springtime musings, a waking dream
As the summer approaches, the air in the city grows heavy and thick. As if in a dream, I see nameless faces all around me in the train station, the heat making them tired as they pass by, wiping sweat from their brows. I watch as a young mother intercepts her toddler before he comes too close to the tracks, while an overweight man eats French fries out of a styrofoam container and a thin woman in a tight skirt glances down at him in disgust as she hurries toward the escalater, red heels clacking loudly. As the sound of her shoes dissolves into the ocean of cell phone conversations, squealing subway breaks and loudspeaker announcements in both English and Spanish, a street musician takes a seat and opens his guitar case, ready for his own voice to join the city's dialogue.
He knows he has a lot to compete with; the people with their iPhones and iPods and Blackberries and Bose headphones, drowning out the heady, hot reality of Downtown Crossing in early May. Before I get a chance to hear what he'll play, my train rushes in and I'm whisked away, into the dark tunnel and then back out, emerging into sunlight and high above the Charles River. I'm facing the good side, and as the train crosses the bridge, the city's displayed out the windows in front of me; the boats with their clean white sails floating peacefully atop dirty water and very tall and very old builings standing out against a deep blue sky.
I am alone. Literally, right now. And figuratively. I have very few close friends. My family is across the country and doesn't understand why I tolerate the cold winters. The boy I thought I would marry at this time last year is gone, somewhere in D.C., doing what he never could while I held him back. I am 24.
At night I have visions of the end of the world, and sometimes when I am home by myself my friend calls me to talk about how we'll prepare for it. "I feel it in my bones," he says, "it's coming. Other people feel it too."
And as I observe the traffic, the people, the city around me, seeming to pulsate with life in this moment, it's not so hard to imagine it all ending. No more sailboats or skyscrapers or old churches and meetinghouses and graveyards with great historical significance. No more history because there's no one left to remember the mark we made.
I take all the energy in as I emerge from the staircase of the train station into Harvard Square. Eager college kids with their whole futures ahead of them and Asian tourists with big, expensive-looking cameras around their necks and overeducated middle-aged men in black-framed glasses. The world has opened into bright pink and purple petals and heavy green branches that reach toward the sky. I decide to walk home today, feeling the sunlight wash over my skin and praying that it could have the same cleansing affect on the Earth as it does on my soul.
I am at once detached from this reality and completely absorbed in it. The feeling of change is heavy in the air like the early May humidity, but I'd like to ignore it and pretend it will always be this way ... the sweat that comes with a strengthening sun, the blossoming flowers and my youth, and the buzzing, vibrant city full of anonymous faces that somehow make me feel as though I'm not alone; an eternal spring for a beautiful but undeserving humanity that threatens to ruin it all.
He knows he has a lot to compete with; the people with their iPhones and iPods and Blackberries and Bose headphones, drowning out the heady, hot reality of Downtown Crossing in early May. Before I get a chance to hear what he'll play, my train rushes in and I'm whisked away, into the dark tunnel and then back out, emerging into sunlight and high above the Charles River. I'm facing the good side, and as the train crosses the bridge, the city's displayed out the windows in front of me; the boats with their clean white sails floating peacefully atop dirty water and very tall and very old builings standing out against a deep blue sky.
I am alone. Literally, right now. And figuratively. I have very few close friends. My family is across the country and doesn't understand why I tolerate the cold winters. The boy I thought I would marry at this time last year is gone, somewhere in D.C., doing what he never could while I held him back. I am 24.
At night I have visions of the end of the world, and sometimes when I am home by myself my friend calls me to talk about how we'll prepare for it. "I feel it in my bones," he says, "it's coming. Other people feel it too."
And as I observe the traffic, the people, the city around me, seeming to pulsate with life in this moment, it's not so hard to imagine it all ending. No more sailboats or skyscrapers or old churches and meetinghouses and graveyards with great historical significance. No more history because there's no one left to remember the mark we made.
I take all the energy in as I emerge from the staircase of the train station into Harvard Square. Eager college kids with their whole futures ahead of them and Asian tourists with big, expensive-looking cameras around their necks and overeducated middle-aged men in black-framed glasses. The world has opened into bright pink and purple petals and heavy green branches that reach toward the sky. I decide to walk home today, feeling the sunlight wash over my skin and praying that it could have the same cleansing affect on the Earth as it does on my soul.
I am at once detached from this reality and completely absorbed in it. The feeling of change is heavy in the air like the early May humidity, but I'd like to ignore it and pretend it will always be this way ... the sweat that comes with a strengthening sun, the blossoming flowers and my youth, and the buzzing, vibrant city full of anonymous faces that somehow make me feel as though I'm not alone; an eternal spring for a beautiful but undeserving humanity that threatens to ruin it all.