Toronto Eulogies

All Text Written, Recorded & Performed by RM - Copyright (C) 2024 RM/VMH - All Rights Reserved

The Ephemeral of Ontario Place - November 19th, 2024

I once knew a tree. I’m not acquainted with the species, nor can I tell you much on the ‘how’ for when it was planted. I can tell you from basic research that it might have been around fifty years old or so (not when I met her - We were a little younger) I know from a tiny bit of investigation in the ‘now’ that the study of trees is named Dendrology, the Greek providing us with one more measured piece of beauty in our language. Dendrology.

I had met her in a cafe that no longer exists in this city, Ephemeral being another word the Greek gifted to us, tied to Ephemeros meaning ‘lasting a day.’ The wonder of the last four letters of the word being ‘Eros.’ Ephemeris in Latin tied to the Greek ephemeros, Brittanica telling us of it being tied to a ‘table giving us the positions of one or more celestial bodies, often published with supplementary information. Ephemerides were constructed as early as the 4th century BC and are still essential today to the astronomer and navigator.’

an ecosystem itself of words, a map & a chart that led me to say, ‘I love you.’

Boxcar Social - October 29th, 2024.

What makes a city, a home? I prefer to think upon that question to have the same answer, every time – the people. But there is a character to our association in the places where we find each other. A place is like love – it has to make you feel soothed & wild. It’s dimly candlelit corners, always the right song playing underneath, the co-conspiratorial whispers side-by-side, clinking glass, warm-stocking’d legs dipping between yours. A soft mouth. A kind of heat exchange that you will rarely find in this town.

Banana (& The White Squirrel of Crawford Street) - Spring 2024

There was a girl named Banana. Banana was a bit of an older gal. She was missing a part of one ear cause sometimes the world takes a little bit of you, but it doesn’t make you any less sweet.

Banana was a dreamer. She’d kick her feet in her mom’s bed whenever she slept, sometimes dreaming of when she was a younger one chasing after one of her brothers or sisters in play. Sometimes she’d dream about what their lives were like cause she really didn’t see them anymore. But her mom would tell her that part of the reason we close our eyes is so that we can see the ones we love and who we miss anytime we wanted to, like they were imprinted on our eyelids.

A Quick Word

As I’m wure you’ve seen elsewhere on the site (specifically at Emergency Fundraiser for Salim — VMH) for the past year, my brother Salim has been dealing with Stage 4 Liver Cirrhosis. Without a liver transplant soon, he will die.

His work has now moved him to long-term disability and that affects his benefits as well for very expensive medication. The financial strain on him is only exacerbating his condition.

We’ve been running a fundraiser for him, but it’s going pretty slow lately. We’ve also set up a campaign to help find him a living liver donor, but there are layers of bureaucracy that make it challenging to receive a transplant from a living donor in this country

The fundraiser is for his rent, food & medication but more, it’s to buy us enough time to find him that living liver donor to save his life.

I know it’s hard out there. I know it’s the holidays, I know of the financial uncertainty of things. But if everyone reading this donated $25 or more to him, it buys him that time for me to find him that living liver donor and we save his life.

If you’re willing to help us, you can visit this link - Emergency Fundraiser for Salim — VMH or simply click on the ‘Donate’ button below (& if you do, on behalf of my brother & my family, thank you)

r.