The Park

 

  If you leave my apartment building and head right on the back street, past my favourite street food vendor (open 6 p.m. To 10 p.m.) and through the swerving scooters, you'll see the park I go to. It's not huge and, other than the nighttime yellow lights and the section of canopied trees, it's not dissimilar to all the little parks in every corner of every other neighbourhood in Taipei.

      I go at night.

     And there's always a group of dog owners that assemble around 10 or 11 p.m. to let their pups roam and fight and play with each other. Next to them are the groups of teenagers huddled in whispers and guffaws under the nighttime shadow of the gazebo, and next to them are the three old men, dressed in sweatpants and old undershirts, doing their stretches, but mostly just chatting. And next to all of them is me, sitting on the pond's bridge in awe of the mix of so many ages and activities in one public place.

     Because despite Canada's obsession with public space, we don't really have any parks like this. We've definitely got parks that are bustling with people, but they're either populated solely by children under eight years old, or so tremendously sprawling that no matter how bustling, the visitors never ever have to interact with each other. The parks here are different. They capture the heart of what I imagine all the Canadian urban planners who beam about "public space" have in mind.

     I feel like we definitely all want to want public space, but we have a hard time ditching our heavily engrained habits of privacy and isolation. I was listening to an interview with Zadie Smith the other day on CBC's Writers and Company (I recommend it), and she touched on her observation that Western goals seem to revolve around the desire to become increasingly isolated. We go from a school bus, to a transit bus, to a carpool, to a taxi, to finally having our own car, just as we go from our family home, to a home with friends, to a home with a single partner (and that home, of course, is bound to have a big backyard so no community park like this is required).

     So when I'm here at this park at 11 o'clock, and it's stretching at the seems with conversation and activity from people of every every age, I can't help but feel like Canadians have gone astray somewhere. Though I could never give up the majority of the freedom and privacy that we gain from our ways, we really do lose our sense of spontaneity, flexibility and openness by shutting strangers out.

     I've decided it's kind of like lucid dreaming. From afar, it seems like lucid dreaming would allow for the best dreams ever. But in reality, having complete control of a dream would be limiting. It would stop the dream from reaching those farther, more surprising and mysterious places. So, for now, in all my reserved and irrepressible Canadianness, I can only sit in this neighbourhood park and watch this group of adults do the cha cha with the help of a boom box and an inspiring lack of self consciousness. But I do have high hopes that this park will eventually teach me to let go of some control, and open my life to that farther, more mysterious dream.