NYC in Motion

I love NYC, but let me tell you something I don't like right now....THE COMMUTE! I spend a lot of time commuting.  Too much time!!!  It takes me 2 hours to get to the salon in the Bronx from Brooklyn. That's 12 hours a week of commuting if I go in 3 days a week.   I spend another 3 hours to get from Brooklyn to New Rochelle for dialysis and I make that trip 3 times a week. That's an additional 18 hours!  Making a total of  30 whopping hours of commuting in a week!  Are you kidding me?!  That's a full time job!

How the hell have I been managing?   My struggle is staying awake and sufficiently alert so that I do not miss my stops.  I am too embarrassed to share how many times I have missed my stop...and it's never because I was asleep.  Though I dose on almost every subway ride I  always wake up just before my stop.  I usually miss my stop with my eyes wide open!  I'm either daydreaming about the day when I don't have to work so hard and be so tired all the time...or I was so tired that I stepped onto the wrong train completely and didn't notice until about 10 stops in the wrong direction!  For instance, one night after a long day in the salon, I stepped onto the train heading to Stamford, Connecticut instead of White Plains.  Another night I didn't realize I got onto the express train instead of the local until it didn't stop at my station and I had to find my way back.  For the most part, these long train rides are not the highlights of my days.  Especially since there are no scenery underground.  It's a little comforting knowing that I'm not the only one struggling to stay awake though.  Why do we work ourselves to exhaustion?  Is that how we are supposed to live?

 

However, every now and again, some interesting characters board the trains and break the monotony with their performances of dance, song, poetry, drumming, creative begging or just plain old weirdness. I am still relatively new to the City, so I can't help but stare.  Plus I'm a Kittitian by birth ("We fass bad!!...dialect for "We are very inquisitive").   I have always marveled at the sheer courage of New Yorkers,  especially the beggars....I can certainly learn a thing or two from them since asking for money when I need it is a vital survival skill that I never took time to develop that they have mastered.

There are also some very interesting pieces of literature and art that adorn the underworld of the MTA (Stations and Trains).

One night I saw the poem below on the inside of a Brooklyn bound A Train and fell in love with it.  It lingered and marinated in my consciousness for many days after.  Then one afternoon, 1:29pm September 18, 2013 to be exact, I saw the same poem on a Manhattan bound C Train.  I grabbed my notepad and scribbled it down.  Thought I'd share it with you.  Enjoy!

The Good Life 

When some people talk about money

They speak as if it were a mysterious lover 

Who went out to buy milk 

And never came back and it makes me nostalgic 

For the years I lived on coffee and bread, 

Hungry all the time, 

Walking to work on pay day like a woman journeying for water 

From a village without a well, 

Then living one or two nights like everyone else 

On roast chicken and red wine. 

By Tracey K. Smith (1974)