Wednesday, August 25, 2004, uptown “2” train, 4:42 pm
No one can stand straight this afternoon, everyone’s grip
and stance are loose so that every jolt, every turn and twist of the train,
every sudden stop throws the whole crowd into a stumbling domino set of sore
toes and apologies.
Book in hand: The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book
About a Vast Memory by Aleksandr R. Luria
Saturday, August 21, 2004, uptown “G” train, 4:30 pm
I am in the train. The man next to me is holding a large
camera. For some reason the presence of this large camera resting between his
legs distracts me from my reading. It feels almost as if he was exposing
himself.
He looks middle-aged. He has a gray ponytail (shudder).
He waits for the train to make a loud noise turning a turn
or sudden application of the brakes. He uses these moments to cover up the
quiet clicking of the shutter on his camera. He is taking pictures of girls’
legs on the train as far as I can determine.
Book in hand: Lout Rampage by Daniel Clowes
Friday, August 20, 2004 , downtown “R” train, 10:35 pm
I’ve entered the train and a young man is passed out on the
floor of the car.
“Is he alright?” I ask a man sitting on a seat nearby.
“He’s passed out.”
So I had gathered.
The conductor eventually arrived, shook the man awake
enough to yell in his face, “Hey, sit up man!”
Then he went back to conducting.
Book in hand: The Curious
Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Sunday, August 15, 2004, uptown “F” train, 1:30 pm
Two men in suits get on the train. They both have sore red
eyes. One turns to the other and says, “Man, that couldn’t be him in there. No
way man. That… that coffin was like, way too small.”
Book in hand: Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the
Mysteries of the Human Mind by V. S. Ramachandran
Thursday, July 22nd, uptown “F”
train, 7:50 am
I am a fan of the overly-informative train conductor.
The one who gives you the current time and forecast. The one who
names nearby landmarks that you are passing under, like an airplane
captain if the windows were blocked out.
There is one on the uptown "F" train in the morning who spills out
not only the transfers that one can make at each station, but how in
fact to reach nearly every train by an intricate series of
transfers. Lately though, he has tinged the Broadway - Lafayette
stop with a bit of mystery.
After naming all of the various trains one could
transfer to at the station, and through those trains, how to reach
other trains at other stations, he will click his microphone back on
with the following announcement:
"Reminder! When transferring to the 6 train in
this station, it only runs on the downtown track"
*click*
"Reason: Unknown."
*click*
Book in hand: The King In The Tree by
Steven Millhauser
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Wednesday, July 14th, downtown “F”
train, 4:50 pm
Two women with strollers are conversing in front of
me on the train. "So what are you doing
this weekend, hon?"
"I think I'm gonna take the kids out to the zoo."
"Yeah that sounds good."
"Maybe.. they got one in Central Park?"
"Oh don't go there. Go to the Bronx Zoo. The one
in Central Park got like two ducks and a chicken."
"Oh."
"Sometimes a seal."
Book in hand: To Have And To Hold: An Intimate
History Of Collectors and Collecting by Philipp Blom
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Sunday, July 11th, downtown “2”
train, 5:21 pm
Across from me sits an elderly gentleman. He is
dressed in a black suit. From his leather bag he pulls out what I
see is a Bible and opens it up in his lap. I take a glance and
notice that certain lines, seemingly random, have been crossed out
by a thick marker. He produces said marker,
and slowly, methodically, begins crossing off lines in his
Bible. Now, I am not the most religious of men, but something about
this action creeps me out. It's not like he was going in order and
perhaps memorizing the book, crossing off lines as he went, and yet
there was a logic (mad or not) behind the seemingly random line
crossings.
What would happen when he finished X-ing out the
whole book? It reminded me of a Twilight Zone episode in
which a man who had to keep building a giant clock in his back yard
swore that if he stopped the world would end.
What will happen when all of the words are no
more?
Book in hand: The Messiah of Stockholm by
Cynthia Ozick
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Monday, July 5th, uptown “Q” train,
4:35 pm
I'm returning from Manhattan Beach with my friend
Sabrina, and a middle-aged man sits across from us in his swimsuit,
legs spread wider than an eagle's wings. He is intensely
focused on eating vanilla ice cream in a paper cup.
When he finishes he leans forward. Leans back. Leans
forward. Shifts some more and checks his watch. Then he pulls a cell
phone out of a bag beneath his feet and examines it. Sets it back in
his bag. Leans some more. Shoots various people in the car a look
like he might eat them as intensely as his ice cream.
There's something in me that often likes to smile at
these stares, and I did so in this case. He looked back down. Spread
his tanned (and noticing for the first time) hairless legs even
wider.
