I hate the volume from so many cars and trucks on the street, so the park rules my heart of walking. I like listening to the emptiness. Sometimes, despite best intentions to get there while the sun is out, I don’t get to it until after dark and it surprises me when so much blackness and barren terrain feels spooky, to turn a corner and find people still here, sharing benches or just before it got frosty, dancing to portable music machines with glow sticks and incense. It’s usually electronic music, unchanging loops that I don’t admire. How is it you find that stimulating when it’s lifeless? But they do find it awesome and my question outs me as someone who doesn’t understand that which they all know is amazing. How long will I continue to not get it like vaping or fancy jeans already pre-ripped.

Walking late at night through High Park, always leery, known a fair share of male hostility whether held up with a knife in 70s Winnipeg or big guy in 80s New York asking for help which was a con. Next day New Yorkers said he had a weapon if the con proved unconvincing. Or threats screamed from cars in the 90s walking at night in Hamilton “hey faggot i’m gonna kill you and your boyfriend”. I bet that line extends as far into the past as it does into the future and maybe never ends, I bet hostility is hormonal. Didn’t they sort of prove it that one time on This American Life when they explored testosterone? The bottom line is still looking over my shoulder, I’m thinking about animals too. Never heard of tigers, grizzlies or cobras here in winter time High Park, but my imagination isn’t interested in rationality. You can’t fail twice it says to itself, checking once more that behind me there is no Tasmanian devil traveling in a sandstorm. I avoid the paths off the public roads at night and stick to the well lit sections. But not long ago I saw something in the distance by a tree. As I got closer it was clearly a tall broad shouldered man leaning by himself against the tree. It was nighttime I moved to the other side of the path and as I got closer there was abrupt commotion, a second man became visible and got up from his knees and they scurried off in the direction that took them farthest away from me, either a blow job or a moment of prayer. Better than a grizzly I told myself.

By the skating rink they play hit song radio stations, it fits with fluorescent lights. A young woman passed me carrying a saxophone case. Alto, I asked politely? Yes it is, do you play? No, I record. Do you record music like that? She asked motioning with her mask toward the bright lights. No I replied. I come hear to listen to the snow. I didn’t realize until she put it that way, but that’s why I come too.