German accent utter death threats.
I was going to give hostels another chance. My last experience was in Victoria where I didn't sleep at all in a giant dormroom with 20 or more assholes who all came in after 2am. I laid almost face down with my wallet in one hand, and my knife in the other hand. I was up by seven.
Last night, I thought this Toronto place, that I won't name because it's not their fault, was OK. I laid back in a clean, quiet room in a hostel on College and St. Streetcar. This is what I wrote last night: "There's one other guy in this six-person room right now, and he's sleeping. There's an electrical hum that sounds like the beginning of Back To The Future, when Marty McFly is turning Doc Brown's pointless giant amp all the way up to 10. Water is always running, and you can feel the building shake when the streetcar goes by. I'm on a bottom bunk. Someone is going to go up above me and wake me up at some point tonight."
They did. He was mumbling. It didn't wake me up; I hadn't fallen to sleep at that point.
"The bathroom is full of other people's shit. Shampoo, toothbrushes, cologne with German writing on it. It's all weird."
I'd never packed as fast as I did this morning after the psychopath started muttering. There's actually a pair of underwear in my laptop bag. And a pen. And a sweat-soaked shirt. I stripped my bed without standing up, and I never once made eye contact. I came downstairs in a bit of a state; I asked if I could leave my stuff somewhere while I tried to go to the bathroom, and had some breakfast for free.
That's him. he just came down. He has short brown hair, a fanny pack, navy blue flipflops, blue plaid shorts, and a small, mean face. I don't want him here. I don't want to be here. I'm getting a different room to have a shower. I told the lady at the desk I didn't feel safe in my room, and explained the situation. There's an angry, damaged man here, and I don't want any part of this shit.
Hostels are a surreal place. I wish it wasn't three times the price to get a private room.

Summer 2011

Summer's a hard time to work. The sun shines through office windows, bringing winter's tolerable boredom to an unbearable rolling boil. Fortunately, I got fired from my job. We'll leave reasons and rationales to someone more lawyerly than I am for now, and accept the beautiful, wonderful truth that goes along with any good summer firing: now I have more time to go fishing.
Tonight, like any other night, I'm thinking about fishing again. I just ate a herring and a mackerel; two ocean fishies far from being endangered.
The scene is as such: there's a bridge that goes over an inlet southeast of Halifax, overlooking what for the most part is an untouched stretch of pine and bog wilderness. Think some rocks in there, too, if you're trying to imagine right now. And through this vast wilderness goes a long salty watercourse that rises and falls with the tides. The tides push seaweed, styrofoam, beer bottles and other junk under the bridge and out the other side, then takes them back out again in six hours or so. And the current under the bridge is strong in one direction as it fills, and strong in the other direction as it empties. For a scarce few minutes, the water is dead still at high and low tide. High tide, you cast and catch fish. Low tide, you cast and catch the bottom. Then you lose your hook. Then you swear.
As the tide comes in, the water gets clearer and saltier. Sometimes, fish follow the tide. As it goes out, the water gets murkier, and fresh water from waaay back out of sight, trickling from creeks and swamps, prevails.
There's a quiet peacefulness to this spot. Herons stand around looking at fish. Cormorants stand around looking like a pile of castoff bird parts painted black. Pigeons poop endlessly from their perches under the bridge. Sometimes, that kingfisher flies by to divebomb you or screech about how close he thinks you are to his nest. Little fish doodle around in the shallow water near the giant white granite boulders you can stand on and cast out from.
I don't remember what made me pick this spot, or why I found it. I know that when I first started fishing, about a year after I moved to Halifax, I never caught anything here. Pollock, which there are millions of, ignored whatever I put in the water. I didn't know about mackerel then, and herring? Well, who knows about them now. I've caught two since I started fishing. One was hooked right near its butt, and the one I caught today was hooked through the side of its face, nowhere near its mouth. They don't eat hooks. They filter-feed. But they also travel in huge schools, and get caught by mistake.
Anyway, the spot. I don't take many people to it. There are those who know about it, and those who ask to come with me, and generally, I'll take whoever happens to be ready at the exact second I decide to go fishing. Some people wreck fishing rods immediately, tangling everything around the reel in a giant ball, or casting so hard that the hook breaks off the line. Some people cast clean and natural with minimal instruction.
A friend told me "I like going fishing with you. Fishing with you is fun! I wouldn't want to go by myself and find out that I liked it without you there." It was a sweet thing to say.
But a lot of the time, I go by myself. In the evening, before the bugs go insane, you can cast out time after time, catch or not catch, and decompress. It's always been there like that for me. I've swam here, too, when the current isn't too strong, and canoed all up through the channels and coves the inlet has, sunburning and moongazing as the minutes turned to hours, and days turned to nights.