Now he reached into his pocket and pulled out change.
He examines this closely. He selects some coinage and throws it
violently under his seat. The clatter making everyone jump a bit. He
makes a grumpy face. Pulls out more coins, chooses the "bad" ones,
throws them again.
Leans back. Checks the cell phone. I ponder who in
the world this man talks to, then realizing that we're under the
ground and then thinking, well he probably still talks to people
when he has no reception.
Around Prospect Park he gets out, leaving his evil
change, a crumpled paper ice cream cup and perplexed passengers
behind.
Book in bag: Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo
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Thursday, July 1st, 2004, uptown “R”
train, 7:42am
The man next to me pulls out a book titled The
First Two Years of Marriage. As I turn back to read my book I
notice out of the corner of my eye the rapidity with which he is
turning the pages. No more than seven seconds go by before he flips
to the next two. I imagine he is either skimming the information
(which seems funny to me), or he is a speed reader.
The reason I doubt option B for a while is that he
isn’t moving his hand down the center of the page as I remember
seeing in infomercials as a kid. In these ads a person who could
barely make it through a single page in fifteen minutes was reading
through War and Peace in the same amount of time by the end
of the program.
When the man next to me gets to the chapter entitled
“Sex” I think, “Aha! But surely he will slow down now! Important
info!” But no, he keeps moving, flipping with an urgency which then
suggests that perhaps he is behind on a “homework” assignment that
he may be graded on that night in Couples Therapy; and yes, perhaps
this very rushed and half-hearted attempt is the reason he has
landed there in the first place. He gets off at Whitehall Street,
the heart of the Financial District.
Book in hand: The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig
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Tuesday/Wednesday, June 29th/30th,
2004, uptown and downtown “F” trains, 11:55pm – 1:45am
With a few drinks in me it is time I return to my
apartment and so I am standing in the East Broadway station waiting
for a downtown “F” train. This late at night (morning?) it is always
a long wait. Thirty minutes pass and though two uptown trains have
come, there has been no sight of a downtown train. I sit on the
steps leading to the platform and drift off for a bit. I wake up and
get frustrated. I look for a sign. One is tacked to the wall but it
is written in Chinese, though I can make out the letter F with a
circle around it. Two kids holding guitars seem to be reading it so
I ask what it says and they tell me there is no downtown “F” train
at this station tonight.
Nice dude.
So I wait some more and finally an uptown
train arrives which I take up to West 4th Street where I
have to transfer back downtown. Too tired to read my book I pace to
keep awake. By the time the downtown train arrives and I get back to
my apartment it is 1:45am. It would have been faster to walk across
the Brooklyn Bridge. What do I know?
Book in bag: The Secret Life of Puppets by
Victoria Nelson
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Saturday - Monday, June 19th – 21st,
various times, the “1”, “R”, and “F” trains
There are connections underlying everything.
Perhaps this has more to do with the book I started, but once you
become aware, for the time you are in it, you become more and more
conscious of it. Systems beneath systems. Realities beneath
realities.
This weekend my mom and her husband made a last
minute decision to fly out to New York to visit me. The weather was
incredible and so much of the time was spent walking. In fact nearly
all of the time was spent walking with the occasional meal to rest
the legs and fuel up for the next part of the journey.
Walking seemingly makes up much of what I do in this
city. I love people watching, I love the change in flavors
from neighborhood to neighborhood. It lets me think, let’s me
forget, helps me to process thoughts. Solvitur ambulando so
the Latin maxim says, “it is solved by walking.”
Of course in a pinch, the subway is a very quick
alternative most times.
Saturday was a combination of subway riding and
walking. We took on much of the Upper West and East Sides of
Manhattan with a long spell in Central Park. Then an "R" train down
to Union Square, into the Village, up the Hudson to Chelsea and a
drink at the Frying Pan where Louisiana University was having a
class reunion with all-you-can-stomach crawfish and a poor excuse
for a band churned out off key versions of “Louie, Louie” and Kinks
songs.
Sunday found us exploring the anagrammed parts of the
city, SoHo, NoLiTa, TriBeCa, and DUMBO after a jaunt across the
Brooklyn Bridge. Then into my neighborhood of Carroll Gardens.
I explain all this walking not to brag of how far I
can push myself and my mom, but to move into Monday when after
calling into work with food poisoning, I met up for a final day of
strolling. This time we passed many of the stations or areas we had
traveled underneath in the subway the days before. From the Lower
East Side, back up to their hotel in Times Square each stop
announced an area of terrain we had explored before. The underworld
of our jaunt taken at a much faster pace. A reverse chronology.
