TTC

When I woke this morning to the news that the TTC was holding an illegal strike, my immediate thought was: Good. It's all over their safety, anyway, and I think they deserve the safety they want and probably require. It must really suck to get spit on for asking people to pay the price you don't set yourself. Someone has a problem so he takes it out on you, when really he should be calling the head office and spitting into his cell phone. I support them whole-heartedly.
My second thought was: I'm really glad I have a bike. I rather like the TTC for those days when I have an injury, or I'm wretchedly tired, or it's raining torrents, but otherwise, I can live without it, and can in fact go faster.
My third thought was: All those poor souls who rely on it. They're NOT going to be happy. And who can blame them? I hope they understand why it's happening, and maybe the guy who wants to spit or hit next time will think twice about his actions.
My final thought was: Oh, no. There are gonna be a LOT of cars on the road today. And there were. It was insane. I thankfully didn't encounter any kind of problem, but my god, the smog. And there was already a smog warning.
Maybe some good will come of this. Already it's becoming apparent just how reliant on public transit we are. Perhaps they will get the safety measures they so deserve.
Smog covering can have silver streaks.

We meet again

The same thing happens to me every time I read a Colette novel.
I develop a taste for hot chocolate.
As a rule, I'm not really all that into hot chocolate; I'm British by descent and therefore must enjoy tea above all other things. I even have a personal tea time most days, and it's rare that I would go one day without drinking at least one cup of tea, herbal or otherwise. For a while during the cold weather months, I could not fathom starting a day without a piping thermos full of Earl Grey tea to be transported to work and consumed in sips between classes. When warm weather began to show its face, I had afternoon tea on the porch with Kumari on a leash wrapping herself around the legs of my chair and trying desperately to both wiggle out of her harness and dunk her nose into my cup. She, however, only enjoys tea with milk, whereas I will have it any way I deem appropriate for the hour or the variety.
Not so, however, when I read Colette. For anyone caught unaware, Colette is a french woman writing in the late 19th century. She had a very colourful life and her books are filled with the intricacies of french living, decorating, eating, drinking, entertaining, and dressing. Mostly, however, her books are very personal, and have a lot of herself written into them. She also borrows quite extensively from her sensual and sexual experiences. I often refer to her books as "extraordinarily intelligent smut." She is one of my favourite reading experiences. She is never to be found on a canonical list of french authors; she is only marginally recognized by academia (I found her in a second-year feminism in literature class, which was a deplorable class besides this book). I, being a person who tends toward the classics, am not surprised at her lacking in classification and higher recognition. After all, her experiences offer little to the experience of educated men who create the systems. To a woman, however, and especially to a woman raised in these systems of male creation, she is invaluable. Hers isn't the writing of female experience through conventions, but they are. Hers are simple honest truths about her life through her characters. She never falls into the convention of the woman as witch or as feminine lump of ultimate goodness; all of her characters are well rounded, both loveable and hateable.
But I digress.
Strange things enter my brain whenever I pick up one of her pieces. I develop a strong urge to find a shabby-chic studio with only one room and very little space, filled with old furniture that requires some repair and perhaps are a bit threadbare. I desire a kitchen with few modern conveniences: a smaller refridgerator, a decent stove, one sink, lots of counter space and quite a few cupboards. For reasons I cannot divine, I want a divan. I want to section mysef a "bedroom" with gunmetal and fabric partitions (or the bamboo and ricepaper partitions I have), have a claw-footed bathtub, and a huge old mirror in my tiny hallway, to give it depth. My vanity, of course, will stay. I want to eat cheese and bread, cherries and chilled fruits, and chocolate. Lots of chocolate. And I want to finish every single meal with a cup of chocolate.
I finished breakfast with a cup of chocolate this morning and found myself less hungry this afternoon. I wonder if that's why they do it; to save both money and their figure. But having 1-3 cups of chocolate a day cannot be good for a person.
Can it?