Chinese Broccoli

1. spring
I always forget about spring. Seriously, it's like you need to suspsend your belief in it during winter, because if you really knew, if you really remembered, it'd be completely torturous during the worst bleakest greyest sleetiest days of winter decline and despair. (It's kind of the same as forgetting that there is love in the world, maybe — some days you just can't handle that idea.) In any case I don't know what the deal is with people who live in places without seasons — that cyclical mind game of forgetting and remembering (over and over your whole entire life) anchors the most inspiring and awakening and beautiful stuff in the world for me. I heard the ice cream truck yesterday, for god's sake. Life is good.

2. arcane culinary geographical reference
Can I just say how much pleasure I take in coming off like some kind of old crank in a roadside bar whenever someone tells me where they're from in the good ol' United States? "Oh yeah? You're from Albuquerque? Sure could use me one of those grilled cinnamon rolls from down at the Frontier Restaurant!" Hopefully it's not too annoying, but I dearly love to be the local nutjob and random food go-to in any travel conversation. Of course, my knowledge is pretty obscure and limited to the 50 states and only a handful of Canadian provinces — but for now I can be content with wandering into a Brooklyn coffee shop and droppin' some serious hometown taco and brunch-spot science on the transplanted baristas. Speaking of which, can somebody hook me up with a Montreal cannoli or a shot of Blue Bottle Roman espresso? Thanks!

Posted by liz at 06:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Newmindspace,
I know the gal from NOW Magazine would have preferred you to blow 5,000 chicken eggs out yourselves in order to "lessen your impact on the environment", but hey. Thank you again for the easter egg hunt.

This year's hunt area was a little daunting. I thought maybe Andrea and I would have more fun if we started at vapid, businessy Yonge and moved back Annexward—but we were lazy and just started from my house. And luckily so, as we would have been very discouraged by the lack of anything eastery left whatsoever in the fancypants Yorkville environs. (What, you guys couldn't arrange something cute and purple plastic in the Cartier window? Harumpf.)



But the ethos of truly using your whole city as a playground and a place to live lives on. There's nothing quite like stumbling around sleepily—maybe even a little hungry and lightheaded and nauseous, hey—on a Sunday morning only to gleefully spy that orange plastic ovoid in a planter, wedged behind a window grating, stuck up a tree, wherever. It's delight—it's pointful in its pointlessness. It's living like a kid and like a curious person and participating—and whether there's a message inside the egg that says something inspiring or just some confetti and robot stickers (my cat loved the green fuzzball, by the way) it's about so much more than that. I find it weird that detractors even exist, frankly.



So, thanks to everyone who went out in the frigid freaking freak cold at 4:30am and hid things for the joy of other people, and who continue to make Toronto interesting and strange and intimate and vital in the subtlest little ways. For the record, we found the eggs dangling from fishnet in the arbor at the Tranzac and aloft its fire escape, (and a helpful passerby pointed out the ones in the bird-feeder!); we recovered the eggs stuck in the window at Trinity-St. Paul's, and behind its lumpy Bloor Street banner. Andrea turned up the one in the mailbox at Lee's Palace, and we couldn't miss the one on the patio chairs at Future Bakery. And of course there were all the others we forgot where we found but that have left us pretty much drowning in bunny erasers until 2008. Strangely we encountered no one else on our quest—but the shards of pastel dollar store plastic all along our main drag told the story of comrades, albeit early birds and keeners.( At least this saved Andrea and I from having to get into hair-pulling fights with competing hunters.)



Til next year, kids!

Posted by liz at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

[Woman pointing at issue of Infiltration]
"Is that the tunnel in Toronto?"

 
[Hey Buddy table]
"We should get this for your father since he spilled bleach on his Duchamp shirt."

 
[Infiltration table]
"You're the Richard Burton of Urban Exploration!"

Posted by liz at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)