It’s incredible once you connect all these points in
“reality” above, how the city seems to gel together. Where once it
appeared as a puzzle made up of these different sections of city
tied together by subway stops, now both above and below,
the full picture begins to form. Veins flowing through concrete.
Ghosts under the feet, sometimes sending warm and acrid sighs
through the grating in the street. Tossing up a newspaper or
frightening a dog. Be sure and watch your step lest your heel get
caught.
Book in hand: The Secret Life of Puppets by
Victoria Nelson
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Monday, June 14, 2004, 11:35 pm, downtown "F" train
A homeless man has entered the train and is begging
and pleading for money. All he can offer in return are the blessings
of God; either that or a prompt "Fuck you" if you politely refuse.
Behind him a man's voice shouts over his head,
"Batteries for one dollar!! Double-A, folks!! One dollar!!" It's not
the blessings of God, but perhaps the blessings of fresh Walkman
juice, either way I can't imagine it can help sales to be following
a destitute man. People will just feel morally wrong.
I'd rather take the "fuck you" I guess.
Book in hand: Fateless by Imre Kertész
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Saturday, June 12, 2004, 12:35 pm, uptown "F" train
It's begun, like two giant hands squeezing my brain.
The early afternoon sunlight is scraping my eyes and nausea is deep
in my belly. My first migraine. The evening
before had been old Russians at Brighton Beach, Burlesque at Coney
Island and a ride called simply: The Ghost Hole.
I'm standing, correction, kneeling on the
"F" train platform at Ninth Street in Brooklyn trying to keep
conscious enough that I can make it to my apartment.
It didn't occur to me until much later that this
is what it was. People say that "you'll know it's a
migraine/appendix/ulcer when you feel it," but I have, for better or
worse, a rather high tolerance for pain.
The nausea had calmed a bit and I ate a muffin,
water and two Tylenol and promptly passed out on my bed for four
hours.
Book in bag: An Anthropologist On Mars by
Oliver Sacks
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Wednesday, June 9, 2004, 4:53 pm, exiting downtown "F" train,
Bergen St. stop
I tempted fate today by exiting a stop ahead of where
I normally get off on a day that all but promised to pour rain at
any moment. I walked quickly, but not too quickly, back to my
apartment. As I reached my block there was a sudden crack of thunder
and what appeared to be hundreds of chicken feathers began to float
in the air down the street.
Hmm. I hardly had time to
ponder this when the heavenly flood gates opened. I bolted the last
twenty feet or so to my door. Luckily, an older man was on the other
side and graciously let me in, instead of waiting for me to fumble
for my keys in the downpour. “Thanks,” I said as he peered out at
the sheets of rain.
“Well,” he sniffed, “screw the Italian bread.” A
statement made not all-too-unhappily, I might add. His errand
now having been shortened to a small jog back up the stairs.
He did so, and I followed.
Book
(damp) in bag: Jakob Von Gunten by Robert Walser
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Monday, June 7, 2004, 7:30 a.m., uptown "F" train
The man sleeping on my shoulder looks like one of
those bald-slavic circus strong men that one sees in the old Barnum
& Bailey sideshow posters.
The people across from me smile to see this massive
framed man unconsciously seeking solace on my bony shoulders.
When the train shudders to a halt at each stop he
straightens himself up, apologizes, then slowly drifts back down.
Book in hand: Edison’s Eve by Gaby Wood
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Wednesday, June 2, 2004, 6:04 p.m., downtown "F" train
The goth kids sitting across from me
recall various thoughts/discussions of late on what I’ve
been calling “the crisis point.”
It had occurred to me recently while
reading the Helter Skelter book about Charles
Manson just how these teenagers, fresh off the bus in
San Francisco in the late 60’s could find themselves in
a cult, murdering for a man who was very clearly insane.
This line of thought also led to a
moment in Andre Bréton’s Nadja (or was it Mad
Love?) when he and a friend stopped strangers on the
street in Paris and asked them, off the top of their
heads, to name someone in their life that had entirely
changed them as people.
I think, often in high school, we
reach this crisis point… a point of total loss
and confusion, an entire self-identity breakdown, and
whom or what comes into our life at that point to rescue
us can totally change the direction of our lives. That
thing totally influences who we are from that
point on. Not to say that we can’t change, but that
crisis point – and what enters it - is our first
defining moment as independent human beings.
For some it is the goth, punk or
hippie scene. The intellectual scene. For some it is one
person. A teacher perhaps. For others it is a
combination of things.
