A Toronto version of saudade

[kathleen_dailey]

I don't think about my old neighbourhood very often, but today I received a message that mentioned the imminent sale of the Beacher Café (or maybe it's already sold--the website is gone), which triggered a frisson of nostalgia.

I remember the many fannish conversations I had at that café, a place that I still associate with an otherworldly, altered-state-of-consciousness period of intense reading and writing and imagining and analyzing (just like what I'm seeing now with friends who are immersed in Heated Rivalry creativity). For some reason--its lighting, its layout, the artwork on the walls, the general ambience--that particular café felt like a portal that, if entered at the right moment and in the right mood, might transport us to a dimension where we could catch a real-time glimpse of the universe and characters that preoccupied us so strongly.

It's been decades since I've lived in that time-forgotten lakeside neighbourhood, but I'll never forget the irreproducible synergy of people, ideas, and passionate inspiration of those days.

Comments

[flemmings]

I get you. I live next to my old neighbourhood even if I don't get to it much anymore, and the disappearance of places that were part of my formative years when everything was new and wonderful hurts a lot.

[kathleen_dailey]

Yes. Yes, that's it exactly. The cruelly funny thing is that, although my house was lovely and so was the neighbourhood, I really couldn't wait for the day when I could move downtown. I lamented the whitebread nuclear-familyness of the Beaches and the distance from absolutely everything that was interesting and fun. It never occurred to me (duh) that by the time I was able to move downtown, all the places and activities and restaurants and people I longed for would be gone or irrevocably changed, seldom for the better.

[flemmings]

There are aways new places, of course, but I'm not 35 anymore and they don't measure up to the old ones. Maybe nostalgia is lying, maybe things are geared differently. But it's not the same.