Hermes, I think. Then a perfumed bicyclist, straddling her machine, legs pumping, taillight strobing, derailleur clicking softly. Nothing seems quite what it is. The clinging ivy has turned a vibrant magenta, softening the relentless geometry of the grey limestone walls and leaded windows of the student dormitories along St. George Street. Scarlet and gold leaves drift to the ground from towering maples, gilding the lawns and sidewalks and gutters.
Umbrellas unfurl like spinnakers.
Streetlights flicker and then ignite, one by one, like signal fires. For a few moments, I am living in a painting, or perhaps a poem. And then the crosswalk signal lights change and a driver taps a warning to me on his horn and I step back hastily to the curb and the feeling is gone. Of course, the blunt and insensible tools of instrumental reason, of the business ethic, of obsessive bottom line accounting are at work here as well, like some creeping fungus, but they have not yet managed to rot the fabric of so ancient and resilient an institution. There is room still for optimism.