I certainly fell into the last camp,
picking bits and pieces of the aforementioned groups,
but in addition to that certain authors, musicians and
movies. Here I took ideas as role models. It was
that infallibility of ideas (vs. humans) eventually
saved me.
It’s the goths’ stop. They exit
together.
Book in hand: Correction by
Thomas Bernhard
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Friday, May 28, 2004, 7:40 a.m., uptown "F" train
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Some days I feel I would love to slice the lid off
the subway cars so I could glance down on the elaborate chess game
that is played out every time a crowded train pulls into a new
station and as vacancies are made, so are decisions, adjustments, a
sudden rush for seats, shifting of preferences, perspectives (i.e.
from the center seat to one at the sides), these new vacancies being
replaced and the empty spaces left by those who were once standing
have also been filled in by new objects edging ever closer to the
edge of the board.
Book in hand: Correction by Thomas Bernhard
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Wednesday, May 26, 2004, 7:10 - 8:35 a.m. uptown "R" train
What corollary to Murphy’s Law states that every time
I decide to leave for work a little earlier than usual, that
is the day the train will choose to break down? This morning there
was a “broken switch” in the track. It always amuses me to see how
my fellow passengers react. Many reach for things to read. Some
stare at a new spot on the floor. Those with headphones readjust
their volume and find a better song. The peeved and/or insane swear
quite loudly and some punch their bag or a bit of wall if any is
handy. Their loud exhalation of air is mocked by the released
pressure gauges of the train, and everyone jumps after the
thirty-minute silence when the dispatcher informs us yet again that
“the train will be moving shortly, sorry for the delay.”
Book in hand: Wittgenstein’s Mistress by David
Markson
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Tuesday, May 25, 2004, 7:35 a.m., uptown "F"
train
I’m seeing people with laptops on the subway, open
and typing away. I’m thinking about these writings and how I still
do everything in a notebook first.
I think about the French writer Edmond Jabés and how
he would do all of his writing in little notebooks as he traveled to
and from Paris on the metro to work. As he often could not get a
seat, he would think up small, often single lines and jot them down
quickly. It was in these little moments that he found and used his
time to be creative, and out of this creative desperation was born a
style. He created whole books this way.
Minimalist composer Phillip Glass would create his
compositions in his head while driving cabs through the streets of
New York. In fact, his cab driving grew to be such a source of
inspiration for him, such an integral part of his creative process
that for a while after he could afford not to drive them, he
felt he still had to in order to get new ideas.
They both have inspired me in their own ways, one
above ground, the other below.
Book in hand: The Code
of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
***
I remember my brother telling me a story about his
first trip to New York City and how he and his friend Pete bought
red super-balls, and were bouncing them around inside the subway
cars much to the delight and jealousy of the children, and to the
anger of the adults.
Monday, May 24, 2004, 9:04 p.m., Brooklyn
BridgE
It’s my friend Pat’s last week in New York before
he moves to Seattle. What started as an impromptu stroll in Carroll
Gardens turned out to be a long walk up through Brooklyn Heights,
DUMBO, across the Brooklyn Bridge and up to Chinatown ending at the
Chinatown Ice Cream Factory for a well-deserved dessert.
As we were crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, at about
midpoint, we stopped and had a cigarette. We remarked on how neither
of us had ever walked across the bridge in the evening before, with
all of the buildings lit up like a giant steel jewelry box.
Further down the river the Q train could be seen
crossing the elevated Manhattan Bridge. We discussed the liberated
feeling of emergence when that train births out of the darkness and
you find yourself suddenly suspended above the East River like a
UFO.
Indeed from our view from the Brooklyn Bridge,
this golden snake seemed to hover in the air like a great space
coaster to be borne into the sky like some Chris Van Allsberg
children’s book or an old issue of Amazing Stories.
Book in backpack: The Code of the Woosters
by P.G. Wodehouse
Sunday, May 23, 2004, 4:30 p.m., uptown "F"
train
Sunday was a scorcher and I was sweating like a
whore in church. New York City has decided once again to leapfrog
over spring and land full blast into summer’s piercing rays.
Back in college at Ithaca, I admit I was a bit of a
hippie. Sporting longish hair and sideburns, I felt in some odd way
that there was no real use for underarm deodorant. Years later my
friend Chris would inform me that he had once burned a shirt of his
that I had borrowed for a film shoot, and he swears he saw howling
demons rise from the flames.
The reason I tell you this is because I am at
times able to admit when I am wrong. People DO need to wear
deodorant. And with the Big Stink of Summer all over us like a cheap
sweat drenched suit, especially within the confines of a well
cramped subway car, the hazardous driftings are made doubly so. Now,
I’m not asking you to smell like roses, but I am pleading, nay
demanding, something better than the foul wafts of total
underarm insanity that my nasal passages have had to deal with of
late.
