This photo was taken before I collected scarves like friends.
I've got my daily commute down to a science of invisible landmarks of leftover technology and unidentifiable stains through the belly of the New York City system. But somehow the stairway up from the depths of of the uptown express train Grand Central Station, the one you get to from the second car back from the front which I ride for that express purpose, those narrow stairs back up to still-below-street-level always inspire me.
These seemingly unimportant stairs always manage distract me from the haze of subway books, leftover work I'll be working on in my "off hours" or whatever else I'm mulling over in those last minutes between "just me" and"me with boyfriend" time. Sometimes it's the blast of cool air that ushers you from the subway heat to the street heat in the summer -- when you are lucky. Other times it's the push of bodies and the semi-respectful rush hour line the New Yorkers who use this exit everyday have formed out of habit . With this many people it's impossible to fight the tide. Just accept, become one with the mass, you will wait, it will be fine. I never know what it will be, but my distraction is inevitable. And no matter how many times I keep a book open, vowing that this time I will only pay attention to the printed page, I never accomplish binding my thoughts to the book before me.
Today there was a shoe, two steps from the platform floor. A flipflop abandoned like an openface sandwich. Sole up, awaiting its fate. I wondered if its owner was three more steps up but no one was fighting the tide to get the shoe back to its missing mate. And then I realized that wasn't the point. The shoe's why was irrelevant and the how couldn't concern me for more than a minute. (It's not just the New York Minute thing again, between 6 and 7:30 there's really no stopping on these tiny stairs.) The shoe's significance wasn't its story but what it gave me in the moment I had as I passed it by. The realization that countless other people would experience that same thoughts. That anyone who thought about it would do so in the same on-the-go fashion.
I know the shoe won't be there tomorrow. And I will live with the fact that I won't be the person to know if its new home is a trash can, the lost and found or the foot of one of the city's (too many) homeless people. And in the end, it doesn't matter. This is just one more New York mystery, one more time that these subway steps inspire me.
Yesterday my dad asked if I was writing.
"Some."
"That's not enough."
It never is, Dad. It never is.
These seemingly unimportant stairs always manage distract me from the haze of subway books, leftover work I'll be working on in my "off hours" or whatever else I'm mulling over in those last minutes between "just me" and"me with boyfriend" time. Sometimes it's the blast of cool air that ushers you from the subway heat to the street heat in the summer -- when you are lucky. Other times it's the push of bodies and the semi-respectful rush hour line the New Yorkers who use this exit everyday have formed out of habit . With this many people it's impossible to fight the tide. Just accept, become one with the mass, you will wait, it will be fine. I never know what it will be, but my distraction is inevitable. And no matter how many times I keep a book open, vowing that this time I will only pay attention to the printed page, I never accomplish binding my thoughts to the book before me.
Today there was a shoe, two steps from the platform floor. A flipflop abandoned like an openface sandwich. Sole up, awaiting its fate. I wondered if its owner was three more steps up but no one was fighting the tide to get the shoe back to its missing mate. And then I realized that wasn't the point. The shoe's why was irrelevant and the how couldn't concern me for more than a minute. (It's not just the New York Minute thing again, between 6 and 7:30 there's really no stopping on these tiny stairs.) The shoe's significance wasn't its story but what it gave me in the moment I had as I passed it by. The realization that countless other people would experience that same thoughts. That anyone who thought about it would do so in the same on-the-go fashion.
I know the shoe won't be there tomorrow. And I will live with the fact that I won't be the person to know if its new home is a trash can, the lost and found or the foot of one of the city's (too many) homeless people. And in the end, it doesn't matter. This is just one more New York mystery, one more time that these subway steps inspire me.
Yesterday my dad asked if I was writing.
"Some."
"That's not enough."
It never is, Dad. It never is.