Subway Observations

I used to work with someone who disparaged the people he shared his long subway ride with if they chose to journey without reading anything. He mocked them. Such astonishing elitism terrifies me.

I know from personal experience that sometimes it's time to read and on other occasions there's no room in me to absorb any extra information. Does that make me a vegetable? Sometimes there's already too much in my head to sort out. In silence, subtle balancing goes on, or outright worry and fretting, a good deal of praying, some pining and aching, fear gets mediated, plans made, boundaries tested. Facades are maintained. Perhaps some would like to read but don't know how.

A lot of quiet reckoning goes on in that pause in life we call a subway ride. Recently I watched a woman angrily thump herself on the leg in self-disgust and disappointment. A good deal of parenting goes on too, and I'm so happy I haven't seen anything disturbing in the longest time. Today I watched a man, baby girl slung on his chest, laptop over the shoulder, gracefully get his pink-cheeked daughter to sleep. Men noticed him and were practically falling all over themselves to offer him their seats, but he declined their kindness, commenting that it was "better for her" if he stood. I remember those times. He stood, gently swinging her from side to side, whispering something to her that no one could hear over the drive of the train. I watched her get that faraway look, as if she were watching a performance through the train window that no one else could see, and then finally her eyes went half mast and then shut. Before she fell asleep I noticed she had her father's curly eyelashes. I think many of us breathed a sigh of relief when she succumbled to her drowsiness.

Coming home I watched a man watching a man. Mexican singers got on the train and the man sitting in front of me gave me a look and then looked over at a blonde man who was sticking his fingers in his ears, greatly displeased with the music. The watching man marveled at the one trying not to hear, and I suggested, in his defense, that he might have a migraine. The Mexicans got off and some Black men got on and started to sing a spiritual. The blonde man took his fingers out of his ears and went as far as to give the singers some money. So I guess it hadn't been a migraine. I wonder what it was.

Perhaps one reason New Yorkers have managed to keep it cool while LA flared with race riots is because of the test tube the subway is, our mixing vial, where we see each other's humanity with such immediacy. In the quiet and thrum of the train, our oneness, forgive the cliché, is terribly and beautifully apparent. We are all stuck there, vulnerable to the situation and to each other. So many choose to look out for their riding mates.

Not to mention the fact that the trains keeps us out of those rage breeding-fossil fuel guzzling-CO2 emitting cars. I heart the subway!