Thursday, June 11, 2004, 10:12 p.m., Brooklyn-bound "F" Train

Yesterday it was cauliflower and trees. They were the same, only different heights above and below us. I was in the park thinking about scale. It was exciting, like a vacation from my previous thoughts about trees.


Today I wish it were something new, but it isn’t. I can hardly look after a single thought. Every one that
enters is pummeled by hundreds of others. So, every thought is destroyed by the presence of the others. They all fight for my attention, so none win. So I sit here overcrowded, but blank, but buzzing.

I find insufferable this state of buzzing, and it won’t soon go away because I am bounded by added
buzzing, here in this traincar, by outside din. Sometimes at night the subway becomes a moving party
if you step into the right car at the right time. If enough friends unite and incite in each other a
certain brand of fulsome conversation, a traincar can literally hum with energy. This can be very fun to
watch, and at the right age, probably very fun to participate in.

But tonight I want peace, and peace is elsewhere. Here, right in this transport underground rocket, my
perception is one of terror: of this moment as a hyperphysical overexperience of confusion, color and
clatter. All in me agree: I want to get off. I want to be home, silent, in command, and able to lean forward while growling and bury my eyes into my palms. I want to be private enough to snap and recover.

This, though, is city life, and I must remember that I can, right here, retreat into myself, into the
country, like a squirrel. I must remember that this city’s insanity is perfect and seamless. I must
remember that because of thoughts like mine that this city has come to be. I must remember that standing beside city life is a tree with two hundred rings. I can turn and face it. I can close my head and return to the villages where candles drip, where the bare bottoms of our feet grow tough, where the food is picked, where the dance is free to see, where the colors are berries and flowers, where my sweat is regular and left on, and where the buzzing is laughter atop laughter, or bees near the hive.

I write this for me. I am in love, my friends, with too, too much. I have been blasting the boundaries in
my heart with images of the future, and what remains is flying debris. I cannot see to read the meaning. I cannot build from this frenzy. I can think of thousands of reasons to be happy and thousands more to be hysterical.

You passengers- if you concur, if only with a grain of this text, I am made better by that- better at ease,
better in this world group. Your faces are unreadable, but only because behind the eyes I am too trembling to read them.

I close my eyes and see: milk. The texture. The pouring. The coolness. For a moment, I will focus on
this. I will focus only on this. Tell the city and tree. Tell them to sink into milk. I will focus on a single thing, on one single thing, on milk. This will not last, but it may last until the doors open and I can run home.

 

Monday, June 7, 2004, 1:53 p.m., Brooklyn-bound "F" Train

My shoes are soaked, but not by the rain or its puddles. When I walk, my shoes squeak water from their folds. It’s not embarrassing, just uncomfortable and odd. I won’t tell you how my shoes took to be wet, because it isn’t relevant.

Such a collage today. Such a sweet, brutal display of effects. The people down here are scurrying down into holes.

Situated in my subway seat, I provide the missing arc of a circling group. (Outsiders, our subways are
constructed with right-angled bends and space-efficient nooks. In some traincars, a certain batch of seats are arranged so that the riding passengers are assembled in a neat cluster, as if around a fire.) It’s hard not to feel a part of such a group when you find yourself in one of these boxed assemblies.

Today, we are five around the fire, the table: myself, a long uniformed man, and three women (all strangers). My arrival does nothing to interrupt the conversation being had between these three women. After I settle and squeeze a little water from my shoes onto the mauve-tiled floor, I lift my head and ears just as one of the women begins to read aloud a news story from one of New York’s most despicable newspapers.

She reads more loudly than necessary, but her intent is not to inform. She is only reading the words so
that she can make pointed declarations afterwards, which she does, of course, as the two other women
bellow their opinions into the air. The women’s voices rise in volume, in unison, as each tries to out shout the others with their comments. I think of daytime television and the hosted, public battles between two-timers, sluts, backstabbers, incestuous families, obese children, and alien abductees.

The women are screeching about murder, babies in garbage bags, and the disgrace that is our “crazy
world.” Sadly, a little group of young kids, maybe 10 year olds, is sitting about eight feet from us,
soaking in the violence of the words. The uniformed man doesn’t add anything, though the women look at him occasionally for validation, and he nods appropriately, much to their fulfillment.

