I was in the apartment building in Toronto. We occupy the thirtieth floor. I enter the apartment, I walk purposefully to the window drapes and fling them wide open. The glass doors are sticky but when I manage to pry the doors open I realise that the day is hot and sunnier than I had realised. I stare across the water at the islands, I think of ferris wheels and carnival fare. My custom is to spend five minutes examining the ferries in the harbour as soon as I enter this place. I love to look at them from this height. What toys they are! I watch people in the park too. The park is too obviously engineered for dog walkers and polite visitors. Nothing real could happen there. I am poised for change. White sheets ruffle about my arms, I fling them into the summer day. They drop quickly in a bundle – not in the picturesque bird-like poetry I had anticipated. I start with other things – fruit of all juicy varieties, melons and grapefruits. I toss candles and wine glasses and small wooden toys that the family doesn’t use anymore. Now I begin with a mysterious stash of toys. Small ones, the kind I never got as a child because they came with happy meals or in cereal boxes - how I coveted these kinds of items as a child. Now I am in possession of every imaginable kind: muppet babies and small cars, wind-up toys and disney figurines. I throw them out the window one by one. They float and twirl downwards, towards my fruit mush and tangled sheets. I am delighting in their decent, and the recklessness of it all; someone could get killed by a falling toy, however small, from thirty stories. But I don’t take this thought seriously. My neighbours, who I have never seen or spoken to, emerge from the depths of their dwellings to watch my display; some of them even join in. People in the park, the dog walkers the polite tourists stop to look. People gather bright clothing and towels to flap in the wind to celebrate my artful protest. The entire building is alive. All the people are tiny except one. On the ground, you are looking up at me and smiling.
