The invisible holes of a neighbourhood

Yesterday was dark and rainy, and the gutters became cataracts.

Today is the epitome of a perfect day in late May - something it's best not to mention to those I know in Hades.

This morning, I paused by a large bush of California lilac, listening to the powerful buzz of scores of industrious bees at work, their abdomens orange with pollen.

All the flowers and greenery have responded exuberantly to the combination of rain and sun.

Cook Street is white with tents for their annual street party. I walked along here last year, and browsed through boxes of DVDs as Pic-a-Flic downsized for their impending move after three and a half decades on Cook Street. I didn't know that then, but I knew their site was optioned to make room for yet another condo, and I feared they would go altogether.

I seemed to spend most of my time in Hades watching books stores and video stores die off. My two favourite bookstores managed to survive, but a video rental by a pizza place, preceded by another small establishment specializing in art,documentary and foreign films, succumbed a few years after my arrival, leaving me to depend on the public libraries.

Through the Victorian summers in the years of my Hades exile, I always had Pic-a-Flic, with its long corridors of films and television series from around the world. I also had other fixtures of Cook Street, for example, the grey and gaunt proprietor of the old-fashioned grocery stand, whom Demeter and I called "Grumpy" - never to his face, of course. Grumpy seemed to mellow over his decades in the drafty recess where he sold fruits, vegetables and flowers. I learned that he was a regular entertainer at the coffee house across the street, where he sang, of all things, folk songs by the likes of Gordon Lightfoot.

Shortly after Pic-a-Flic made the move to Stadacona Park and a much smaller shop, I saw the notice that Grumpy was retiring, and not long after that, the coffee house where he sang disappeared.

I gather that Grumpy is now strumming his guitar at the local pub, and other businesses have sprung up where he displayed his wares and sang his songs.

I still feel a pang when I walk past the refilled gaps, because I know there are gaps. It's okay; holes rarely remain empty for long -- even invisible ones.