I don't miss much about Toronto except for the sound of the streetcars. I don't particularly hold any sort of romantic connection with these rumbling vehicles and a particular someone; the sound merely evokes an overall good feeling about being downtown in the searing heat, sitting on a patio, waiting for friends outside of concert clubs... or even in the dead of winter, when a race out to Spadina Avenue and a hearty crossing of all available limbs would hopefully summon the Rocket to save us from a fifteen minute frostbite attack.

I get these occasional twinges of romance with this city I've fled from, and wonder if I'm experiencing a bout of homesickness. But it only takes me a minute to realize that's about all I miss. Most of the friends have fled, most of them wandering in various parts of the world, completing their own individual destinies, finding their own little niches in the world, becoming a little more liberated and conquering all that they couldn't do back home. And even if they could do it back home, maybe they just needed this little trip away. This little poke in the bum to say, "Hello! There's a big big big world out there for you! Go get 'em Tiger!�E[insert ad for Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation here]

And then I think, it's not just the streetcars in that one single town that I miss. It's the sonic beauty of my life thus far, every element, every little tick, every little tock. It's the Muslim chanting on the tinny loudspeakers in India. It's the torrential rainfall on the tin roofs of Costa Rica that prevents even the heartiest sleeper from closing their eyes. It's the character-rich cackle of the tropical birds outside a bedroom window in Australia. It's the migraine-inducing sputter of the tuk-tuk in Thailand. And for a good chunk of my childhood, the buzzing streetlight perched above my family's restaurant sign in the middle of a quiet highway and surrounding cornfields.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Kisses to veryevilbeth, offonmars and ubika and (OH DUH!) deadmedia, my real-life LJ Ontarians who have (or will have) parted ways with their little streetcars in search of their own individual vidas de sonidas. Listen well.