Subway Sketches and a Short Piece Published

I've written a lot, over the years, while riding on subway and train cars. It's resulted in dozens upon dozens of sketches where I capture moments, real and imagined.

It's no wonder, then, that in all the years sending work out into the world, only two small stories have ever been accepted for publication and they've both been part of what I shall now call the subway series (like baseball but more lyrical.)

So, I'm happy to share one of those stories, this flash piece in the latest issue of Cleaver Magazine. I hope you will check out this issue and all the wonderful work the magazine puts out. It's cool to be a small part of it.

With thanks to the lovely Beth Kephart for pointing me towards the magazine, the way she points me in the direction of so many cool things.

Something I Hate To Do

February Photo A Day

I try to be positive on the blog but...

The theme was posed. 

I thought about it.

I found the photo.

And so it goes.

I strongly dislike waiting for the subway.  

But I really like this platform poster. 

New York City, Intimate, Exposed

Standing on the subway this morning, scanning, as I always am, for the possibility of an empty seat, that sudden jerk movement upward that sends me flinging forward and down, I watched a stranger wipe tears from her cheek. I caught her eye for the briefest moment, then looked away. To allow her that.

This is something I have seen in New York City countless times.  Not exhibitionist emotion. Not like hand-hipped arguments on street corners, a woman cursing into her cell phone at 23rd and 6th. This is quiet grief. Loneliness. Hurt. The kind that should have been private but faucet-dripped, leaked past, through, where it should have stayed put.

I don't know if this happens everywhere. Maybe suburban tears sit beyond pristine lawns and closed curtains or at steering wheels in crowded strip mall parking lots. Maybe rural tears happen in the shield of sun cutting through crowded, thick brush and wood.  But urban tears are exposed and I have seen them as often as I have felt them suddenly well up, suddenly rush past orange cones and construction workers on concrete sidewalks, the back of my hand ripping across raw red cheeks, thinking, not here, not now, they will see. They will know. 

I remember my first job in New York City, an internship after freshman year of college at a lifestyle and sporting magazine. I was somehow put in charge of talking to restaurant managers about where to eat and drink during the upcoming US Open Tennis Championships, which sounds exciting, but got old quickly, day in, day out, interrupting busy hosts and hostesses during the rush of food service because restaurant managers don't answer their  telephones, do you want to be included in this epic page spread? I'd ask, and then announce the advertising fee and have to justify it with the circulation and the demographic and really, they were too busy, getting lunch out, too busy to talk to me, and why should they pay, really, for this nothing blurb?

I'd go back to the offices, usually empty-handed. I'd try to talk to the staff-writers and editors. I'd say, I could write a story on Agassi's forehand. Do you know Agassi? they'd ask.  I'd shake my head. They'd raise their eyebrows. I could write about the psychology and dynamic between figure skating partners. That's a great idea, how many figure skaters can you interview? Of course, none, none. So I'd be back at places like Le Cirque, restaurant managers suspicious and sighing, what is this magazine anyway?

I remember sitting on the steps of the New York Public Library eating my bagged lunch, in some mis-matching, crooked skirt and blouse combination that the Editor-In-Chief of Style had previously sneered at. I munched on the turkey sandwich my mother made me the night before, that I carried with me on the Long Island Railroad each morning, and I thought, despite everything, I work in the best city in the entire world.  No one knew me. They didn't see me. They didn't know. I could have been anybody.

I have always loved the anonymity of New York City, of Manhattan especially, of walking down the street, completely unknown, nameless, unmarked, and therefore, protected in my own coat of armor. But there are those private moments that become public. Remembering someone you've lost. Realizing you've been hurt or that you might have hurt another. New York City suddenly becomes too intimate. You are vulnerable inside it. The buildings are not tall enough. The crowds not thick enough. For a brief moment you are seen. You are known.

Overheard: F Train, York Street

She had huge brown eyes and a swinging ponytail.  Her backpack bunched up her shoulders. She wore a black coat, black pants.  Her friend was the one dressed in rainbow. Long spidery eyelashes. Earrings that brushed her shoulders.

I think when I'm finished with school, when I'm a nurse, I'll be a nurse for twenty or thirty years and then I'll be done with it.  I'll be something else.

You'll go back to school? The friend asked. When you're fifty?

I don't want one career. I want two careers.  I'll be a nurse and then I'll be something else. And when I'm fifty, I'll appreciate school more. When you're young you don't appreciate school.

What will you be when you're fifty?

