The Views

My initial opinion of Toronto was pretty blase - unimpressed by the onslaught of vehicles crawling along overheads, underpasses, and spilling out onto quadruple-laned highways. Engulfed by smog and smoke, I struggled in the heat, slogging under the weight of the smokey air and 100lbs of luggage, tripping from bus to subway to bus again.

Or perhaps there's another way to see it...

A snapshot of me sitting on the rocket train would show a very relaxed girl: headphones on, fingers tapping the beat, mouth chomping away on bubblegum, blowing indifferent pink bubbles. She's dressed in hip clothes complete with look-at-me movie star shades, one leg swung casually up over an enormous black suitcase, holding it from falling over as it gently rocks to the sway of the train. One arm is resting against a bloated backpack that is arguably half her size and she has her purse and day-pack squashed between the larger two items. She gives off a strong air of "I've done this before" and that she has - many times.

She knows her way around, despite being her first time in Toronto and 45 minutes later when she lets herself into her friend Emily's apartment, she is rewarded with the view of Toronto she's been waiting for... Cute, quaint, personal. Houses with character, holding the lives' of people who contain so much history, so many stories, as unique as the next door's house and its contents. Mini ecosystems, cohabiting the same city, the same time, the same air, but etching out existences that are so intensely personal, so inimitable that I'm left reeling at the thought that I'm momentarily part of the 4.5 million who inhale this air and who share Toronto as a setting to one of their stories.