Subway Sleep Quiet People
The streets were quiet this morning. I guess fewer people were going to work, taking an extra day or two off to lengthen the holiday week. It is the calm before the holiday season storm that I abhor. With each passing year I hate this time more. . . It would be ambivalence and not hate if it were not for the crowds and the commercialism. I don't know what it would take to make it love again. It may be that that is simply impossible.
But I do enjoy a quiet morning in the city. Fewer cars, fewer people. . . the canyons of New York echo with a muted garbage truck roar from a few blocks away, a too-loud morning voice cracks the near silence drawing looks from those of us walking up Lafayette. The quietude is like an extension of my unremembered dreams as I dozed on the 'D' train. The snatches of consciousness are almost as delicious as those long moments of sleep, my head hanging under my hoody. Broadway-Lafayette station can seem like a thousand miles from the 9th Avenue stop in Brooklyn when you wake up for moment with the jerk of the train pulling in beside the platform. Floating back and forth repeatedly in that limbo of near-sleep, full-sleep, dreaming, suddenly awake awake awake, consciousness clicking like the metal wheels on the rails and then lulled back rocked back. . . Sleep can be delicious in my subway cradle.
There are people all around me and I don't know any of them, even though I see some of them nearly everyday. Not too long ago I read a couple of articles on the flaneur for my Literature of Brooklyn class, and I recognized something of that character in myself. . . the walking (or often in my case, riding) observer. The article made an interesting point about how the advent of mass transit led to human beings being closely packed into a space together for periods of time while remaining strangers to each other. More often than not, we do not talk at all to these faces we see everyday on the street, in the subway, on a bus, on a trolley. . . I think I prefer the silent faces, because too often the voices that go along with them do seem overloud and distract me from perceiving them by body language alone. People can camouflage with sound, blast you back from loving kindness with their talk of current news, recent purchases, the latest gossip regarding the illness of acquaintance. . . I am amazed by how often I overhear people talking about someone having cancer, getting chemo, dying, grieving, some human misery, and I knocked off track by the pettiness of it - the strange vicarious thrill people seem to have when discussing these things. . . I prefer the silence.
I prefer to see the discomfort on their face when someone squeezes into the seat next to them, or when they hustle for a seat only to lose it to someone else - the disappointment when someone first walks on and sees there are no free seats - so much about a seat. And if not a seat, then an open spot by the doors where one can lean between stops, or even through the stops, if you are luckily enough to be on a route where the doors tend to open on the other side.
I prefer to see some woman putting on her make-up perfectly despite the rocking of the train. I prefer to note how long people spend on one section of the paper as opposed to another, and is it the Post? The News? the Times? The free papers they give out these days?
I prefer to see the teenaged couples leaning on each other for every iota of affection that they can squeeze in before being separated by a day of class or a return home. I like their awkward hand-holding, their faces-buried in each others necks probing with kisses inappropriate to the public venue, their exaggerated expression of sadness when one must get off the train before the other - all words shared in quiet voices as if hidden away and not crammed in with scores of other strangers. Watching them I realize that these subway moments before and after school are as close as those kids are going to have to being alone with each other. It makes me think about how crucial young love can seem, and how each moment is as precious as it is fragile.
I prefer watching people watch people. Men in dusty overalls with heavy steel toolboxes eyeing the women in their suits and sneakers, their shoes tucked away in a little paper shopping bag from some fancy department store make-up counter until they reach the office. I wonder if they buy their make-up there, or just get the bag somewhere. . . I prefer the nasty glares at men who set with legs open wide, monopolizing space and not giving up their seat to some crumpled elderly form, or some pregnant woman looking ready to pop. Sometimes I awake with a start and look up to see some pregnant woman, some woman (sometimes a man) with a small child and some bundles, and I sleepily leap from my seat and give it up, feeling slightly guilty that I did not wake up earlier. Other times I have to wonder for a long time if a woman is pregnant or merely kind of fat. I don't want to give up my seat if I don't feel like I should have to, and I don't want to insult someone by implying they are so fat they look pregnant, if if that might actually be the case. Luckily, this is a rare occasion, and I wonder if they notice my intent observation of their belly looking for clues to help me decide.
This morning's sleep, however, was deep and rich, and I was oblivious to all of that around me. I even lolled by head up to note that we pulled into Grand Street, and was momentarily amazed that I did not notice going over the bridge at all, and then promptly fell back to sleep for the three or five minutes before we pulled into Broadway-Lafayette. The doors opened, and I leapt from my seat straight out onto the platform, a trail of dreams flickering behind me, getting whirled by the winds of the subway as the train left the station, and scattered like the litter in the station. They seep up through the earth and concrete, rising like vapor off the quiet streets and call me back. Part of me wanted to stay on the train, ride up to 205th street in the Bronx and ride back down. . . Sleeping, sleeping like no other sleep I know or love as much.
