Hustle and bustle

I've often heard people say that they choose to live in cities because they enjoy all the hustle and bustle, being in the middle of everything. I find that odd, because to me it's irrelevant. I chose to live here because of convenience - everything is right there! It seemed odd to me that such a major life decision would be based on how many extras are walking through the frame of the movie of your life.

But then I saw this picture of Amsterdam taken by Alfie Hitchcock, the photographer on Eddie Izzard's tour (which should totally add a Toronto date to the itinerary, btw) and thought how it's rather amazing that there are real people, living real lives, in a place that looks like that. The next day, on my way to work, I tried to imagine what my corner of the world would look like to someone from another country. Walking down the street, I wasn't quite able to see it from foreign eyes, but I noticed what kept attracting my attention was all the stuff that was happening. The crane building the new condos was lifting a big heavy load. There was a truck delivering beer, a truck delivering shoes, and a truck delivering kitchen utensils. The mailman was delivering mail. People were rushing out of coffee shops with take-out cups of coffee. As I tried to view my life through foreign eyes, what was attracting my attention was all the hustle and bustle. But why?

***

When I was 10 years old, our family went on a vacation to England, the first week of which was spent in London. We flew into Gatwick airport and took a train into the city proper. I was really surprised by what I saw out the windows of the train - some of it was dirty, some of it was ugly, some of it was shabby. This was not what I expected. (Especially since I wasn't aware at the time that trains usually see the backs of things, not the front face that they present to the world). I'd always thought of Europe as the pictures I'd seen in storybooks, which didn't include peeling paint and pollution.

The flat we were staying in was a bit of shock too. The building was old (by my North American standards) - so old that it had originally been built without plumbing, and a toilet and a shower had been haphazardly installed in two separate closets later - literally water closets! But what was even more surprising was that when you looked out the back window, you saw roofs and chimneys of other buildings. They were old too, and kind of grungy, like the roofs in Mary Poppins. We could see other people's back windows from our back windows!

The other thing that was a bit of a shock, and I don't know if this is cultural or just because I was sheltered at home, was hints of human sexuality in media. In the Tube stations there were movie posters featuring a nude woman covered by a sheet. The sheet covered everything that needed to be covered, but it was apparent from the arrangement that she was nude underneath - no possibility for her to be wearing underwear or anything. I also clearly remember a cover of a women's magazine with a reference to "making love" and a man with his hands on a woman's (clothed) buttocks, which caused me to spend some time trying to figure out where a man touching your bum comes into the process of a penis going into a vagina. Magazine racks included magazines with pictures of topless women on the cover. TV sitcoms included sexual innuendo. This was an adult world, and I had literally never seen anything like it in my life.

This was a scary place, this London. It was quite clearly intended for adults, and it quite clearly had history far beyond anything I could possibly imagine. I wasn't used to this. I grew up in a house that my parents bought brand new when they were pregnant with me, and many of my friends lived in similar houses in a neighbourhood that was all built at the same time - a whole neighbourhood intended for child-rearing. Our house backed onto a ravine, so I wasn't used to being able to see into other people's space. My world consisted of a few winding streets on the 15 minute walk to my elementary school, with nothing more complex than a little park with swings and climbers, and a Becker's where we could buy candy. The rest of the world I saw through the window of a car. We'd go to my grandparents' houses and they were smaller and older, but that made sense because my grandparents were smaller and older. Sometimes I'd go on errands and stuff with my parents, we'd go places in cities, we'd go to tourist things, but these were just sets for different scenes in the movie that was my life. Just like in the books I read, I was clearly the protagonist, the different places I went were just sets, and the space in between viewed through the car window was nothing more than pictures to entertain me on the ride.

In London, I was quite obviously not the protagonist. This was an adult world, and there was no effort to hide that from the children. Because school was still in session when we were there, we would often be the only children in sight, and as a result I felt constantly out of place. It also had history. People had been there before, and they were relevant. I saw pictures from the 1940s of Tube stations - actual, real-life Tube stations that I had been in, in real life, just moments earlier - filled with people in suits and skirts hiding from WWII air raids. I saw pictures of Victoria Station, which I had actually been in, from the 19th century, filled with long skirts and top hats. All kinds of people had been there, most of them adults, doing important and historical things. They had left their dust and their fingerprints and their antiquated attempts to install toilets. I, 10 years old, in a sweatshirt and running shoes, was irrelevant to this world of grownups in suits and/or mohawks, walking in the footsteps of generations before them, through streets that had been bombed by nazis and shat on by horses and built by kings. I wasn't the protagonist. I wasn't even an extra. I was just some random kid who had accidentally wandered onto the set. I didn't belong there at all. It was terrifying.

But after a couple of days in London, I had a revelation: I knew how to use the Tube. I had been on public transit before, but I had always simply been following my parents, who knew where they were going. In London, I watched them figure it out, and saw that it was actually quite simple. I could totally use it independently! (Wasn't allowed to, being only 10, but I unquestionably had the ability.) Once we went to some town or something on the outskirts of London, a trip which involved a couple of different tube lines and one or two trains. Looking at the map, I could totally figure out how to get there myself. I had the ability to go to another town! Unilaterally! This was a super power! I spent hours looking at the gorgeous and complicated London Underground map figuring out how to get places. This world was terrifyingly big and old and adult, but I could navigate it! I had the ability to be a perfectly competent part of this big scary adult world just like all those grownups on the train! I had literally never before in my life felt adult competence, and I was feeling it not at home where I was the protagonist, but in this big, old, adult place where I clearly didn't belong. It had never before even occurred to me that I might ever one day - not even in the distant and adult future - experience such competence and empowerment. But the moment I realized I could navigate the London Underground, it occurred to me for literally the first time in my life that I might one day be able to fit into, or at least move undetected through, a world that is so much bigger and grander than me.

I've had an affection for trains ever since, and to this day, after nearly 10 years living in Toronto, I still feel a little bit cool when I take the subway.

***

So back to Toronto in 2009. I'm quite clearly not the protagonist here. I'm nothing more than an unnamed extra, and I'm quite content in that role. But as I walk down the street, watching all the hustle and bustle, I can see that it all relates to me. Those condos the crane is building? The people who live there will be my neighbours - at the very least I'll be able to recognize their dogs. Those trucks delivering stuff? I totally shop at those businesses. It's very likely that I'll drink that beer, buy those kitchen utensils, or try on those shoes. That mailman? He knocked on my door one hot, sunny, summer Saturday and handed me the Harry Potter book I was eagerly awaiting. That coffee shop? I once sat in there for an hour, waiting out a freak thunderstorm in which my shoes got wrecked and my foot injured. For the price of a cup of coffee they let me use whatever resources they could scrounge together to dry myself off, repair my shoes, and give first aid to my injured foot so I could get home.

I'm part of it! Not a big part, not an important part, but have my little niche and fit into it nicely, despite the fact that this world is so much bigger than me.