Pizza and Crowds

I was walking along the muddy

road a few days ago and passed a man carrying a pizza box. I stared at it as we crossed paths, wanting to reach out and touch it; this thing that brought back dreamy memories of a place I used to live, with pizza places that you could order to take out. It smelt so good. The train had just pulled in and the man must have brought the treasure along with him from Cochrane to share with a fortunate few. I wondered if it was still warm. It didn’t matter. The box alone invoked such strange emotions in me of sights and smells commonplace in a previous life but in which this new one was alien. This wasn’t the only time it has happened. On Thanksgiving Day I was cutting a slice of Pumpkin pie: I sprinkled some nutmeg on top, since it was right there, when a whiff of that spicy aroma sucked me into a space tunnel and brought me to the Starbucks in Chapters at Christmas time. The barristers were concocting fancy Christmas lattes while I sat surrounded by people, sipping on my own nutmeg-sprinkled one. I watched a timelapse video of Toronto and had to tame strong pangs of desire to walk through large, arching passageways filled with people going to and fro. I always accepted that the senses were acute to things that are new and unfamiliar but I’m realizing that they are even more so to things that were once commonplace but aren’t anymore. My sister suggested that it could be like a sugar addiction – which I’m very familiar with – in that there is such sensory overload in the city that I’m going through withdrawal and scanning my surroundings eagerly trying to be satisfied by what was once normal. Perhaps in time the addiction will fade and I will become receptive to the sensory stimulants here that aren’t as loud as the city. Or perhaps there is just something Godly in the design of the city. We will reside in the City of God after all. The one that is to be 12,000 stadia long, wide, high and so on. Tim Keller describes the city’s original purpose to be a place of cultural development, justice and refuge – that does sound enticing. Perhaps both possibilities are true; only time will tell.

Strong evidence of the lack of demanding sensory stimulants here is the darkness of the nights. One can barely tell where the trees end and the sky begins. The space between two streetlights on either side of a burnt-out one is truly not for the feint of heart. But there you’ll find is the opportunity to witness softer, more majestic lights if you’re willing to take your eyes off the familiar one up ahead. The stars here are magnificent.