The Puddle

A lot has happened in the past couple of weeks. First off, Nuit Blanche in Toronto. The dry stone bell installation in Trinity Bellwood Park was a rocking success (see what I just did there?). In the interest of not being a "life-tourist" or something to that effect, I neglected to bring my camera along, and most of the photos taken by iPhone or otherwise were a bit grainy on account of it being night time. I've included a couple below. It was a really exhilarating experience to throw something up that quickly, with so many wallers of different skill level coming together in unison. We were accompanied by an ensemble of professional bell-ringers, whose music seemed to drive us into a bit of a frenzy of activity at times. At one point near the end we had four or five people forming a fireman's chain to feed individual stones to the top. Building complete, I crawled into the hole underneath to connect the lights and fog machine that brought the bell to life.

The effects of sleep deprivation certainly added to the festive mood, it being more or less the third sleepless night in a row for me at that point. We had many people tell us that it was the best thing they had seen at Nuit Blanche, and many more lamented the fact that we had to tear it down at sunrise. The tear-down was a rather rough warmup after the chill and exhaustion had set in. Myself and some comrades had stolen away to Spadina street at about 5:30 to have some chinese food and celebrate with a pot of "cold tea," we then caught an hour of sleep in the cab of a pickup as the last of the darkness began to fade. It definitely was not a relaxing weekend, but certainly worth every sleepless second.