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Streetcar wires pop up again and again whenever I try to churn these posts out, so let's focus on them for a while, or as long as it's feasible. I've always had a respect for them that goes far beyond their function. It's strange to me that naked apes could string up an entire sky above an intersection and preserve it against every imaginable kind of weather, and that this would cause conveyances to move. I admit, this is not a particualrly excellent engineering achievement; certainly nothing to rival the Discovery Channel specials or that artificial island airport terminal in Tokyo-Yokohama where they say you can see the curvature of the Earth in the floor. But these are my goddamn unchanged-since-the-1970s streetcar wires. I'm always afraid I might get electrocuted on the tracks, but that might be unreasonable. The other day the wire slipped off while I was on the streetcar and the conductor apologized to all of us for the inconvenience.

So I expected the holidays to be a booze-and-writing fest, but they turned out to have a little too much family togetherness, also moments of poignancy I cannot help but acknowledge: the kind of things that paradoxically make one glad to be alive, which made it possible for me to believe M.S. when he said that he enjoys his life after dumping even more salt on his revisited wounds. So the human togetherness has been hiked up, and the booze kept down. Except this human togetherness occurred in the context of the most crippling vicarious loneliness to hit me in a long time. "Closed due to Christianity," they should have said. Which cruel patriarch mandated we shouldn't be able to drink on Christmas eve, though the day and into the night? (Of course, there is no conspiracy; there never was.) Wandered the city for a while; walked by here. We are not clubbing types.

And what better to illustrate the shuffling and scuffing and sniffling, etc. of the Annual Gift Day season than with a walk through the Eaton's Centre. (Incidentally, I think I ran into the guy taking these pictures today while jaywalking. Me and him and this other guy were stuck on the median. He was trying to get a perfectly framed shot of Toronto's widest street. And he snapped some more pictures, one of which included me. But I don't think I'm ready for web exposure. I'd melt or something.) There is a spot on the other end of the Centre where I stand and if you get it right most of your visual field gets covered with people walking everywhere. It's strange and exhilarating and humbling and disorienting all at once.

I got back to the Eaton's Centre the next day. There was more despair this time. I was on my way to my counselling shift: talking to the most disappointed devout holday celebrants juxtaposed to the most irreligious and desperate. It equals out, the despair of crushed hopes and the despair of no expectations. But my job is to never let it get to despair. We try to take that negativity and dispel. And it's amazing how little it affects me. Most of my despair is somatogenic. I think.

Consider: "One thing virtual reality could do is dispel some of our most cherished illusions. Such as our wish for omnipotence."