lock lurker

 

on a rainy spring day a person hears someone open the front door of the boarding house and enter the hallway, pass his apartment and go into the living room, he opens his door and looks into the hall and then walks into the living room to check who it is, coming out of the kitchen is the the landlords representative. she says she is dropping off rent receipts for some of the tenants in the house before she has to check on some maintenance issue in the adjoining property. they begin to talk about the weather and then she tells him about a music concert or some kind of rave she went to.

an ethnic-canadian, she begins to talk excitedly about a concert she has been to earlier in the week, reviewing it all for the tenant who has never been to one, swinging her arms to imaginary music and flicking her cigarette lighter in the air. while doing that she gets the lighter too close to her head and with all the spray she has on accidentally ignites her hair. the flames spread along one curl to the next. she shrieks something inarticulate in her original language all the while patting out the flames and hopping around as though she was dancing. "oh so that's what people do at raves" the tenant says chuckling a little. she pauses to give him a dirty look then continues fussing with her burned hair.

the tenant laughs about the way she is dancing around as she is patting the flames out, and then steps into the kitchen to open the side door so the smell of burnt hair would air-out of the building, then so she can't see him trying not to laugh he stands there looking at the yard. she is muttering under her breath what may be explicatives in her first language and then retreats from the living room to the hallway, it sounds like she is digging in her purse for keys and says she's going to the property next door and that she will let her self out the way she came in and lock the door behind her.

the tenant stands at the side door a couple of minutes more, to let the singular disodor of singed hair exit to the yard and then shuts the door, locks it and goes to the front door to make sure the land lords employee locked it as she said she would (but didnt), so he locks it, then goes back to his room. he can't get in, his door he thought he had left unlocked is locked, he reaches for his keys and thinks ("no I left the door unlocked when I came into the hall and the keys are laying on the desk so I couldn't of locked the door behind me and the deadbolt isn't of the type that slides shut when the door closes so how?"), he pulls and pushes the door to see if the bolt may be only a little way out and catching but its locked shut, he thinks of running next door for the landlords rep who would have pass keys on her and then recalls his window is open he goes back to the side door and out in to the yard where he can open the widow all the way and crawls through, picks up his door keys and then walks over to the door where he turns the deadbolt which was in the locked position, opens the door looks out into the hall and he wonders how the doors deadbolt got locked.

not long after this he begins to notice people who could be described as immigrants walking ahead of him on the sidewalk, flicking a lighter in one hand as they move to imaginary music and then stepping to the side of the walk where they would pull out a set of keys and look at them as he walked by on his wanderings to and fro around the city.

 

Posted with Blogsy

accidental townscape--split pediment

the perspective illusion of a split pediment on the white apartment building between st.marys and inkerman streets to the west of st.nicholas street .

 

 

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accidental townscape--landmark

the old city hall clock tower viewed from victoria street between queen and shuter streets .

 

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elder lurkers

a person sitting at a table reading a book at a toronto public library.

two more people (an elderly othersex couple) , come along they sit down at the table next to the first person . soon along comes a fourth person who sits at the same table as the first person . this person seems to know the elderly couple and they start talking about some pictures of churches the old women had developed in her darkroom the day before and then the old man tells the other guy he recently bought new binoculars .

a strange conversation , seemingly all of it meant to be overheard by the first person , goes on between the old couple and the fourth person . where they say they can see his apartment from their apartment . "oh I don't mind you can't see much from that far" he says , "not until I bought the binoculars now I can see right in your bedroom , you were busy last night , he seemed to be one we havnt seen you with before (laughs) . oh I shouldn't be talking so loud every one" , meaning the young guy sitting at the table with you , "can hear me going on about the life you lead" , meaning they watch him having sex with other men in his apartment from their apartment . "oh I'm sure he knows all about that sort of thing" says the second guy in an arche tone.

a couple of months later while visiting a fifth person the first person comments on the lack of curtains in his apartment , "the people in the tower apartment across from here can see right in your apartment". oh he doesn't mind if they watch , "i know an old couple across the hall who like to watch , if you want i could goe get them ", something clicks but not loud enough for the person visiting and he looks at his host with a no thanks look , he then notices and comments on the hole in the ceiling above the bed , the person says "yeah since I don't use the bedroom and have the bed here in the dining room the ceiling-lamp was in the way so I took it down and haven't covered over the hole" .

a couple of weeks after that while at a cafe he thinks the guy who came out of the wash room before he goes in seems familiar though he can't place the face , inside the washroom on the lid of the trash can are boxes from several elder-porn films , thats when he recalls the day at the library and thinks the guy who came out of the wash room was the guy who was talking to the strange othersex couple , he puts the video boxes in the garbage and leaves .

several weeks after that incident he notices a seemingly greater than usual number of elderly , even decrepid , othersex couples with binoculars in hand or around their necks lurking along the path of his daily wanderings around the city.

 

Posted with Blogsy

accidental townscape--streetscape

the photo shows a fragment of civilia as defined in ivor de wolf's "the italian townscape", a keyhole passage off the public sidewalk and the dead-end beyond.

the defining quality of a keyhole being the ceiling over of a passage-way between two parts of the street. in this example the public sidewalk, a part of the street, is connected to another part of the street, the private dead-end at the back of the building via the keyhole between them.

 

Posted with Blogsy