(no subject)

[leahbobet]

I don't know how to wrap my head around this.

I'm out of town right now, in an exceedingly nice hotel room with a view of Windsor, Detroit, and the river between. Back at home, in my city, in my neighbourhood, there's this happening.

They're rioting in my city. There are cops firing rubber bullets into the crowd outside my office and arresting people face down in the grass in the park where I eat my lunch. There are SWAT teams on the paths of my university. There are police cars burning out front of my favourite movie theatre, a couple blocks from bakkaphoenix, and the stores on Yonge where I checked in on Thursday to try to get a mirror for the new apartment, some tights for work, my groceries, have had their windows smashed in. There are pictures all over the internet of violence, destruction, anger. I've been refreshing the #G20 Twitter feed here for an hour or two. I'm pretty sure I've annoyed my friends by staying in to do that instead of coming out for dinner.

I can't stop looking. I want to cry. I am crying.

I've been trying to intellectualize this, trying to process it all day; to write something here for you that would communicate the worth and weight and heft of how this feels, to write about how a building is not just a building, but a node of experience and memory; about neighbourhoods and what they're made of, their tacit social contracts and how the Annex tastes different from Church/Wellesley feels different from the Beaches; about how I dream the Don River sometimes, swim it in my dreams or watch it run like lifeblood under the Bloor Viaduct, joke about how years of drinking unfiltered Toronto tap water has bound me to that river like sympathetic magic or a geas and now I'll never be able to go somewhere else for good, lest I wither and die.

I've got nothing. I have nothing wise or pointful or calm to say. There's no art in my fingers right now. All I want to do is wail.

The overriding theme, which I`m sure my mother would disagree with strongly if she read my LJ? I should have stayed home. I am a big fucking traitor.

I really, really want to go home right now.

Comments

[olletho.livejournal.com]

I am home and I don't want to be here because I can't do anything.

Not anything useful or good.

but if I was away I'd feel like you do and want to be home.... but what I would really want is to be able to do something, fix this mess, but I can't. So I'm home alone in my basement reading minute by minute updates on cbc.

Bleah.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I want it to stop.

[themachinestops.livejournal.com]

We went through this last year in Pittsburgh. The important thing to remember is that the vast, vast majority of those rioting DON'T CARE about Toronto, because they're not from there. These traveling "anarchist" douches don't understand the importance of your home city or what it means to you. The important thing is to stay safe because you can't do a single thing to stop it and it would only cause problems (from both sides) for you if you tried.

I really don't understand why they keep having the G20 in a physical location when they KNOW this is going to happen. Every year it gets worse and worse, I remember looking up past G20s when they announced it for Pittsburgh.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I know that. People don't do this in their own homes. They hesitate before they land a blow when it's their town.

And I really don't care to be assigning blame here, there, or anywhere right now. I want the whole thing out. I want to rub it out like a stain.

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

This, exactly. (In Seattle, a few years ago, when I was living about 15 blocks from where the violence was happening... Nothing I could do except stay away from the area where things were going on, and oh yeah, cry. I'm not good at living in cities, am much happier now that I'm out of the downtown area, but still and always I think, Seattle is my city.)

[saoba.livejournal.com]

I understand, I think. I sat and watched the coverage prior to the Katrina landfall and wept because I couldn't STOP it.

Sometimes a city is yours and you are the city's and not even time or distance can take that away.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Yes. It's what I felt when my parents evacuated for Hurricane Rita that year. It's what I feel now looking at the oil which is about to hit MY BEACH.

I'm so very sorry, Leah. I wish I could do something more helpful than understanding exactly what you mean.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Understanding helps, especially when a lot of people don't. Thank you.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

That is what I mean exactly. Thank you. For getting it.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

When I was ten my home-city went through this. And there was really nothing anyone could do. We stayed inside. Some of the men in the neighborhood tried to establish some kind of neighborhood watch to protect our area. The local McDonald's and strip mall was destroyed, and the biggest, newest mall in the city was burned down. I didn't know anyone who was hurt, but some of my classmates left the country. And I think it took me a while to acknowledge it - especially b/c the change in government that resulted was positive - but it really does affect you when it feels like your city is being murdered. So I'm sorry that's hurting you.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the right words: when it feels like your city is being murdered. That's it exactly.

Thank you.

[kchew.livejournal.com]

I'm not really able to process how angry I am yet. I just think to myself "it'll be over by Monday, it'll be over by Monday".

