Saw her on the R again today. First time in weeks. She used to look alert, lively, active. Any time I see her now she is slouched, hoodie-covered, nearly-asleep or only pretending. Our only connection is occasional eye contact. I looked, again, for that ring I know I saw on her left hand 4th finger. Still not there, but I know it was there the first times I noticed her. What happens? How do lives like this one change without any announcement or press release to advise nominally interested observers?\u00a0 Does she care about the occasional leather stain on the right side of my pants? Probably not. I don’t even think about it anymore. I want information on all people, everywhere. OK, let’s limit the scope. People I see regularly but with whom I never directly interact. I’m really just thinking of this one woman at this particular moment. She sulked off the train at her regular stop. Frowning. Sweat pants and a hooded jacket.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Sat next to a man on the train yesterday whose face looked like a cake gone bad. Mud mixed with flour and deep creases. He closed his eyes but seemed to be anywhere but at peace. Not unlike the R train woman, but he was much older. Settled in his look of glowering abandonment, passing his days on the subway trains. His arms folded not in serenity or self-warmth but as repellent. As I sat next to him I sensed his discomfort, then his resignation that the train was full enough that customs permitted this proximity. He would rather have sat alone, and at the first opportunity he moved to a seat with no one on either side of him. He reminded me of someone I encountered at a bus stop near 1300 Metropolitan Avenue. He was talking loudly to himself but that was all I would recall if he did not approache me minutes later to say “You don’t have anything to be nervous about.” I said “I don’t know what you’re tallking about.” He seemed embarrassed and said “Never mind. Sorry.” Then I put the ephemera of the past few minutes together. I had used my phone’s camera to scan the QR code on the bus stop sign, to see how long a wait it would be for what I think was the Q47. In his otherwise nonse-seeming litany he said something about “take a picture”, which I now realize was a comment on me appearing to be taking a picture of a bus stop sign. Maybe he didn’t know about the QR code trick? After scanning the QR code I stood off to the other side of the bus stop shelter, studying the bus route and whatever else. After his comments about not needing to worry I realized that his camera comment was directed at me and that when I stood off where I stood he thought I was trying to avoid him. Is it possible all this is true, that he was correct, but that I behaved as I did blindly, on auto-pilot, or in the removed manner in which I float through these years?<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saw her on the R again today. First time in weeks. She used to look alert, lively, active. Any time I see her now she is slouched, hoodie-covered, nearly-asleep or only pretending. Our only connection is occasional eye contact. I looked, again, for that ring I know I saw on her left hand 4th finger. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/saumAn-hunkered","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47896"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47909,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47896\/revisions\/47909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}