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Published: March 17th 2014
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Except when late, the trains barely warrant mention. Nonetheless, the innumerable stories of City unfold upon this stage. Historical ones about when and how and who. Socioeconomic ones about crime and graffiti and tipping points. And undoubtedly, dramatic ones of birth and death, violence and compassion, joy and sorrow, and every other experiential polarity. More often though, the trains’ stories are banal, predictably quotidian. They are the unconsidered, unthought of, space between from and to. An urban miracle taken almost entirely for granted.
Deep beneath the ground, the trains burrow under the thicket of Manhattan’s buildings, snaking through the bedrock to emerge beyond rivers in far out places with names like Pelham Bay Park, Jamaica, and Coney Island. Along the way, there are hundreds of neighborhood stations that each have their own character, their own narratives, their own art, rhythms, habits, and peculiarities. Each station forms a node of the web that draws together the boroughs of the city and carries the human fodder necessary to feed City.
In Queens, at the 30th street station in Astoria, snow is falling. The N and Q line is elevated out here. To the west, the jagged peaks of City are indistinct
and grey. On the island, the train lives mostly in the dark places, but in Queens, it clatters proudly above the streets. A great silver snake running north along 31st avenue rattling the windows in the squat buildings that peer out at its passing.
On the platform, morning commuters hunch their shoulders against the biting wind and driving snow. The recording announces ‘There is a Manhattan bound train, two minutes away” and the commuters reflexively spread out down the platform. Then they turn, a hundred eyes stare intently north awaiting the red eye of the approaching N/Q train. Cresting a slight ridge, it rumbles into the station. Like a wave breaking on the beach, the commuters pull back at its passing then push forward. Footprints in the snow betray where doors will open, and where the daily competition for real estate will begin.
As the doors open, a middle aged woman, red in tooth and claw, lurches forward, lunging desperately for the lone piece of prized blue plastic bench. Sloughing off my backpack, I drop it into the puddle of shoe-snow melt on the floor and grab the cold metal bar above. The standing suffer the daily indignity
of hanging on, arched over the self-satisfied sitters staring blissfully at their phones. Meanwhile, the standers sway and rock, watching tensely at each station for unlikely seating vacancies, as they are slowly squeezed tighter and tighter at each stop nearer to the city.
At Queensboro Plaza, lines converge, and there is a final sausage like stuffing of bodies into the train. Then it dives below the river, entering its subterranean lair beneath Manhattan. Three stops: 59th and Lex. - 59th and 5th - 57th and 7th. At the last, I join the herd swarming out. Climbing the stairs, the train rumblings of coming and going and the plosive air break exhalations are replaced by the sounds of the station: the rhythmic thunk thunk thunk of turn styles is overlaid with the irregular staccatoey click of heels, muffled footsteps, and the rustling of bustle. Endlessly looping is the nasally barked ‘Get your morning Metro paper’ and the somewhere out of sight, melodious, hypnotically honeyed “good morning, free mumble massage, good morning”.
I turn away from the never seen voice around the corner and head toward the 7th Ave exit. Here sits the silent accuser of profligate Mammon. The subway,
especially in winter, houses the homeless, and daily, I skirt a hooded faceless soiled bundle ringed by the half dozen plastic bags of her life. This human squalor rebukes City and the ostentatious grandiosity above. The repulsive malodorous miasma that permeates the corridor is an acrid reproach to those who try to look away.
At the top of the stair, the slate sky slivers the deep stone and glass-walled canyon of 7th Ave. Amongst the towering and imperious newer buildings, the rajasthani-ochre hued Carnegie Hall and the ornate terra cotta facaded Alwyn Court peer down haughtily. In warmer weather, steps slow at the stupefying architectural agglomeration and the vertiginous verticality of City. But in winter bitterness, appreciation withers on the vine. The stuff of City’s majesty are a corner-of-the-watering-eye blur in the head down, scuttle along 57th, across Broadway, and back into the warm subterranean subway entrails at Columbus Circle.
At 59th street/Columbus Circle, as Duke Ellington famously informed the world, you catch the A train to Harlem. The train runs express until 125th, so at Columbus Circle, the bundled commuters are disgorged to connect midtown and downtown. Few commute uptown, so the train empties. Going uptown express
42nd street morning commute
photo courtesy of google images not me transforms the tone and timbre of the train.
This morning, there are few books; no newspapers anymore. Hunched over, glued eyes scroll phones. Even those looking, don’t see. They stare vacantly or with preoccupation into some distance beyond the train where the prospects of the day unfold. Others, ears headphoned and eyes closed, nod with the train’s cradle rock. Heads jerking on the edge of sleep. The luxury of the express.
Despite the thrumming of the rails and the clunking of swinging chains between the rail cars, the train is loudly silent. The white noise of motion is undisturbed by human chatter. Voices at this hour are harsh and jarring, and there is an unspoken taboo to respect the morning or, perhaps, it is a silent kowtowing to pending Job. As the train slips under the Upper West Side, time and travel luxuriate in the delicious un-interruption
By now, the smells of weekend revelry have been usurped by the earthy fruity char of coffee, the insinuation of toasted bagels recently breakfasted, and today, a hint of perfume. Something floral, murmurs of tropical fecundity, a repudiation of winter. Underlying all, perhaps sensed subconsciously, the pheremonal bouquet of resignation,
anxiety, excitement, anticipation, weariness, love, hate, power, sex, joy . . . the impress of things past and the expectation of things to come. But within the moment of the express, the stories of the day are dormant, lulled for now, unhurried and languorous.
As the train shudders to a stop at 125th street, it is like waking from a nap dream Announcements, bells, doors opening, a momentary bustle and flow of shuffling on and shuffling off, doors closing, and then again, the silent roar of motion. At 145th, I emerge again into the lighted world and climb the steep hill to Job. The sights, sounds, smells, thoughts, faces, and feelings of the daily commute already banished to the oblivion of forgetfulness. Another day getting from and to. A story soon forgotten. Life woven through by the new become ordinary: “A myriad of impressions. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, they shape themselves into the life of Monday.”
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Brian Boultinghouse
non-member comment
JOB?
Wait a minute... You have a job?!?!?