Yesterday’s threat of rain sent my daily constitutional into the subways and the much-loathed Oculus. Fulton Street station is pretty sprawling, with the 2/3 lines over on William Street to the R/W on Cortlandt. I’ve been taking the W home even though it’s 10-15 minutes longer. It feels like I found a secret. At peak rush hour the W coming from Brooklyn is almost empty so there is always a seat to be had, the A/C is usually boss, and while it does eventually fill up the coast is always clear to exit without too much combat among fellow travelers.
There is a route from this building to the W that would get there totally underground. With rains slated for early evening I might take that route. Decisions decisions.
But the underground stramble yesterday reminded me how I used to just sit in subway stations, experiencing transient locations as stationary. It’s generally not a safe thing to do, as I frequently rediscovered. Other people spend their days lurking in subways waiting for easy targets, and while I know I was targeted I managed to avoid encounters.
Oh, why am I writing this? Days pass and days pass but I don’t think a day ever passes another. Days are strangers to each other. No day asked to be born, to be recognized or named. And why do days and months and years have names but never the weeks? You could say we name some weeks. Fashion Week. Restaurant week. But these designations often refer to events that last longer than a week, and they’re not universal or relevant to cultural history. What would the Babylonians have done? Maybe they did name the weeks but it’s lost to the days of time.
Days pass like strangers. I’ve said that for years. Even the years pass like strangers. Strangers pass me by in this room, each representing an estimatable but generally unknown-to-me number of years. These people, strangers to me, are filled with the strangers of time. I overhear them talking about songs, music. The word “water” keeps rising above the din of I don’t know what… air conditioners, perhaps? More strangers enter the room.
A woman on the subway today had incredibly beautiful legs. I did what I could to look away but in so doing I found I was not alone in averting my gaze, my gawking gaze. One woman saw me attempting to look away.I think she recognized the hungry, or is it thirsty look of bobbling eyeballs and oh-so-casual travels of my line of sight. She was smiling toward me. She knew. Two other men made longer looks toward this woman, who seemed blissfully unawares.
I had been away from here, the work place, for 4 days. Yesterday’s return was not good. I felt like death warmed over after consuming just a bit more vokad than I should have. I know my limits and it’s rare that I exceed them, but it happens when I am phenomenally tired as I was Wednesday. A good tired. My good tired to her good sore. But still, too tired to know my limits. Feeling fine today. Good sleep, epic, earth-shaking dump yesterday, and strawberries for breakfast. I am ready to end this nameless week.