I change cars at Jay St/Borough Hall. I settle again, again wring a small puddle of water from my shoes,
then look up to see more of the same. Another newspaper faces me. Bold headlines do their jobs; I
read them. They say a bomb scare called for the evacuation of Times Square yesterday. I didn’t hear
about this, but I don’t have a television for this very purpose. 

I look to the right and there sits an incredibly overweight woman, coughing and crying. She wears the
dull lime costume of a hospital orderly. At work today, she must have scraped against something
deathly. Now here she sits, bringing her work home with her. Where are such self-sacrificing humans bred? On what island on what distant star? If on some great day we are indeed visited by space creatures, I hope a woman like this crying woman will stand and speak for me, represent me, and us.

No, I see, she isn’t crying; she’s sick. Her eyes are on fire with an itchy cold. I know that feeling. I
watch her suffering, and I wish I could help. I really do, because I love her and she is struggling, and
because she makes evaporate my hasty notions.

The doors open and suddenly, an announcement about an emergency sits us up. This makes two in one week. The conductor tells the police to enter car number four. Could it be? No, it isn’t my car. I can’t see anything from here. We’re all looking around; this dwarfs everything.

Nothing. No signs of disaster, but thankfully, everyone remains scared and quiet. Today, living is
enhanced beneath such quietude. We absolutely have to be scared to be this quiet, and, of course, we have to be quiet to be this scared.

The last few weeks have churned this way, under throbbing silence. The last several subway rides have
felt more dangerous than usual, and internally, I have felt more self-absorbed, self-protective and weak. I consider as a factor the arrival of summer’s thick, feverish heat. New York City’s summer wave brings with it a testing sense of entrapment.

But under my skin, where my own heat is rendered by roiling thoughts, my own seasons are fostered at will. Today, these feelings, severe like equatorial mid-day sun, blare against the back of my lids, while my thoughts, the moving elements, are cold and piercing; so, between brain and eye, an impossible storm gathers force, striving for equilibrium, failing to find it, reforming, spiraling, alighting again and again, causing cold front/warm front/cold front/warm front… then… then… an ending, a stasis, but an impossible one… a death, a pitch of choking in this already bloated subway car, a gasping for pure air.

I squeak out of the traincar, leaving wet prints like complaints behind me. They will dry up, evaporate,
also, like complaints. Thank goodness for water’s dying uprising; a permanent mark for every grumble or grievance would be too much. I want today’s heavy wet prints, inner and outer, to dry, turn to air, and be gone. So then, for whom do I pen these words? Why add weight to rising water? Let it up, I think, but I write on, write on… squish and squeeze, squish and squeeze, making history of the hardest times.
 

Monday, May 24, 2004, 8:19 a.m., Manhattan-bound "F" Train

I had a book, so I appeared calm.

First the traincar stopped suddenly in middle of a black tunnel. Passengers tipped and blushed and
realigned themselves upright and proper. Then the lights went dead. Then the air conditioning shut off.
Passengers looked around. I looked at them. I thought maybe the closing moment had arrived.

The conductor mumbled and all I heard was the word “emergency.” I had a book, and my mind begged me to read it. I did. I looked down at the words. I read words. I read sentences, but the race had already begun. Today, I thought, will be the ending.

We sat still for over ten minutes. Newspapers became fans. Sighs grew to gasps. A few men gave their seats to women and elderly sweating folks. I did not. I was reacting poorly, like ice. My split self was
pretending that pretending to read would save me from something. On the pages of my book, I saw my plan. I would break a window. I would be the first one out. I wouldn’t help anyone. Everyone would be too upset. I would slip out and slink away like a rat. I would climb up and up towards the sunlight, push through a manhole cover and run for the river. I would jump from a bridge and swim down south.

The conductor said we’d be moving shortly. We all inhaled again. This wouldn’t be our disaster. The
traincar lurched forward, but stopped again suddenly, accompanied by a great thud towards the front of the train, as if we’d struck another train.

Round two. I studied the page even harder. I tried to convince myself that my book was fabulously
interesting, interesting enough to read during a catastrophe. At the same time, I imagined the deathly
chemicals were eeking down the subway tunnel towards my traincar. I had no plan for this. I made a plan. I would read. I would read until I couldn’t breathe any longer. I would die reading about the failure of democracy.

At last, the inevitable: an infant began to wail like a dying walrus. This little girl went limp in her
mother’s arms. She slumped onto the sticky subway floor and moaned with all her might. Her mother went bright red in the face. We all watched. It was all we could do. If we could be entranced by this little girl, entranced by her mother, then we could forget about the impending terror.

But after ten more minutes of dark heat, the little girl’s cries became too much to bear. Her howling too
closely mimicked our panicked thoughts. This little girl was singing the sights in our minds. She had to
shut up or some of us were going to join her. A pack of people in a metal car, all at bay. It would be too
much. This little girl was ruining our ruin. She could not be allowed to pollute our last moment.

A man at the end of the traincar abruptly yelled, “bring the child down here by the window!” We all
grew, sat up and turned, wide-eyed. Yes. Bring her there. Away from here. Sadly for some the girl was
brought closer. The movement broke her spell, and she was silent. We sat in the dark again and remembered.

Forty minutes had passed. I had read the same page a hundred times and had yet to make sense of the order of the words. I closed the book. I decided that I would die with a clear mind. I would meet the creator with square shoulders. I would inhale deeply the terrorists’ toxic cloud. I waited. I tightened.

So many thoughts can vanish at once. So much pathetic preparation went extinct when the lights came back on and the train moved forward. So much uncertainty and anxiety block the potentially wiser parts of me. So many of my thoughts are revoltingly useless.

Saturday, May 15, 2004, 9:40 p.m., Brooklyn-bound "F" Train

I get dizzy thinking of you.

You, without a roof over your head, have asked me a thousand times, in a thousand ways, for riches I am hesitant to give away. You, stinking and carrying coats of soiled sweat, enter my train car and speak tome. You tell me what I already know about you. I shut my eyes as my Fears and Sympathies begin to waltz around my head.

I want to save you, I do. I mean to ask you to live with me, but can I trust you? I will bring you home if you promise not to hurt me while I sleep, if you promise not to steal from me while I sleep. I open my eyes, stare at you and hate myself for not dropping my life to better yours.

If I gave you silver change, even green paper dollars, would you rally? Would you go round a corner and find the blessings needed to ascend? If I brought you food, would its strength fill you for longer than a day? Would you strongly see the uselessness of eternal begging?

Why you and not me? I was born in a hospital, picked out, taken home, fed, loved, nurtured, schooled, and finally encouraged out of the nest. What happened to you? Were our paths ever parallel? What day changed everything and left you lacking? And how grueling was the first day you asked for help?

I would tell you I love you- stop the train and enfold you- but I have too little nerve and too much distance. In this train, we are miles and miles apart. Years ago, we were balanced brothers, you and I, long before we built this system that gives more points to the winners.

I see you and feel something that I can't quite bring to mind. I hear your plea and freeze inside. I see your cup, your hat, your open leather hand, and I grow tight, embarrassed, nervous and low. The great men and women of all time, what would they give you? What is everything?

I give you my excesses only, my leftovers. You thank me, god bless me and move on. I added to you, but in the widest pool of worth, neither of us amount to anything. Our exchange is water for water, dirt for dirt. You ask, I give. You leave, I leave. We stampede back into ourselves. We could have spoken about the sources of this. We could have become lightning-fast friends. You were already broken in crisis, so we could have skipped the small talk. You could have cried enough for me to break, to see the real sadness that I'm too stiff to see.

Friday, April 30, 2004. 7:54 p.m., Brooklyn-bound "C" Train

The likelihood of it happening is microscopically small. But it is happening. In this train car, there are seventeen women and I, and that is true. There are no other men. I verify this again and again, but quickly, so I can move on into the feel of it.

Now I can't define energy, or point to it, collect it, bag it, avoid it, paint it or write it, but I can feel it. And this train car, unlike any I've ever ridden in among the thousands), feels like a room. It feels comfortable. I would even say that it feels like little home. The contrast between the outer effects of today's feminine company and the usual band of rowdies is inexpressibly corporeal.

I feel like I could turn and talk to any of them and be received. I feel like I could tip over in sickness and be promptly tended to and nestled around. I feel like I could break down under the weight of the city and be heard, let to vent, held, and replenished with encouragement. Here, I feel nowhere near the roots of war.

If only these women were in charge. This ailing mess of men needs their help and their peace and their softness more than any thousand new discoveries, inventions, trips to the stars, or hard won fields foil. We men, we need their mothering and their advice and their love. Our raging ways need dousing. We won't survive another century unless we frame and admire the ways of women.

I feel so lucky to be outnumbered and to feel these ashamedly) rare accompanying thoughts. I hope no other male boards this train and steals this peace. Oh- but there I go- defending an idea, being raggedly, stupidly male.

Tuesday, April 27, 2004, 7:29 a.m., Manhattan-bound "A" Train

When I see time passing, whether out a window or across an avenue, a fear climbs from great depths total me that, indeed, I have no grip. Blinded then by this fear (and arrested by the knowing that I am without a grip), I throw myself in opposite directions at once. (Leftwards, I lunge, talons stretched, towards the fleeting moment. Rightwards, I lean with deadweight towards the cheerless sea of futility). Consequently, as common sense would reckon, I go nowhere, stuck between strivings. And then, as always, time passes as it does, in and around me.

Today, traveling still and sort of slow like the lighter birds riding a side of wind, I see these faces- this line of faces, each standing for an age in me, a page in me. Where I was, am, and will be shows in them. Where they sag, I have sagged, am sagging, and most certainly will sag after years more of these discounted, dragging, thinking days.

I hope not to build sentences only for this purpose: to support a struggling self. On some day, my words will reflect some now unknown peace, and the passing of time will know no barriers set by me against it.

Wednesday, April 21, 2004, 10:14 p.m., Brooklyn-bound "A" Train.

Today's pen marks wont amount to much, not anything whole.

Because here a pregnant girl thrashes herself. Because here a racist refuels. Because here a starving lion man tiptoes towards me. Because here a mind reader separates the soup and starts in, separates the broth and starts in. And because in here it rains in other ways, and because in here I feel every way about every thing.

Now even if I traveled with my eyes closed, I would see these sights, and these sights would see me. And even if I rested, I would feel alarmed. This train and all of us are messes; we clean up, seal tight, then spatter. I do and I speak for you.

All over the plastic seats we spill our sort of seething crimes; because, no, we are not whole and we are not spilling invisibly. Every day, every color blends as every story bends into one, into the art of modern mental illness. To visitors, I say: the greatest museum is this- the underground train, home to every slope of the human mind.

One day, I'm going to draw you as nudes. Today though, I lack the zeal to mix such splendid colors. Yesterday I worked from half past seven in the morning to half past midnight. So I'll just gaze at the wall and let the corners of my eyes capture what they can.

Apparently we are sitting apart at perfect distances, measured by comforts of space. Seven of us today, rather empty, and I'm glad. I need no elbows today, no overhearings, no pressing dirty hands, no 'excuse me's', and no strong young people looking for a little war with strangers.

I could imagine us together here- if this were on water, if we were on a boat, turned outwards, window-facing. We could slice the sky into slices- you look there, and I look here; and we could never meet again. You could go swimming for fish; I could spread out, swim away to an island of my own. Maybe if a moment freezes for me, I'll turn the seats towards the windows, so no one has to face such mirrors.

What subway tale couldn't concern any occasion in any life? Every last outing turns the world to tracks. This train won't surprise us, ever. It will bear down and take you there, on across steel lines, through the whole adventurous masquerade. So we change the ragged disguise but study the map; and we will be here, looking in, unexploring, twenty years from now.

I am going to have this dream tonight. I am going to gather berries and move without thinking, stare without wondering.

Friday, April 16, 2004, 6:52 a.m., Manhattan-bound "F" Train

Passengers, in your centers, under each eye, flip open and answer this: are you pleased today? In the middle of that mess we are, surging forth, I warn us: don't be pleased with this. The summer is showing, but the sun has always been around. A new season is not the lift we need.

To the brain atop the world, we fire an arrow, saying: we will be warmer to the touch, but we will be unchanged until we, ourselves, warm from the inside. I close my eyes and you leave me. I open again to red shoes squeaking, children running through the subway halls, bouncing across into older years. Soon they'll stop and ponder. Now, let them run happy. Let them run until they are ten years old, then pull them aside and show them the spectacle, the clown, the feast, the fires, the arsenal, the red memoirs, and the still coming hail.

I close my eyes and you leave me. I open again to a train flooding in. We move back; newspapers rustle; doors split, and we are injected into New York City. Of course we are like blood cells! Of course! We are every likeness, every parallel to every body bigger and smaller! So of course we are like drains, stars, mildew, dust and glass!

I sit, close my eyes, and you leave me. I open again to the stiffness in my neck. I must remember to sit up straight. I don't want to look like him over there. He's finished, stinking and broken. I should have sympathy. I must remember to have sympathy.

I change veins, trains. I close my eyes again, but you stay with me. Voices stay with me. I can't evade them. I can't elude you three- you're too close to me: she hates her boss, might quit tomorrow; he is tired- needs a new apartment- his neighbors are too loud, and he dreamt of knights last night- how strange, he said- because he's not chivalrous- he doesn't even hold the door for his girlfriend- he laughs, he should hold the door next time; she whispers- she might leave her husband- she might cry right here in the subway. Go on then. All three of you, go on then.

All of you, I'm listening. Now listen to me. I love you, but I hate myself. Other times, I hate you, but love myself. You matter to me, but at other times, you are hay; you burn out before I close my eyes. Is it the same for you? Always changing? Will we ever meet in caring and love? With so much shifting and reshaping, we may always dodge each other's good days.

You, you're going too fast, but I'm dreaming slow. And you, you are fading, and I'm just waking up. And you, you have only a few years to live, and I'm just growing up. You, you speak Spanish, so my eavesdropping is of no use. You, you avoid people like me, and I avoid people like you. You, you look expensive, and I look cheap.

We're missing each other, have been for years, and always might. To meet, we might have to stop this, this going and coming and flying and dreaming and fading and dodging. We might have to offer each other a moment of time, selfless and without reward. We might have to risk an unlikely friendship. We might have to risk a little loss.

But can I risk losing myself again? I've been lost before; it took most of my life to find me again, mend the masks, re-name them, re-hang them, re-order them. Masked, but still lost say the back voices. I know.

And the sun says it's getting better, but I don't believe it. We're boiling. We're getting warmer, but better?

Wednesday, April 7, 2004, 8:55 p.m., Brooklyn-bound "2" Train

Billions of years after a beginning, we are here, sitting in this metal crate, creaking along towards that which we intend to do. In certain respects, our goings and doings achieve grand somethings, but today, I can't hear to think of any of them.

That is because, today, our delicate ears, perfected after countless changes on the course from ape to man, are being raped by the rumpus of metal against metal. We thinking apes live in the most technologically advanced city on this planet, yet during our travels within it, our highly evolved eardrums are shredded and sapped of functional years. How fantastically strange and silly this is, though I blame no one, for in my own life many more strange and silly affairs damage my senses.

Though, what puzzles me today is our acceptance of these assaults on our ears. If this shrieking, piercing, deadly sound suddenly announced itself on some quiet Sunday evening in my apartment, I would probably urinate while squealing while flipping over backwards in my recliner- then I would probably call the police or my mother. My heart would need hours to recuperate and restore its resting rate. I would probably go the next day to an ear doctor to have him inspect the damages. I would have trouble sleeping for days, my nerves so shattered by the shock. And most sadly, my trust in the impenetrable tranquility of home might never return. Yet, here I sit, we sit, in this trembling casket, vigilant, habituated to the deafening dialogue between rusty wheels and rails.

Such is the surrender of the working man and woman, or more apt, such is the distracted unconcern of single-minded apes (and of course, myself included).

Thursday, April 8, 2004, 10:02 a.m., Manhattan-bound "E"Train.

I am reading Rainer Maria Rilke. In an essay on solitude, he wrote:

"How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us."

I thought to bring this book of Rilke's with me on today's travels when yesterday a close friend of mine said:

"This winter has lasted too long. We need the sun. I don't know- lately, some kind of universal curse has been cast. People are killing each other daily, even more than usual, and the walls between us are growing higher and higher. I have no energy, no will to fight the sadness of it. I cant bear the headlines any longer, but I can't avoid them. Everything seems exceptionally terrible."

Usually, guided by Rilke, I do find hope that in the deepest being of our modern misery, there lies something helpless that wants help from us. But today I wonder of Rilke's relevance to such dim days. I find myself hesitating to hope for fairer skies around the corner of a rainy season. I want to, like always, string Rilke's words high out like a kite to spite the stormy winds. I like to watch his strong words dance in the dark clouds, flouting them with light and hope, while on the ground, I remain planted in the knowing that no wind can tear the string that connects his words to me, and that during any panicky moment or week, I can pull them down to me, view them closer, learn them longer, and slowly, when I am stronger, send them out again to forswear the worst weather.

But as I look from corner to corner of this subway car, seeing all and myself, I see dragons and no princesses. I see nothing beautiful or brave. Not even the working man and woman seem brave in their living-making; they (we) seem tired and routed, not driven by the will to survive, but driven by the desire to have more, make more, be more comfortable, etc. The ancient myths are gone from here, seemingly for ever. But most unpromising is this- that if our myths returned, those of Love-overcoming, they would be useless, for such myths rely on the use of our deepest being, which here, seems fully absent.

The row of faces I see (again, mine incorporated)- were they photographed, printed, sealed, and rocketed into space, then discovered (either now or in four eons), I hypothesize that the discoverer(s) would marvel at the vacuity in our eyes. In still frames especially, our hollow faces would appear dead.

I continue to read, and Rilke continues:

"We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us."

Yes, Rilke is relevant and unfathomably more mature than I shall ever hope to be. He timelessly knows that through a happy mimicry, we have rightly assumed the coldness of this metal train. He knows that we are scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us- that our eyes and the world they see appear as one. They do. Somehow, he knows that this subway car is paler than dead skin, as warmhearted in mood as a dungeon, and as shrill as the greed programmed into my mind.

Rilke, tonight and always, sees, and in seeing, saddens me. He is right, we are not prisoners. We are the prison walls, hardening daily around our fears. Yet, he says, there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. I don't know. I will try again tomorrow to make light.

Wednesday, March 31, 2004, 9:01 p.m., Brooklyn-bound "C" Train.

Reader, for me to write what I see, and for you to read what I write and know what I saw, well it will be difficult, because tonight, the sights are too slippery.

Outwardly, all appears common and true, active and progressing towards tomorrow, but the layers beneath, the withins, they are ebbing and flowing. How can I describe them? Now and never will I be able to describe water, though nonetheless, as always, I will try.

Today's wet question: shouldn't all impacts upon the face of the world eventually reach us, inform us, with their resultant ripples? Clearly, big news, through the vines of mass media, does eventually reach us all. But what of the smaller (but no less significant) events- such as the little girl in Greenland falling down and scraping her knee? And what about when she runs home crying, hugs her mother, bandages the wound, runs back outside, hugs the grass, runs across fields singing to the skies, feeling protected and cared for- would that affair not reach us as swiftly as lighting reports of another bombing?

Our life training teaches us- no. Such little affairs have no wake. But I think on days like today (while five planets spiral so near us, pulling us like water, giving movement to emotive tides) that millions and millions of these 'little affairs' tally up to offer this feeling of vast surreality.

But, reader, It, the surreality of the stars, is not astrology. It is the unknowing of the known wonders of understanding. It is not the dreaming of magical currents; no, It is the sinking beneath our learned good sense.

Tonight, the passengers and I- we feel something weird and wonderful, and it stiffens us. All that shows of our astonishment shows behind our eyes- and that of something urgent, but something too knotty to speak of, too perplexing to scrutinize, too nameless to compare, and too unsettling to think towards.

No thought can lasso It, the perfect Unknown, so no mind can corral its horror. It dictates us. It lets us tread in it, and hold our breath under it, but only for a moment, until we glimpse its space and swim like sharks back to the surface. Though, some of us embark towards it, towards that glimpse, and we- the inventors, the breakers- we drown in it. We drown in all the breathtaking water, the water we, long ago, walked out of with legs.

I can't tell tonight who is drowning and who is on the shore. Certain of us hide more successfully than others. The young woman across from me- she is tuned into the rate of unusual occurrences. She watches the activity in and out of the train. She is drowning, happily so, and always will be.

The gentleman with a book, he suffers something unfamiliar. Against incoming wake, he sends forth a wake of his own; so around him white water splashes and crests. He isn't drowning, but he has read something revelatory, and he is sinking into that book. Good for him.

She and he and all the rest of us are sensing it-something- and sending it- something similar but smaller. We are only three in a city of millions. Our city is one on a planet of thousands. Our star is one in a galaxy of trillions. Between us, the knowns and unknowns, is something, and to whoever can see it, from above, high above, all of these ripples must look brilliant.

Saturday, April 3, 2004, 11:18 p.m., Brooklyn-bound "F" Train.

I was standing, just standing and holding the metal pole. I had nothing to read, nothing to write on, nothing to listen to, no one (in particular) to watch, and no spirit to wonder. The day had ended an hour ago. Homebound, I was just drifting until sleep.

The woman had been sitting below me. She hadn't looked up. We hadn't yet met with our eyes, so we were strangers still. At some stop, she stood. She was a shuffler and very short, shorter still as I think of her, four feet tall maybe. She scurried to the door, and as she passed me, we brushed against each other and she said, "Nobody knows I'm here."

Slump. Until then, I had only felt such pity for animals.

I don't know why she told me, but if gods were watching (and I hope they were), maybe they'll help her. I would pray for her, but I have no confidence in my prayers, and I don't know her well enough to wish for her. I'll have to fiddle with my ways of wishing. Usually I need a face and eyes to wish on. I never saw her face, so I'll never know what kind of eyes escort such sad words.

Friday, March 26, 2004, 11:58 p.m., Brooklyn-bound "C" Train

The painting of portraits within my mind requires that I ride this silver shuttle and devour its innards. To make anything, to deliver any art- I suspect one must collect and carry with him plentiful tasted moments, positioned high in the throat, ready to be regurgitated at the beckoning of the artist's imagination.

Tonight, the girl with dangerous eyes is stuck in my teeth. She arrived after me, slithered past, folded up and tucked her chin between her knees. Only her eyes, only her eyes and forehead, only her eyes and forehead and hair- are all I have to nibble upon, filch, and spit into words.

Tilt for me, dear. She won't. Look up for me, dear. She won't. Her life is locked today. I could circle her for hours, I think, and find no window cracked and no shade raised. Only exposed, and in bursts, are her exquisite eyes, but they offer no entry.

Artists, let us retire, for the workings of her grief will not be revealed. We painters, writers and such-we must now build her out of foreign pieces of mind. So, I will: mix into my paint ashes of an old flame, blend in daydreams of a lost heroine, and finally adjust the tint with shades of sheer invention. All this I will do craftily, but sadly, for no clever composition will do more than suggest her. Words, brush strokes, curved stone- none will know her, tell of her, or behold her. Left on my own, without her, I flounder and wonder- what am I?

Please reveal yourself, dear, so that I might be revealed.

Another day. After thousands, I am still disoriented. Thousands more begin tomorrow.

Thursday, March 25, 2004, 10:02 p.m., "F" Train to Brooklyn

Who pencils them in, these menacing nights? I have such dread knowing that I will someday die.

The early sketches formed in Manhattan earlier today. I was walking down a swarming street in the East Village when nothing changed into everything. Passerbys turned into animals with requirements to survive. Bricks became trees. Stone became mud, and the moment stretched out into vivid, startling detail. The sounds of traffic and disorder overcame my control of myself, and I couldn't win it back.

The jungle shrieked and shrieked and shrieked at me-right into my eyes. Faces dripped with glue. Living and dead voices accompanied me down to the subway platform, where more voices emerged and merged into mounds. I climbed over them onto the subway and here I sit in shock at the speed of all this.

What is this? Is this an accurate experience or psychosis? Inverted, I think, I am. Does my face show this fear? (I would like to stop this. I need to recuperate and reorganize my self.) Do you see me? I see you, and you are staggering, like me. We can't stop this, can we?

You, the calmest. You calm me. You must know some of the secrets. You seem to be in control of this.

I will act like you. Just don't leave. I can't manage alone tonight.

Tuesday, March 23, 2004, 5:34p.m., "F" Train to Brooklyn

Insiders, please let me tell you of the warm wind, for today it most unexpectedly arrived, blooming me.

Can any person summon the effects, on mind and skin, of an approaching season using only the materials of memory? I cannot. Until today (save a small number of false starts), my thin hide had all but forgotten the caress of a spring wind.

From work, I walked, head low in habit, across the street and towards the trains. Also in habit were: the raised shoulders, the coat collar high around my ears, the arched back, the shuffling feet, and the hands stuffed into pockets (wrists, hopefully, unexposed). This pose, so stiff and unchanging, has declared throughout the cold season my sour surrender to nature's executive rule.

