Did you ever have, I guess you could call it, a “golden moment?” One of those times where the atmosphere is right, the setting is right, the mood is right (you pervert, i’m not talking about sex here. nor TGIF 
) I was stopped at the corner of Ellington/Oakland Road and Buckland (also known here as wapping 5 corners) facing the town center, and I had on my Rane tape of their 1st cd. I was listening to the latter half of the song “Broca’s Aphasia” and the sun was in my eyes, but just left of the center. There were few thin cirrus clouds, but it was hard to make them out because of the sunlight, which was reflecting off the pavement and the cars next to me. Of course, I had my sunglasses on, but it was still bright. But where my car was stopped at the intersection and the music setting the mood and the brilliance of the sunlight, everything combined….it was a golden moment. One of those picture moments that you retain in your head for a lifetime. Yeh, it was at an intersection, when everything is right, you just get a tingle down your spine. Like it was something in a dream (not a fantasy dream, but an everyday dream.) I don’t know how to describe it any better. To go back now, 1/2 hr later, I could bet it wouldn’t be the same. It was that instant, that golden moment…..
I wrote that little bit on my website around March 1999, while I was still in high school (hence, some of the lackidaisical language). Part of the concept of the “golden moment” was the result of my foresight to recognize that I would eventually be leaving my hometown for university. And consistent with my introspective and existential nature, I soaked in the moment, holding on to the notion that we periodically have these golden moments where life beats down on us.
I believe I had a similar moment toward the end of my time in Montreal. But I can definitely say I had another one of these moments today, as I’m coming down to the end of my time here in New York (and given my abundance of time walking around the city, it’s quite possible I have a series of these moments before I move).
I was walking home from Starbucks today, up Queens Boulevard. It’s a brilliant day out, slightly on the warm side. I stop at Staples, pick up a few packing things, and then continue walking.
Eventually, I get to the corner of 67th Avenue and “Ghost Under Rocks” by Ra Ra Riot comes on. I’m standing in front of Knish Knosh and all of a sudden, I realize I’m in the golden moment again.
Look down the eastern stretch of Queens Blvd, toward where I lived in the first two years of my stay…. look westward back to the Manhattan skyline… I know that over the next couple of months, I have to become somewhat of a tourist again because, over the course of my doctoral program, coming back to NYC will be much more difficult. Nonetheless, I’ll never really be a tourist to NYC — not after living here for 3 years (any more than I don’t consider myself a Montreal tourist either).
Everything was right… a tingle down the spine… a golden moment indeed…
But for gdsakes, don’t cancel it… 