I can smell it, ipso facto, so can you.
Please help.
Book in hand: Crime & Punishment by Fyodor
Dostoevsky
Thursday, May 20, 2004, 5:06 p.m., downtown
"F" train
A middle aged woman, apparently a few colas short
of a six-pack, delivered the following apparently unprovoked
monologue to a train of unsuspecting rush hour commuters between Jay
Street and Bergen:
“I was not expecting this fucking shot today. I’m
fucking tired of this fucking shit. I have transferred $10,000 into
my account today, okay? And I’m moving into my own fucking
apartment. And you fucking people have to choose today to
fuck with me! I don’t know who the fuck you think you are! I will
not be fucked orally, anally or vaginally!”
Book in hand: Crime & Punishment by Fyodor
Dostoevsky
Wednesday, May 5, 2004, 1:08 a.m.,
waiting for downtown "G" train
Recently after being lulled into a comatose state
by some impassioned acoustical strumming in a Williamsburg café, I
found myself nodding off slowly on my feet next to my friends Pat
and Michelle. We were waiting for the G train, which at this time of
night (morning?) comes about as frequently as a smile in this city.
In my half-awake state I began thinking of a quote
in Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn in reference to the
G train suffering from “low self-esteem, never going into citadel
Manhattan, never tasting the glory.” I tried sending out positive
vibes to the G. Thinking perhaps that I could coax that depressed
steel rabbit from out its dark hole.
Due to repairs the G was running in two directions
on only one track, making the wait only that much longer as they
switched back and forth. When we had arrived the train heading
uptown had just left.
It was going to be a while.
About fifteen minutes later a young and equally
tired man came down the steps.
“Do you know if the uptown train has come yet?”
I nodded a sleepy “yes.”
“Fuck.”
He headed back up the stairs.
Positive vibrations.
Book in backpack: Helter Skelter: The True
Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi
Saturday, May 1, 2004, 6:00 a.m., uptown "E"
train
It’s moving day. For over a year I’ve lived on an
un-folded-out futon in a former closet in the West Village. No
listen, they were literally pulling out the clothing racks the
afternoon I moved in. Now I was moving to Brooklyn. Back to
commuting to work by train.
When I lived in the Upper East Side it was the
express 4/5 trains. From 125th Street down to 86th,
I got to witness fights nearly every morning between the Harlem
residents and the U.E.S. suits. I usually smirked and kept my nose
buried behind a book, but with all ears open. That is until I’d
accidentally bump a neighbor’s foot or my backpack would press up
against a fellow passenger as I entered the overcrowded train. Then
I would be the one railed against and be given a lecture
whose chief subject always seemed to be “respect.”
Before that was Queens and the N/R trains.
Quieter, emptier, I’d almost always have a seat, though the stack of
human feces that awaited me well neigh every morning upon exiting at
23rd Street was almost enough to make me pine for the old
verbal excretions.
This morning as I headed to the U-HAUL to pick up
a moving truck, I savored my Dunkin’ Donuts and caught on to a
conversation between two young men who also happened to be heading
to the U-HAUL station.
The gist of it was that one of them was moving
west to Portland, Oregon. The other had flown out to help him pack
and drive it all back west. The mover seemed a bit naïve, and the
friend who’d flown out tried to keep things in perspective.
“So what’s the plan here man?”
“So we’ll just pack my shit up and head out man!”
“Cool, moving is tiring work though.”
“Yeah but I can drive for-fucking-ever
man!”
“Still, I have some friends in Chicago. We’ll
probably be pretty beat when we’re all done here. I think we should
crash there tonight.”
“Don’t worry man, I can fucking drive!!”
“That’s cool, but man let’s stop in Chicago
tonight, and then in Colorado. I got some buds there too. Then we
can go straight from there to Portland.”
“Whatever man,” the mover said, obviously a bit
miffed at the total dismissal of his kick-ass driving skills,
“cool.”
All I could picture were these two about five
hours later with the truck half packed and their sweat drenched
shirts stuck to their bodies agreeing that if they could even
finish packing it would be a miracle… man.
Book in hand: Helter Skelter: The True Story of
the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi
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In his free time David Willems can be found walking
around New York and looking at stuff. He is the editor of Palaver (www.happyrobot.net/palaver/archives.asp),
and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, Stroker, The
Morning News, Really Small Talk, and The New Colonist. He rides the
subway often on days when he does, and hardly at all on the days
when he does not.
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