Hobo Time...

Hobo time is ephemeral time, time spent drifting and ambling on the highway of daydream and possibility, along the roads down which ideas take us, with progress measured in miles and discovery, not hours and minutes.   It is a boxcar of the mind with no illusions of immortality.   Life on the road distorts time in ways Albert Einstein never considered.  Sometimes it takes a hobo with a PhD in epistemology to recognize the contours of the non-conforming temporal envelope that is the province of our more mercurial, intuitive faculties.  Sometimes time stands on ceremony, indignantly refusing to reveal its secrets, at times it moves in an evasive, sideways, non-perpetuating arc (don't ask me to explain right now), and most painful of all, it frequently moves at the speed of life placing you in the most unexpected of places at the most inopportune times in circumstances you are hard put to explain, leaving you to just plead ignorance, or insanity, which ever feels right for you.

But today, I feel most occupied with the surprising notion that time can and should at times stand still.  Last week we were in downtown Toronto for a few days.  Toronto was a city I was quite familiar with, having spent a good deal of time there back in the late 1970's and early 80's.  I am quite sensitive and averse to change, and when it is not for the better, suffer its insults intensely.  But much to my surprise, it looked and felt as if Toronto had not changed in the least.  A few new buildings here and there, but it remained remarkably Toronto.  If anything, it is I who has changed.

 Back then, we all stayed at a pension on Spadina Avenue called the Karabanow Guest House, a bizarrely furnished maze of rooms and hallways run by this elderly eastern European couple who did not speak English too well, and who, for some reason, we believed to be brother and sister.   Back then, we were all still crazy and our quiet nights and cognac at Karabanow Guest House were so much a state of mind as a geographic location, that I sometimes wonder if it really existed.  Googling it, I found a few others who spent time there, and remember it fondly as well, particularly Olga Karabanow, now gone.

Now I stay at the King Edward Hotel on the corner of King  and Yonge, in a building which continues to lavish you with with the overindulgence and epicurian good taste befitting the Edwardian era in which it was built.  No place for a hobo, and while there, it is easy to forget who you are!!!  My friend Jeffery, who has lived in Toronto for 30 years did not know the hotel and when he joined us for cocktails, couldn't believe such opulence and antiquated charm existed any more.  Maybe it doesn't.
(Pictures to follow)

                                                                        Pablo