[URBAN NOTE] Caught on the street
Apr. 7th, 2006 04:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldIt's raining today in Toronto. It's been raining in proper springlike fashion for most of the day, at least since 10 o'clock when I looked out my window to see everything soaked. It was raining when I left work at quarter past four, so much so that I could only squeeze myself onto a subway car at the very last minute, lower back twisted against the door, smelling the damp and the sweat in the air.
Yeserday in Toronto, it was a beautiful day, in springlike fashion with light wind and a bright, nearly cloudless, blue sky. Walking down Bloor Street east of St. George, I saw a woman taking advantage of this. She was dressed in white--blouse, pants--and well-tended, with short hair, perhaps a clerk at one of the posh stores in that area. She had a lit cigarette in her mouth, cheeks sucked hollow as she breathed, and her eyes were closed as she let the sun shine down on her. In the moment that I saw her, I imagined her photograph, something taken in the visual idiom of Nan Goldin that I'd seen in a 2003 exhibition at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. That one scene of fragile endurance and beauty would have been worthy of her.
Yeserday in Toronto, it was a beautiful day, in springlike fashion with light wind and a bright, nearly cloudless, blue sky. Walking down Bloor Street east of St. George, I saw a woman taking advantage of this. She was dressed in white--blouse, pants--and well-tended, with short hair, perhaps a clerk at one of the posh stores in that area. She had a lit cigarette in her mouth, cheeks sucked hollow as she breathed, and her eyes were closed as she let the sun shine down on her. In the moment that I saw her, I imagined her photograph, something taken in the visual idiom of Nan Goldin that I'd seen in a 2003 exhibition at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. That one scene of fragile endurance and beauty would have been worthy of her.