Maybe. A dentist.

She looked through the glass of the subway doors as we slowed to a stop.  Her eyes did that frantic zig-zag scan, the kind of flash panic that comes when you've passed where you thought you might be, but you're really ahead of it. 

I totally thought we missed our stop.  This is it.

I loved her way of thinking.  The certainty that she wouldn't be one thing but many. The idea that she may not appreciate now what she might then or that becoming doesn't end with youth.

I started to think if I could be one thing now and something else in twenty years, what would that be?  

What would it be for you?

New York Postcard

Last Monday, I came home late, near the midnight hour, after watching a tennis match at Madison Square Garden. I had an angry fire throat and a pesky cough. I rode the F train and wished desperately for sleep.

The train was crowded but I'd managed a seat while Tyler hung at the pole, and I stared through the cracks of coats and bags, watched as across the way, two burly passengers -- like a children's book, one short and wide, the other large and long -- smashed together into a seat like two cymbals gonging.

There was an immediate confrontation.  The two-seater was suddenly not large enough for all three: the wide one, the long one, and the bag the wide one insisted upon slapping upon the bench.  There were accusations flung.

You didn't ask if you could sit here!

I don't have to ask! 

And over and over, this is a public space, man. This is a public space.

I watched as both of them refused to move and, instead, sat uncomfortably squashed. The wide one clutched his bag beside him, stared straight ahead. The long one smooshed himself between the railing and his enemy, trying to read a newspaper.  He looked like sausage oozing out of the casing, his impossibly long arms bent and woozy, as they awkwardly crinkled the unruly pages. 

On our walk home, Tyler and I laughed at their stubborn, crunched up silence.

I would have snapped a portrait if I could.  A New York postcard.  

Crowded Subway

I'm on a crowded subway, clutching a heavy book that requires two hands not one, but where to place my fingers?  On the warm metal pole, or balance, maybe lean, against a door or a railing where the puff of a stranger's coat already peaks through.

I'm lost in rolling sentences, in the rain of words, and my scarf is warm, too warm, for the scratchy wool on one side of me and that backpack strap slapping at my wrists, with my messenger bag smashed between her angry stare and the dull hum of his headphones.

When she comes on, I'm pushed by someone else and then I'm flailing, slipping from the grip of memory where the period had nudged up against a space. I wonder which word had come before it, which might come next, because suddenly the page is a mash of words I have to puzzle together, like the time I lost a fluttering bookmark to the water on the tracks and there went my place.

She talks of the goodness of God and I would mind it if she was yelling, like the others do, but she's just talking, like we're listening. She likes a crowded train, she says, and God is still good, and maybe that's where I've found the extra o, the roundness of it, in the sentence I have had to let go of, because the train has tossed me again, and my hands are tight to the crinkled binding of the book, not at the slip-away railing, where they should be, and as I falter, then find footing between one crooked-heeled boot and a tattered shoelace, she says, It's okay. You can fall on me.

And, usually, I wouldn't say a word, not so early in the morning, not to someone basketball squeak dribbling, dribbling about the goodness of God but she's just talking, like I'm listening, just that way, so I say, and I don't know why I do, I say, Thank you.

You can fall on me, she says again. I've got nowhere to go.

Upside Down

Late last night on a G train, I looked up from my book and found this.

He looks how I feel.

Amid All the Noise

Lately I feel there's a lot of noise out there. I'm browsing through my twitter feed and it seems that everyone is up in arms about, well, everything.  I don't want to perpetuate the ugly sound by lamenting my frustration here but I just wondered...do you hear it too?

I'm trying to maintain an almost meditative focus these days -- on the words I'm writing and the words I'm reading. I'm reimagining my days. 

On Sunday night, I sat on the subway.  Having already finished a book, I was involved in a children's math game on my phone  (I was multiplying.  For real.) A young man stepped on the train to ask for money and food for his daughters, his grandmother, himself.  Unlike the many panhandlers I see and hear each day, he was well-spoken and well-dressed, his speech rehearsed but sincere.  A middle-aged woman, who sat across from me, said to him, When you're finished collecting money, come speak to me.

I'll admit.  I was curious.  I strained to listen while I multiplied but their conversation was intimate, thoughtful, the depth and concentration of it, almost mystical.  When I got off, they got off, and as I waited to transfer to my next train, they stood beneath the stairs in the heat of this conversation.

I wasn't meant to hear their words but I overheard snippets, the work of her rehabilitation, the daughters he loved, an education somehow lost and then found, for both of them.  And in the end, an exchange of information between them.  