I know I can't tell you what to feel, but from this Torontonian's perspective, you're no traitor. If you were here, there would be nothing you could do but worry and wait, and hope they're not coming your way. And all you could do would be to do what you're doing right now, which is watching the news feeds and the Twitter sites, and everything you can online. It's exactly what we're doing here in the city. In *our* city. Which we need to reclaim in some large way as soon as humanly possible.

Asshats.

(((hugs)))

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Reclamation. Yeah. That's what I need.

Home now, and god it feels good to be home, but it hurts too.

[kchew.livejournal.com]

You know, intertribal just gave me an idea.

My husband and I have a lot of friends in Bangkok. During the recent red shirt riots, we had friends evacuated, and a lot of places were burned down. My heart was breaking for them, and their wonderful city. Afterwards, people went to the damaged residential areas and helped the people living in them to clean up.

One of the pictures I saw today that gives me hope was of three young people picking up a mailbox and putting it back.

Maybe volunteer cleanup, together, is the thing to do?

[hoppytoad79.livejournal.com]

I totally understand wanting to be there right now, but I totally do not get the whole 'I am a traitor' thing. How are you a traitor for being out of Toronto right now?

It breaks my heart to see the pictures and read about what's going on in Toronto right now. I've loved the city for years because it is full of Teh Awesomest Awesomeness, and to see all the stupid, senseless, pointless destruction and the police in riot gear makes me want to cry. That isn't the Toronto I've known and loved. That Toronto has been taken hostage and raped and beaten by terrorists filled with hatred and anger. When it's all said and done and all the visitors leave, the only lasting change will be the scars all this will have left in the minds and hearts of Toronto's residents and fans and those who want to keep the voice of opposition silenced will have another batch of evidence to support why dissenters should be kept on a very tight leash. XP DO NOT WANT!

[rosefox]

I felt the same way, watching 9/11 and then the 2004 Republican Convention from California and wanting so desperately to be at home in New York. The only worse thing than not being there was knowing that if I'd been there, there would still have been nothing I could do.

It is a very hard thing, this thing. But you are not a traitor for not being there. It's maybe easier to be angry at yourself because you're in front of you and the people who deserve that anger are far away, but I promise you, you have done nothing wrong here. It's maybe easier to be angry in general because you are so full of love for your city and have no outlet for it right now, and anger can feel better than stifled love. But soon you will go home and help to bandage your city's wounds, and your love will be unstuck and free-flowing again, and in time you will heal too.

Hang in there. These things are awful, but goodness can come out of them too.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

*I* feel like a traitor, and I haven't lived there in nearly two decades. I'm on IM if you want me.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I'm so sorry.
And no, you aren't a traitor. Your love for Toronto shines though your writing. You weave it into the fabric of yourself in every way.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry this happened. Hell, I'm sorry this kind of shit exists.

[eredien]

to write about how a building is not just a building, but a node of experience and memory

It's horribly ironic that the protestors--at least some of whom would say that they are protesting because we have not learned from experience and memory--are destroying the literal manifestations of those things in brick and concrete.

*hug* I read a blog the other day that suggested next year they all have a video conference. This shouldn't happen to anyone's city.

[deakat]

That is not my revolution.

I'm so sorry this is happening to your home.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, this probably won't help, but whatever. I live in North York now, but in 1992 I lived on Maitland Ave, just off Yonge just south of Wellesley, when the Dudley Laws riot happened. I didn't even know, until my friends started phoning me up to see if I was okay. And then I watched it on TV. These things happen. They suck. But the most important thing is, you're okay, and the city will recover. In '92, I loved walking up Yonge street the day after, looking at the plywood over broken windows on the stores who presumably normally sold stuff to the rioters, with "thanks to all our fans" spray-painted on them, and the like. Toronto is resilient, it will recover.

Oh, and the Don River is in flood. We went out on the local golf course to see it overflow the banks this evening.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

That's my neighbourhood. Although I'm closer to Jarvis.

Thank you for telling me about the river. That does help. A lot.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Before you posted this, I was trying to think what to say to you about it because when I think Toronto I think of you (and your book) even when you don't remind me that I should.

Since you posted it, I have been trying to think what to say to you about it.

I am so, so very sorry. I only know what it's like to have bits of my home destroyed by a natural disaster. An unnatural one like this is so many blows further. Know that I am thinking of you.