last homogenized drops between my cracked lips, I croaked my thanks, then manumitted them.
Eventually I forced myself from Room 2229 and abseiled down the lift shaft into the subway. At the Royal Ontario Museum I became transfixed by the bags visiting high school students had left trustingly strewn across the lobby: how could anyone be allowed to receive an education who insisted on dragging about that much
stuff?
And transfixed again in a subterranean gallery by the
pensées
of the former premiere Pierre Trudeau: ‘To remove all the useless baggage from a man’s heritage is to free his mind from petty preoccupations, calculations and memories.’
If it had worked for him, what was he doing here – or at least a photograph of his younger self, in white T-shirt and belted jeans? More to the point, what was the very canoethat he had been paddling when he had this epiphany doing here? Looking round I realized that this wasn’t so much an exhibition as a lumber room, with items from the museum’s permanent collections cast about willy-nilly: a Mercedes saloon got up with wood, a shamanic grizzly bear cast in bronze, and behind this shape-shifter Bacon’s
Study for Portrait No.1
, the reflex-dilation of Pope Innocent’s anus-dentata as shockingly disregarded as it must once have been when it leant against the wall in the artist’s South Kensington studio.
‘I’m sorry, sir, there’s no photography allowed.’
‘But I’m not photographing anything.’
‘Sir, no photography.’
‘I’m not
taking
pictures, I’m
looking
at them.’
The vertically aligned cooker knobs and key-in-lock coition from an ocean away had undone me: I desperately needed reassurance that things had been turned off and closed up, because in my mind’s eye my house was a burning oil well, shedding hairy-black smoke all over the neighbourhood.
Using Canadian magic, the guard pushed me with disapproval alone towards the stairs ... and stumping along behind him, swinging one abbreviated leg in front of the other, came another who had more reason to. But no! This was ridiculous, if I carried on like this I’d soon be kitting Sherman out in a hooded shiny-red raincoat and putting a dagger in his hand.
I managed to thrust Sherman away but he rejoined me at the Eaton Center, where I was scanning the directory for a heel bar. He stood sizing up the atrium, and comparing it unfavourably – in loud un-Canadian tones – to the Galleria Umberto 1:‘Yeah, these fat Canucks could do with a little
risanamento
, d’jewknowhatImean? Look at that muffin stand – oops! Sorry, it isn’t a muffin stand, it’s some people
queuing
for a muffin stand.’
He snatched at the air, as if given sufficient reach he might tear down the flock of model birds suspended from the barrel-vaulted ceiling, and hymned the absurd complaisance of the city government: ‘The base of the figure’ll be down there by the fountains on the lower level – but this one won’t stand upright, instead one arm’ll extend along the second level, and one leg will sorta kick through the atrium, while the other arm and shoulder brace against the roof. It’s the biggest yet, mate – a logistical nightmare, of course ...’
Novelty Shoe Rebuilders offered a ‘waiting service’, so I waited in socked feet while a cobbler replaced the eyelet of my boot with practised economy. ‘Will that be all?’ he asked. I forbore from mentioning the aglet.
‘There were no egos up there.’ His name was Dan, and he wore a CND badge, the roundel formed by gaping red lips. He also had grey hair in a ponytail and a grey beard. No egos? No fucking egos! I wanted to scream at him: I’m all ego, my friend, I’m a Babushka doll of egos – ego-inside-ego-inside-ego-inside-ego-inside-ego. Hell, if you unscrewed the fifth ego you’d probably find another one in there ready to shout you down as well.
But I didn’t say anything of the kind, because this was Toronto and we were buried
Eventually I forced myself from Room 2229 and abseiled down the lift shaft into the subway. At the Royal Ontario Museum I became transfixed by the bags visiting high school students had left trustingly strewn across the lobby: how could anyone be allowed to receive an education who insisted on dragging about that much
stuff?
And transfixed again in a subterranean gallery by the
pensées
of the former premiere Pierre Trudeau: ‘To remove all the useless baggage from a man’s heritage is to free his mind from petty preoccupations, calculations and memories.’
If it had worked for him, what was he doing here – or at least a photograph of his younger self, in white T-shirt and belted jeans? More to the point, what was the very canoethat he had been paddling when he had this epiphany doing here? Looking round I realized that this wasn’t so much an exhibition as a lumber room, with items from the museum’s permanent collections cast about willy-nilly: a Mercedes saloon got up with wood, a shamanic grizzly bear cast in bronze, and behind this shape-shifter Bacon’s
Study for Portrait No.1
, the reflex-dilation of Pope Innocent’s anus-dentata as shockingly disregarded as it must once have been when it leant against the wall in the artist’s South Kensington studio.
‘I’m sorry, sir, there’s no photography allowed.’
‘But I’m not photographing anything.’
‘Sir, no photography.’
‘I’m not
taking
pictures, I’m
looking
at them.’
The vertically aligned cooker knobs and key-in-lock coition from an ocean away had undone me: I desperately needed reassurance that things had been turned off and closed up, because in my mind’s eye my house was a burning oil well, shedding hairy-black smoke all over the neighbourhood.
Using Canadian magic, the guard pushed me with disapproval alone towards the stairs ... and stumping along behind him, swinging one abbreviated leg in front of the other, came another who had more reason to. But no! This was ridiculous, if I carried on like this I’d soon be kitting Sherman out in a hooded shiny-red raincoat and putting a dagger in his hand.
I managed to thrust Sherman away but he rejoined me at the Eaton Center, where I was scanning the directory for a heel bar. He stood sizing up the atrium, and comparing it unfavourably – in loud un-Canadian tones – to the Galleria Umberto 1:‘Yeah, these fat Canucks could do with a little
risanamento
, d’jewknowhatImean? Look at that muffin stand – oops! Sorry, it isn’t a muffin stand, it’s some people
queuing
for a muffin stand.’
He snatched at the air, as if given sufficient reach he might tear down the flock of model birds suspended from the barrel-vaulted ceiling, and hymned the absurd complaisance of the city government: ‘The base of the figure’ll be down there by the fountains on the lower level – but this one won’t stand upright, instead one arm’ll extend along the second level, and one leg will sorta kick through the atrium, while the other arm and shoulder brace against the roof. It’s the biggest yet, mate – a logistical nightmare, of course ...’
Novelty Shoe Rebuilders offered a ‘waiting service’, so I waited in socked feet while a cobbler replaced the eyelet of my boot with practised economy. ‘Will that be all?’ he asked. I forbore from mentioning the aglet.
‘There were no egos up there.’ His name was Dan, and he wore a CND badge, the roundel formed by gaping red lips. He also had grey hair in a ponytail and a grey beard. No egos? No fucking egos! I wanted to scream at him: I’m all ego, my friend, I’m a Babushka doll of egos – ego-inside-ego-inside-ego-inside-ego-inside-ego. Hell, if you unscrewed the fifth ego you’d probably find another one in there ready to shout you down as well.
But I didn’t say anything of the kind, because this was Toronto and we were buried
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