In all of my years living in New York, of the thousands of people (it has to be thousands, after all these years) I see begging on the train and in the streets, I have never in my life witnessed anyone reach out in this way. To tell a story.  To listen to one.  I see something in you, I heard her say.

I wondered what the gift of this moment could mean. For both of them. For me.

On The City

This morning, the morning subway commute was less crowded than I am used to. I stepped on to find a little girl in a wildflower pink and purple dress.  She had huge blue eyes. Pink arm warmers wrinkled to her elbows. Dozens of light brown braids were fastened with rainbow crystal hair ties.

"We are on the city," she told her mother.

"In the city," she corrected.

"We are in the city, Gilly Gil!" She called out, fanned her arms, spun around the metal pole.  She paced the small space, back and forth, babbled incessantly, like a song. The rush of crescendo.  The whispering, skipping little notes.  She spoke to herself, to her mother, to the train, to this Gilly Gil, whoever Gilly Gil might be, until suddenly she marched up to me.

"We are in the city," she said. Her severe stare, such a sharp focus, so determined. "We are on the bus, the plane, the car."

"Or the train." I smiled.

"The B Train!" She shouted, sent her arms soaring to the ceiling.

"The F Train," her mother corrected.

"To the Central Park zoo!"

"To camp, actually," her mother said.

"Or the zoo."

"Not the zoo."

And again, that stare.  How did her mother handle this stare?  Day in, day out, this blazing blue, turned grey, turned cold, turned certain.  She was defiant.  "We are on the city."

I wondered, what she was trying to sort out in her Dr. Seuss riddled way.  Being in a city, on a train, going to a zoo, or not a zoo, speaking to me, a stranger, or to this invisible (or perhaps not so invisible) Gilly Gil.  How strange and, at the same time, wonderful, to be caught up in a trick of semantics, trying to place herself somewhere.

You Are

The always honest, always intelligent Meg at Write Meg! wrote about jealousy and the way social networking sites like Facebook allow us to see into more lives to measure ourselves against. Her post spoke to me because I have always struggled with that (have expressed it many times here.)  I've gauged my progress against others (particularly when it comes to publishing), desperate to catch up, feeling so far behind where I want or need to be in many aspects of life.  I still feel behind. I don't know if that feeling will ever go away. But, recently, I have been just a little more accepting about where I am (that is to say, behind.)

Over the past two years, there has been a lot of construction work on my train, the F train.  It often leaves me stranded on weekends, forced to take a bus that sits, stalled in traffic, along a very crowded Smith Street.

Once, I stood next to a couple I think of often.  The woman was frantic about needing to get somewhere or maybe just wanting to and there were loud sighs and glances at a watch and a lot of what is happening and why are we sitting and wouldn't it be faster if we just walked?  I understood her frustration.  If I had someone to voice my concerns to, I would have whined just the same.  But her companion was perfectly calm.  'You are where you're meant to be," he said.

That's easy to say. Perhaps, harder to believe.  Or maybe not. Maybe it really is as simple as that?

On the Tracks

I saw these objects on different days (weeks apart, actually) and at different train stations.

It startled me, how similar they were. How similar they are.

A lost story (a book.)  An abandoned heart.

Together

Standing on the subway this morning, holding on to the slick of greasy pole, I stood before a woman sitting in a fur vest who, after staring out into nothing, erupted into sudden laughter.  Shoulder-shaking, head thrown back, breathless squeaking, twelve year old girl at a sleepover with underwear in the freezer kind of laughter.  She wasn't holding a book, a phone, listening to a music player, or watching a scene unfold. I searched for the cause of laughter. I looked at the people sitting beside her, to see if anyone joined in, to see if she was a part of something I could not place, but she laughed alone. 

So, I deemed her crazy.  Harmless crazy (on the New York City subway we must make these distinctions) but crazy none-the-less.

After the laughter subsided, and this laughter had gone on for quite some time, after she caught her breath, wiped her eyes and sat still, she turned to the man sitting beside her, who had been quietly reading a book, and fell into the ease of conversation, because, all along, they had been paired.

Their connection surprised me.  I had labeled him: 'man reading'.  Her: 'crazy person laughing'. I had thought them strangers to one another.  And I don't know why it bothered me, to discover their togetherness.  But it did.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Obsolete

I snapped this picture quickly because I don't know the last time I've seen this.

