journal features

traffic, bloody traffic

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2010.11.23

I'm struggling with the train system in Toronto. Tokyo's transit looks better all the time by comparison.

I'm very grateful that there's a train system at all. That's certainly not a given in North America. But tonight for instance it took me two hours to get home from downtown. There just aren't enough trains! And the swipe-card system that allows you to pay is barely functional: yesterday I missed two trains while the staff tried (and failed) to puzzle out what was wrong with my card. Again this morning I had to check in at Union Station to reverse an overpayment.

rand()m quote

Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot