clock ticking in my heart, numbers—of time, money—full of significance to me then ticking too, adding up and up, so high where I had a vision of the future. Things I wanted to come true set up on stilts. I exited the elevator with other bodies, racing them down more stairs, hating the other commuters, as they did me, hating the train for not arriving as I did. On the platform, I always stared at a block of dark, from which the train would emerge, making bargains with it if it would come now, no, now, now. I avoided the dripping water deforming the tile and cement below, where it had landed over time, a long time it had been dripping. Already, the chalky captive air was in my nose, and I found myself watching the tails of the rats on the empty tracks waving at me, serpentining. I did not want to make a study of them or the endless patterns of ancient peeling paint overhead. The city never seemed to have enough resources to show these stations any love, not even in tony Brooklyn Heights. Now most of the city’s resources went to security. Men in uniform, whether NYPD or National Guard, with guns, sometimes dogs. More necessity. Another form of ugly. Alerts issued. Alerts distrusted.
It used to make me laugh to watch the visiting Europeans; they were less fearful; as if New York was a European outpost and, when the dollar declined, a playground, a mall. In English, in French, Spanish, languages I’d studied, they dared to call the city beautiful. Yes, Fifth Avenue, the skyline, the Bridge, Central Park, what was left of the Plaza, the consuming energy, the efficiency of commerce even after 9/11. But I always wanted to correct them. Explain that they did not see what we saw every day—before and after the towers fell—or smell what we did and wear that smell on their clothes, in their hair. If there was beauty for its everyday citizens, it hid and threaded through the ugliness.
Some mornings, back then, not all, it depended, I saw it from where I stood on the subway platform. However many of us there were bent toward the tunnel, watching that same dense, dusty dark. So many mornings spent attending the dark there, praying to it, and just as impatience grew into shifting and sighing and swearing, there’d be an intimation of light on the tunnel wall. The darkness would jump and give way in a flash then return, only to be pierced by a sliver that became a fine line, all made from light and as delicate as anything was delicate. The light grew, in squares and streaks, agitating faster and faster, spreading in the way only light or joy can spread, catching and unpredictable, and unless you were insensate your body woke with it and vibrated with the metal and hot air and noise—such affronting noise!—that was the arriving train. You’d be exhilarated, or I was. All sorts of human traffic—need and boredom and anger—awaited you on that train, but for a moment, ears ringing, you ran in, delirious for motion.
Today, rush hour over, the platform felt a vacuum, very little of the spring day could be felt, save perhaps in the clothing and attitude of a few stragglers, in no hurry at this hour. The train could soon be heard rumbling its way to us before it was visible. I’d forgotten that was sometimes so, here at the Court Street stop, when the system had calmed. Then the train pulled in, making its outsized racket, a hundred strongmen banging on steel, metal brakes turning banshees, piercing the soft parts of you. I leaned into its wind, as close to the tracks as I could. When the doors opened, I hesitated only an instant, catching my breath.
Everything inside reflected, the ads for vodka and podiatric care, all the hard surfaces. The car was perhaps a third full. I sat diagonal to a young woman who dashed blush on her cheeks. It went on micaed and tropical. She held up a mirror, peered at herself with terrible seriousness. Lipstick came next. Another version of pink, of summer, of freshness. She did not seem to care who
It used to make me laugh to watch the visiting Europeans; they were less fearful; as if New York was a European outpost and, when the dollar declined, a playground, a mall. In English, in French, Spanish, languages I’d studied, they dared to call the city beautiful. Yes, Fifth Avenue, the skyline, the Bridge, Central Park, what was left of the Plaza, the consuming energy, the efficiency of commerce even after 9/11. But I always wanted to correct them. Explain that they did not see what we saw every day—before and after the towers fell—or smell what we did and wear that smell on their clothes, in their hair. If there was beauty for its everyday citizens, it hid and threaded through the ugliness.
Some mornings, back then, not all, it depended, I saw it from where I stood on the subway platform. However many of us there were bent toward the tunnel, watching that same dense, dusty dark. So many mornings spent attending the dark there, praying to it, and just as impatience grew into shifting and sighing and swearing, there’d be an intimation of light on the tunnel wall. The darkness would jump and give way in a flash then return, only to be pierced by a sliver that became a fine line, all made from light and as delicate as anything was delicate. The light grew, in squares and streaks, agitating faster and faster, spreading in the way only light or joy can spread, catching and unpredictable, and unless you were insensate your body woke with it and vibrated with the metal and hot air and noise—such affronting noise!—that was the arriving train. You’d be exhilarated, or I was. All sorts of human traffic—need and boredom and anger—awaited you on that train, but for a moment, ears ringing, you ran in, delirious for motion.
Today, rush hour over, the platform felt a vacuum, very little of the spring day could be felt, save perhaps in the clothing and attitude of a few stragglers, in no hurry at this hour. The train could soon be heard rumbling its way to us before it was visible. I’d forgotten that was sometimes so, here at the Court Street stop, when the system had calmed. Then the train pulled in, making its outsized racket, a hundred strongmen banging on steel, metal brakes turning banshees, piercing the soft parts of you. I leaned into its wind, as close to the tracks as I could. When the doors opened, I hesitated only an instant, catching my breath.
Everything inside reflected, the ads for vodka and podiatric care, all the hard surfaces. The car was perhaps a third full. I sat diagonal to a young woman who dashed blush on her cheeks. It went on micaed and tropical. She held up a mirror, peered at herself with terrible seriousness. Lipstick came next. Another version of pink, of summer, of freshness. She did not seem to care who
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