March 6, 2020, 7:19 p.m.
The Toronto train stations are clean, empty, inefficient. The Canadians mill around, casting aimless glances at one another. We wait 9 minutes which would have had New Yorkers stomping their feet. The floors are so shiny, the walls so clean. How do they keep them so clean? Why isn’t New York like this? Looking around, I realize I am, in essence, inside an enormous tunnel under the ground and I wonder briefly What is the lowest I have been and What is the highest. The lowest was maybe a subway station in Budapest where I kept taking escalators down, down further than I expected, until I reached the Earth’s core and also the train. The highest was maybe in France, where we climbed to the summit of Mount St. Victoire and sat on a narrow, rocky ledge, looking out. But I know there are people who have been higher, and lower. There is a rumble that in any other circumstance—a war zone, the desert—would signal something dangerous, but here in Toronto it is only the train.
MC
