love is an iron lung

One of the bad things I mentioned in my previous post has been struggling to deal with the barely translucent peanut butter-coloured substance that Toronto residents laughingly refer to as "air".

I knew it was bad. I went to Kingston for a weekend last summer, and it wasn't until I took three flights of stairs at a dead run that it clicked just how much of an impact it has on me to live in the smog belt every day.

All the places we visited on our recent road trip were either a)on the ocean, b)in the mountains or c)out in the middle of nowhere. For three weeks I never thought about breathing. When we got to Chicago, it was like hitting a brick wall. At one point I was genuinely wondering if I was going to just fall over from lack of oxygen. It was a fight to get myself to a place where I could sit down and by the time I made it there were black spots swimming in front of my eyes.

Since we got back into town I've been using my inhaler every day. I feel like I have a partially inflated balloon in my chest. I can see the constant haze if I look up at the Tower, and the air smells faintly like burnt plastic.

I love Toronto. There are a ton of reasons I want to stay here. (bcholmes being a rather obvious one.) But for the first time ever the_axel and I are talking about what the hell we are going to do if there isn't a major change in Canada's environmental policies in the next couple of years. It may very well mean being driven out of my home, whether I like it or not.

In the meantime, the biggest neighbourhood initiative going on right now in my area is coming from people who are pissed off because they might be losing their street parking.

It's enough to make me weep.

If I could catch my breath long enough.