The subway certainly is an interesting world. Many consumed with their technology like the world that we know outside of the deep dark tunnels...what are you doing on your phone now that service doesn't reach your antenna, hidden beneath the surface if your sleek technological device? Do you write? Take "selfies" at awkward angles so as to be inconspicuous?
A man reads a book. Yes! A real book! Like the ones you see in movies or perhaps you remember from childhood...which seems ever-so far away as you notice the man in the corner, about your age, without a shirt, lathering himself with a lotion, of sorts. His shoes look new from halfway down the car, but his face says otherwise. You recognize your adulthood and the necessity for action down here without service.
LIGHT!! We've surfaced in Brooklyn. Your own humanity disappears in the dark tunnel behind you as you snap back to the world where you ignore your neighbors because they ignore you. A man comes on yelling at someone through his phone. We are probably all more affected than the person on the other end of his seemingly one-way conversation.
A hard hat with a backpack, a flowing dress and a baby strapped to the back of a woman's waist with just a sheet...what world is this? In and out, up and down, on and off. Warm air rushes into the refrigerator I'm sitting in. Thaw. Darkness. Back out into the light.
The man yells on...but now at a fellow passenger that he entered with. Maybe he isn't yelling. Perhaps this is how he communicates.
I flash back to a boss who used to yell profanities as part of his normal speech at volumes that would reach the next two cars if he were here...I shutter. Glad to be in this subway world where anything is possible.
There are trees here and other greenery. It almost doesn't look like New York but the bright orange and dull red seats remind you that this train from the 70s is still bound for glory...
And suddenly the doors close for the umpteenth time...I check my phone...that was my stop. Strange that people look for time traveling machines and try to beat the speed of sound and all I have to do to achieve it is step into subway world... At just $2.50 per ride it's better than Disney. Until next time...little world.