He tried his quarter again and again. It never took, fell through and popped out with a hollow tink.  But he was relentless, stood for a good five minutes, dialing a number that had been written, in pen, on the palm of his hand.

The last time I kept a number written on my flesh was probably about the same time I last used a pay phone.  In high school, notes and numbers were scribbled quickly after class or next to a metal locker. And I used the pay phone in the lobby to call my mother to pick me up after recitals, tennis practice, or a late track meet.

I felt sad that this stranger couldn't get through.  Because phone numbers on the hand always mean something special, written in the heat of a moment, no paper or napkin or digital keypad to memorize the connection for you.  "Call me," it says. "Don't forget."

When was the last time you used a pay phone?  Wrote a number on your hand?

Vine Leaves Literary Journal and my Vignette

I used to do a lot of my writing in train cars.  The Long Island Railroad and the New York City subway were my usual spots. But I have also written on Amtrak, the Euro Rail and the T in Boston.  When I was not working on a particular project, I picked out a person on the train and began to write short pieces.  Sometimes, I simply described what the person looked like.  Other times, I stole a small moment and slipped it between the lined pages of my journal.  Always, I imagined a life for them and let it breathe.

When I learned about the idea for the Vine Leaves Literary Journal, I discovered that I had been writing something called a vignette.  According to the journal a vignette is:

 a word that originally meant "something that may be written on a vine-leaf." It’s a snapshot in words. It differs from flash fiction or a short story in that its aim doesn’t lie within the traditional realms of structure or plot. Instead, the vignette focuses on one element, mood, character, setting or object. It's descriptive, excellent for character or theme exploration and wordplay. Through a vignette, you create an atmosphere.

Well.  You learn something new every day.

On a whim, just a few hours before the submission window closed, I submitted a vignette to the journal and they published it in their premiere issue.   Feel free to check it out here.  As a tribute to my days writing on trains, it is called The Subway and it's on Page 6.  I like tellng people I'm on Page Six!  But you should read as much of the magazine as you can, such wonderful content there.

F is for the F Train

I live in Brooklyn, which means that I take the subway nearly every single day. In the warmer months, I commute to work by bicycle but for all the rainy, snowy, cold days (which is a majority of the year in the Northeast) I take the train. And the F train is my train.

To be honest, I don't have many good things to say about the F train. It takes me 10 minutes to walk to the Carroll Street stop, which isn't all that convenient. In the summer the line is almost always delayed due to extreme heat and electrical failures. The rest of the year it is the victim of major construction and shuts down a lot on the weekends, leaving me stranded. And, every year, when the New York Post grades the MTA, the F train...gets an F.

But, the F is my train. I don't have a car and my bicycle can only get me so far. I've read a lot of books on the F train. On days when we sit in the station for 45 minutes and the MTA forgets to announce that they're suspending the line, I get 45 extra minutes to read. And that's 45 extra minutes I don't have to be at work!

So thank you F train. You may not be the fastest. You may not be the most reliable. But you're mine.

Exploring

On Saturday, Tyler and I took a trip out to Sunset Park, Brooklyn. As we walked east, up the slope, I realized that I've felt trapped these past few months, commuting back and forth from Carroll Gardens to Chelsea. Back and forth. Up and down. The same few streets, the same insides of the subway car, the glow of the computer screen, escaping work only to find that the sun has already dropped in the sky, wondering where the time, the day, has gone.

Travelling to Sunset Park felt like freedom. In the spring, summer and fall that's the way we spend our weekends and evenings. Trolling around the city, exploring on our bikes or by foot, eating at food vendors, paying 50 cents for the Coney Island museum and taking part in all the strange activities a city like New York can offer.

As we walked up the slope, we saw the string of bodegas, discount shops, and dollar stores, heard the loud Latin beats, watched a little boy ride his skateboard head first as he soared down the sidewalk on his stomach, while his Grandfather shouted and cheered, speaking frantically in Spanish.

But as we continued on, only one avenue away, the neighborhood transformed. Everyone walked with purpose, carrying dozens of orange plastic bags and there were groceries and markets spilling out into the streets, the forceful, jerky, often startling speech of Mandarin as we made our way through to Pacificana, a Dim Sum restaurant in the middle of Chinatown, Brooklyn.

For a brief moment, we found ourselves having to travel the wrong direction on the subway (due to construction), edging out farther, farther on the island than we wanted to, into Bay Ridge, listening to the Russian women gossip in their soft woolen coats, until we turned back around and found a new course back.

