dundas square

Why I Love Dundas Square and the Sculpture of Alexander Wood on Church Street and the talking trash can one block south of Queen & Shuter

 

 

1       because Dundas Square is a fine example of low level late 20^th century brutalist architecture in a public space and the hidden fountains spurting frothy crystalline joy from the cement make me think of cinematic panic and widespread viruses carried in water and the seductive shafts of columnal concrete rising out of the asphalt laden earth like giant grey penile monoliths and where else do you get to see Brokeback Mountain free of charge included in an outdoor summer filmfest called Romantic Reels alongside Gone With The Wind with Heath and Jake as neophyte buttbangers who somehow managed to do it for the first time in a pup tent on the slope of a treacheous blizzard inflected plot of barren land in the dead of winter with their clothes on and how can you keep children out of that square when this film is being shown, well, the fact is, it was an oppressive homophobic film that I loved in the first place and looked like a bland version of an Edward Hopper painting come to life and the anal sex scene was so shrouded in sheep and cinematography and palatable romantic mayhem and the dead fag at the end justifies everything Hollywood is so fond of and if a nine year old playing in the fountains looked up during the scene and said “mommy, why are those two men kissing?” she could just say, “they’re not kissing honey, they’re just holding their faces very close together to keep warm”

 

2       because the sculpture of Alexander Wood glorifies nothing, it just sits there bearing a faint resemblance to Mary Poppins from behind without the umbrella and its way nastier than Mary even though I loved Mary but always thought she should have been way nastier and Alexander Wood may very well have had a dubious past but who the hell really knows it was so god damn long ago and history seems to always re-write itself over and over and over again and all those statues of war heroes (no disrespect intended, I love poppies) but the term war hero is entirely relative to the country in which the war was waged and who died in whose arms doing whatever to whomever writing faintly homoerotic love poems in the trenches blasting the living crap out of villages filled with people going about their business worshiping who and what they choose to worship and all the warships coming into Manhattan made of scrap metal from the twin towers, I would rather see a godforsaken sculpture of  a dead magistrate who inspected the buttocks of young men for scratches, young young men in line-ups suspected of rape somewhere near Church and Alexander, not far from the former home of Maple Leaf Gardens where questionable acts occurred in the equipment handling room, but there just aren’t any war heroes (no disrespect intended) and by the way, isn’t it grand that hockey and figure skating have finally been united on the CBC or CTV ( Canada’s Biggest Closet or Canada’s Transvestism) when they were never really very fucking far apart in the first place, but war does not build heroes, war is messy, and the public art that commemorates it is messy too so why not have a well coiffed 19^th century fellow of questionable sexual proclivity at  the corner of Church and Alexander glorifying nothing just standing there in his swishy iron coat reminding people that we are all subject to interpretation and war may not build heroes but it does incubate the saddest kind of shame and duty sent back home to god and country, I salute you soldiers of mass destruction, you are cast in stone and iron before my very eyes, forge whatever form of hero you want but just don’t tell me who my heroes should be

 

3       because talking trash cans at oppressive multi-national fast food emporiums remind me of how much I like to talk trash and when trash talks back to me it reminds me of the arguments I had with my mother about homosexuality and how I can’t stop myself from inserting trashy references to her in poems that are not supposed to be about her - my mother who always said “thank you sweetheart” in such a heartbreaking passive aggressive kind of way that split my gut and made me bawl and howl when we both said stupid things and both loved to just wander through concrete palaces of urban doom and glitter as we tended oh so mercurially to our immense brutalist love for each other and how she would say such quirky things about effeminate male ice dancers and gentlemen in swishy coats with pony tails, and made my brother and father miss the NHL playoff game so I could watch the Oscars - saying and doing these things with me on her arm with no thought to the sheer magnitude of queer identity propping her up as we staggered into streetlamps singing “trash in the morning and trash at night” saying thank you for your trash - thank you thank you thank you- I accept your trash and it is not a hero it is just garbage and there is always garbage in the streets so lets just be careful what we call trash because it might just fight back and say

 

“thank you, I am trash, white trash, I do installations in store fronts where I have depleted the ozone by blanching my weekly waste with aerosol cans from hell and what the fuck do you think Dundas Square is supposed to be anyhow, an urban replica of Algonquin fucking Park, and is Alexander Wood any worse than the sex offender we named our local pub after and when trash cans speak and pigs fly you can count me in”