the insanity of time
Like most days, I never thought this day would come. Perhaps more accurately, I never thought this DATE would come. It's a maddening dance of irrational psychosis, the way the hours and the numbers go on and on into the future, indefinitely, infinitely. Of course one can draw an arbitrary mark and assume that one will die before 100 years of age, so at least I know that the madness will stop no later than May 17, 2083. But that in itself is a maddeningly astronomical number, almost unfathomable and certainly not easily tolerated. Why, even the thought that my dad is now 69 years old and was born in 1940 (!), is dizzying. I don't know anyone who can even remember the seventies.
This was one of a coursing sea of flashing thoughts that flickered along as I sat on the subway bridge in Brooklyn, elevated over and open to the street, eye-watering chilly wind wafting up from the universe at my feet. The station was dirty, filled with ordinary people who like me had to wait some twenty-five minutes for the Q train which, to add insult to insult, was now making local stops.
An older woman in breezy fabric pants with subtle white tie-dye accents and no-nonsense black leather heels was pacing back and forth between me and the world below, smiling kindly when our eyes met. A clamoring group of college-aged kids, half Asian, huddled with musical instrument luggage and silver gift bags. A long-haired thick-figured Hispanic boy stood on the edge of the tracks, eyeing the world distrustfully from between his white earbuds. The second story of a clothing store called 'rainbow' was on level with us. It was closed but the mannequins were so cheerfully dressed as to almost keep me company through the glass.
This is it, I thought to myself. I can either resent the cold wind and the long wait, or I can remember that this is life and I am alive. There may be times when I am happier but this may be the happiest I'll ever be while alone in my own company, and there will certainly be many more times when I am more unhappy than now or equally wrapped up in my endless worries and schemes for the future as it continues onward in its madness. If I don't grab the world and live it right now, forcefully, I could miss it.
So I took it all in: the atmosphere of the street below, the imagined customer base of 'rainbow', the extrapolated lives, hopes, and dreams of the people waiting for the Q train going into Manhattan. I continued to take it all in after the train finally arrived and we all boarded, and new minds and lives poured in at each of the bazillion stops.
The couple sitting directly across from me was a part of the group of college-aged musicians. She was Asian and he was not. He nuzzled her, he smiled wistfully at her, he doted and kissed and cherished; and all the while, her face remained expressionless, her body language unmistakably non-reciprocating, responding to him only in words when he asked her questions directly. She was plain and he was fairly good-looking. I became frustrated by their dynamic, angry at her for being a cold fish and mad at him for being in love with a robot.
Some stops later, as my frustration grew at the continuation of the advancing of time and the endless train ride with the drunk European girls and the phony-stern solitary black men and the small pock-marked man whose blackberry had devoured him whole, I became tired. I was the only one who looked around, the only person who seemed to care at all. Everyone else was invisible to one-another, living in separate transparency slides but in a complex cutting and overlapping pattern that enveloped the entire conglomerated monstrosity of the city. Each person saw only what and whom they had already been introduced to. It was depressing. It was disappointing in a very familiar way.
It was at that moment, in the insane infiniteness of the passing of time, that I knew I would always be alone. Because even in my ordinary life, passing by the same places dozens of times each week, and even when tasks at hand called most of my mind away, I always pay attention. I always notice and care and see--maybe I don't see everyone and everything, but at least I am always looking.
Last week there was a young boy in the subway station at Washington heights, swimming in a lush black hoodie with a wide flat face and chains everywhere, whose eyes were wet with tears. I asked him if he was okay, and he said yes. No one else seemed to see him. There had been demented drunks on the trains and in the streets, muttering at decibels much too high to be ignored, but somehow everyone managed to anyway. They would turn and gravitate away in fear and distraction. I understood completely, in one moment, that I am alone and always will be.
Then my stop came and my attention divided again, the trance partially broken like creme brulee. The certainty of knowing slowly faded back into its rational-minded place, but the memory remained.
This was one of a coursing sea of flashing thoughts that flickered along as I sat on the subway bridge in Brooklyn, elevated over and open to the street, eye-watering chilly wind wafting up from the universe at my feet. The station was dirty, filled with ordinary people who like me had to wait some twenty-five minutes for the Q train which, to add insult to insult, was now making local stops.
An older woman in breezy fabric pants with subtle white tie-dye accents and no-nonsense black leather heels was pacing back and forth between me and the world below, smiling kindly when our eyes met. A clamoring group of college-aged kids, half Asian, huddled with musical instrument luggage and silver gift bags. A long-haired thick-figured Hispanic boy stood on the edge of the tracks, eyeing the world distrustfully from between his white earbuds. The second story of a clothing store called 'rainbow' was on level with us. It was closed but the mannequins were so cheerfully dressed as to almost keep me company through the glass.
This is it, I thought to myself. I can either resent the cold wind and the long wait, or I can remember that this is life and I am alive. There may be times when I am happier but this may be the happiest I'll ever be while alone in my own company, and there will certainly be many more times when I am more unhappy than now or equally wrapped up in my endless worries and schemes for the future as it continues onward in its madness. If I don't grab the world and live it right now, forcefully, I could miss it.
So I took it all in: the atmosphere of the street below, the imagined customer base of 'rainbow', the extrapolated lives, hopes, and dreams of the people waiting for the Q train going into Manhattan. I continued to take it all in after the train finally arrived and we all boarded, and new minds and lives poured in at each of the bazillion stops.
The couple sitting directly across from me was a part of the group of college-aged musicians. She was Asian and he was not. He nuzzled her, he smiled wistfully at her, he doted and kissed and cherished; and all the while, her face remained expressionless, her body language unmistakably non-reciprocating, responding to him only in words when he asked her questions directly. She was plain and he was fairly good-looking. I became frustrated by their dynamic, angry at her for being a cold fish and mad at him for being in love with a robot.
Some stops later, as my frustration grew at the continuation of the advancing of time and the endless train ride with the drunk European girls and the phony-stern solitary black men and the small pock-marked man whose blackberry had devoured him whole, I became tired. I was the only one who looked around, the only person who seemed to care at all. Everyone else was invisible to one-another, living in separate transparency slides but in a complex cutting and overlapping pattern that enveloped the entire conglomerated monstrosity of the city. Each person saw only what and whom they had already been introduced to. It was depressing. It was disappointing in a very familiar way.
It was at that moment, in the insane infiniteness of the passing of time, that I knew I would always be alone. Because even in my ordinary life, passing by the same places dozens of times each week, and even when tasks at hand called most of my mind away, I always pay attention. I always notice and care and see--maybe I don't see everyone and everything, but at least I am always looking.
Last week there was a young boy in the subway station at Washington heights, swimming in a lush black hoodie with a wide flat face and chains everywhere, whose eyes were wet with tears. I asked him if he was okay, and he said yes. No one else seemed to see him. There had been demented drunks on the trains and in the streets, muttering at decibels much too high to be ignored, but somehow everyone managed to anyway. They would turn and gravitate away in fear and distraction. I understood completely, in one moment, that I am alone and always will be.
Then my stop came and my attention divided again, the trance partially broken like creme brulee. The certainty of knowing slowly faded back into its rational-minded place, but the memory remained.