Then- at once, all my habits adapted to the unending chill were suddenly dunked. Miracle! By the new painless flapping around my shins, I was halted. (Non-local reader, know that flapping pant legs, all the winter in New York, imply acute sorrow [specific cause: the wretchedness of whipping white winds snaking between a maze of flat city walls.]) But here, today, on the sidewalk, on the subways long runway, the flapping felt- different.

You see, between my slacks and I fluttered not the accustomed glacial draft. No today, against my shins (and moving to my delight kindly up my thighs), drifted one of the pleasant memory-makers of my youth: spring air.

I stopped, and like a flag, stood and remained happily flailing and waving in the new weather of tepid breezes. Oh, the joy, the elapsing joy of giving home to a season's homecoming. I unbuttoned my thick, winter uniform to let more of the savior-wind run across me.

And it did. And I untightened. And I lowered my shoulders to let my ears meet the air. And I pulled my hands from my pockets and unfisted them. And I stood straight in neck and spine, taller and taller until I was tall again. Then I let a minute pass.

When I was ready and warm-wafted, only then, and at the leisurely pace of an overfed dog, I began walking again.

I entered the subway wearing spring's lightness. Looking about, I knew the season had tapped us all. She was brighter; he was smiling; the old woman wore only a sweater and sat comfortably in it. (Look at us.) The days do change. The winters do end, all winters, just early enough.

Feathery today, we rode.

Friday, March 19, 2004, Manhattan-bound "F" Train

Not much of a morning, still showery. Cold has our hands under our thighs, except for this little boy. To such owning weather, he's unavailable, busy at deliberating the world. First, to his mom, he asks, "Why do people get wet?"

He's standing in front of her, staring us through, marveling at our wetness. She whispers words, then he asks (first assuming that because calf becomes calves, that giraffe becomes giraves), Why are giraves orange?"

People are wicked because they want. Life is difficult because it changes. People get wet and giraves are orange because - I don't know. I forget to wonder about such wonder-full things.

Wednesday, March 17, 2004, 8:55 a.m., "F" train

Today, personal and world alarms are ringing with such ferocity that the soft sight of a child's smile is powerless, meaningless; the meaning is scorched by the burning pessimism promoted by the pages of our daily tabloid.

When a wave of darkness dips so widely, may I name it an ebb to convince myself of its imminent passing? And when a rag saturated of bad news is spilled upon by pails of more bad news, to where goes the surplus? Into us?

Subway, city street, plush pasture, or crater on the moon- no place will give itself as sanctuary to the eruptions of the screaming human spirit. So, sweltering in the long winter mood- today, my view is stuck. My eyes, lasers each, burn holes in subway floors, seeing nothing, searing all.

Then this Wednesday for me, in the ride from here to there- in the layers of bustle and color-- is altogether obtuse. My eyes might well be shut for the frozen vista I suspend. Today might well be any day in the warring years of any stupefied soldier standing in the company of chaos.

Monday, March 15, 2004, 7:24 am, Manhattan-bound "A" train

Now, at 7:24 a.m. on the Ides of March in 2004, and here, on my slippery plastic seat on the "A" train dashing into Manhattan, I see in myself and my trainmates the beginning stages of shell-making. Still in Brooklyn, we are alchemists, binding our toughest, tightest cells together into skin. In minutes, we'll emerge into the highest, hardest city in the galaxy, none of us entirely awake.

For now, we sway to the twisting of the tunnels, we passengers stuck in last night's dreams. We tilt in accord, sigh and sneer in concert, composing our underground symphony of stresses, hardening for our arrival.

And who will applaud for us, for our performance, for our finished shells? No one, for what god would cheer at the covering of his creations? By ourselves, we will emerge into chaos and scatter ourselves into square rooms.

Suddenly, a light: an uncovered child rescues me from my thoughts. A baby girl with wide eyes watches me watching her, and for a moment, I remember that skin is radiant and ticklish, but polished for ruin, though built so, though intended for use. I remember, in her eyes, that mornings are not closings, and that Mondays are but names. In her ageless smile, I recall that a week is nothing but patented time, and that forests, oceans, and all things natural have no need of such metered lives.

The little girl reaches out, brushes my knee, and my shell disappears in her breath.

I will emerge from the train uncovered, terrified to join the turtles on the streets above.

Yes, today is Monday, but it doesn't have to be.

Eric Metzgar lives in New York, where he reads, writes, sleeps and eats, over and over and over again. In his dreams, he sees the world agree, and clings to sleep until he has to leave.