This afternoon in wakefulness, I will see a different set of people I see nearly everyday. I will see them and feel as if I know them in those recurring moments of travel, even though we will never share a word.
But I do enjoy a quiet morning in the city. Fewer cars, fewer people. . . the canyons of New York echo with a muted garbage truck roar from a few blocks away, a too-loud morning voice cracks the near silence drawing looks from those of us walking up Lafayette. The quietude is like an extension of my unremembered dreams as I dozed on the 'D' train. The snatches of consciousness are almost as delicious as those long moments of sleep, my head hanging under my hoody. Broadway-Lafayette station can seem like a thousand miles from the 9th Avenue stop in Brooklyn when you wake up for moment with the jerk of the train pulling in beside the platform. Floating back and forth repeatedly in that limbo of near-sleep, full-sleep, dreaming, suddenly awake awake awake, consciousness clicking like the metal wheels on the rails and then lulled back rocked back. . . Sleep can be delicious in my subway cradle.
There are people all around me and I don't know any of them, even though I see some of them nearly everyday. Not too long ago I read a couple of articles on the flaneur for my Literature of Brooklyn class, and I recognized something of that character in myself. . . the walking (or often in my case, riding) observer. The article made an interesting point about how the advent of mass transit led to human beings being closely packed into a space together for periods of time while remaining strangers to each other. More often than not, we do not talk at all to these faces we see everyday on the street, in the subway, on a bus, on a trolley. . . I think I prefer the silent faces, because too often the voices that go along with them do seem overloud and distract me from perceiving them by body language alone. People can camouflage with sound, blast you back from loving kindness with their talk of current news, recent purchases, the latest gossip regarding the illness of acquaintance. . . I am amazed by how often I overhear people talking about someone having cancer, getting chemo, dying, grieving, some human misery, and I knocked off track by the pettiness of it - the strange vicarious thrill people seem to have when discussing these things. . . I prefer the silence.
I prefer to see the discomfort on their face when someone squeezes into the seat next to them, or when they hustle for a seat only to lose it to someone else - the disappointment when someone first walks on and sees there are no free seats - so much about a seat. And if not a seat, then an open spot by the doors where one can lean between stops, or even through the stops, if you are luckily enough to be on a route where the doors tend to open on the other side.
I prefer to see some woman putting on her make-up perfectly despite the rocking of the train. I prefer to note how long people spend on one section of the paper as opposed to another, and is it the Post? The News? the Times? The free papers they give out these days?
I prefer to see the teenaged couples leaning on each other for every iota of affection that they can squeeze in before being separated by a day of class or a return home. I like their awkward hand-holding, their faces-buried in each others necks probing with kisses inappropriate to the public venue, their exaggerated expression of sadness when one must get off the train before the other - all words shared in quiet voices as if hidden away and not crammed in with scores of other strangers. Watching them I realize that these subway moments before and after school are as close as those kids are going to have to being alone with each other. It makes me think about how crucial young love can seem, and how each moment is as precious as it is fragile.
I prefer watching people watch people. Men in dusty overalls with heavy steel toolboxes eyeing the women in their suits and sneakers, their shoes tucked away in a little paper shopping bag from some fancy department store make-up counter until they reach the office. I wonder if they buy their make-up there, or just get the bag somewhere. . . I prefer the nasty glares at men who set with legs open wide, monopolizing space and not giving up their seat to some crumpled elderly form, or some pregnant woman looking ready to pop. Sometimes I awake with a start and look up to see some pregnant woman, some woman (sometimes a man) with a small child and some bundles, and I sleepily leap from my seat and give it up, feeling slightly guilty that I did not wake up earlier. Other times I have to wonder for a long time if a woman is pregnant or merely kind of fat. I don't want to give up my seat if I don't feel like I should have to, and I don't want to insult someone by implying they are so fat they look pregnant, if if that might actually be the case. Luckily, this is a rare occasion, and I wonder if they notice my intent observation of their belly looking for clues to help me decide.
This morning's sleep, however, was deep and rich, and I was oblivious to all of that around me. I even lolled by head up to note that we pulled into Grand Street, and was momentarily amazed that I did not notice going over the bridge at all, and then promptly fell back to sleep for the three or five minutes before we pulled into Broadway-Lafayette. The doors opened, and I leapt from my seat straight out onto the platform, a trail of dreams flickering behind me, getting whirled by the winds of the subway as the train left the station, and scattered like the litter in the station. They seep up through the earth and concrete, rising like vapor off the quiet streets and call me back. Part of me wanted to stay on the train, ride up to 205th street in the Bronx and ride back down. . . Sleeping, sleeping like no other sleep I know or love as much.
This afternoon in wakefulness, I will see a different set of people I see nearly everyday. I will see them and feel as if I know them in those recurring moments of travel, even though we will never share a word.