I marvelled at the change. How we shifted through cultures and rediscovered our own traditions. Because that is what we do when we're not bundled and clothed, our feet aching in rubber boots, our chins scratchy against the the woolen scarves. We explore. And I've missed that, trapped as we've been in the dark days of winter.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Pages Underground

I was standing in a crowded subway car and in every direction I turned, I saw this. There are people that say we are reading less, that the magazine, the newspaper, the book...they are all dying. I don't see it here. I never do.

The Alternative

The other day, I was walking along Hicks St. to my apartment, a street that runs above the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. I began thinking about the constant noise streaming from this high traffic road and how accustomed to it I've become. When I turn from Hicks St. on to my own street the sound dulls a bit, but it's still there. A steady rush I can hear from my apartment. It's become a part of the way things work in this neighborhood. The way things are.

But as I walked that day, the noise became overwhelming to me. How is it that I function in a city with so much noise? Why is it that when I collapse on my couch at the end of a long day, I revel in the supposed comfort and silence of my home, but the noise is technically still there?

And then, these thoughts began to spiral. Why do I accept the fact that every restaurant I go to requires a reservation six weeks in advance? Why do I have to strategically plan the time of day I leave for any event in order to account for overcrowding? Why do I stand in art museums waiting behind 6 people deep to see a pencil sketch?

And most importantly, why have we all abandoned the things we love to do because there is simply no convenient way to do them in this strange city? Tyler, whose been golfing since he was 3 years old has a bag of golf clubs sitting in a corner collecting dust. My tennis racket has not seen the light of day in 6 years- the same amount of time I've lived in New York City. What a strange coincidence! I've had similar conversations with others in the concrete jungle, Oh yeah, I freaken love to ski, but the skis don't fit in my studio apartment so I keep them in storage and I don't have a car here because parking is such a b%tch so it's not easy to get to a ski resort...so I haven't skied in like 8 years...

When I travelled to Ithaca, NY two summers ago, I remember planning to eat lunch at a state park. I immediately calculated what time we would have to arrive at the park to make sure we got a picnic table. "We should go early," I cautioned, "EVERYONE will be eating lunch at noon." Of course, I arrived at 'peak lunch time' to an empty park and had my choice of at least 100 free picnic tables. Well Toto, we are not in Central Park anymore, are we?

The first time you attend a movie in New York City-- after waiting in line having tried to attend a film at 8pm on a Saturday night, then settled for a G-rated children's film at 11pm instead of the other 6 movies you gradually watched sell out-- you file away the experience, and you ask yourself, "How can I do it better next time?" You think...if I get tickets on moviefone in advance, and I leave right before everyone gets out of work, maybe I'll get to see the movie I actually want to see this rainy Friday night. No, no, no! Better yet, we'll go during THE DAY! And no one will be there. Mwah ha ha! I've cracked the code, I've done it! We'll go to an 11am showing on a beautiful sunny day. That'll show em!

Life in New York is a constant adjustment. I can't tell you how many times I've been on a subway and been told, "Service is suspended" And suddenly, I am leaving the subway platform and heading upstairs to a neighborhood I've never stepped foot in and, thought, Well, OK. Now what? And some how, some way, I figure out. I get where I'm going. Even if it means walking 20 minutes until I can hail a cab. Walking in 3 wrong directions until I get to the right direction of the other closest subway. (OK, really, I will call my human GPS, Tyler, and ask him which way to go.)

I may sound like I'm over-dramatizing but this is truly the way this city feels on a daily basis. Saturday night dinners become a battle, waiting 2 hours to be seated in a cramped restaurant only to find out they've run out of the dish that everyone is talking about. Sometimes you'll turn a corner and find a construction site blocking the building you need to go into, a police officer shrugging his shoulders, "Well, I'm sorry, there's just no alternative."

And yet, we're all constantly searching for the alternative. The restaurant that hasn't been discovered yet. The other entrance the police officer failed to tell you about. The best way to get a picnic spot if you can't find one on the Great Lawn. You can deny it if you want, but I know all you New Yorkers have waited, shivering with your umbrella, in the pouring rain for free Shakespeare in the Park tickets because "it'll be less crowded during a Nor'easter, honey..."

But I'll tell you, I get a rush when it's pouring rain and I catch the bus by sheer seconds in order to avoid a 15 minute walk to the subway. "Haha! I did it!" I shout too soon, manically dipping my card in the automated machine, as it beeps: Expired. "But, sir," I plead with the busdriver, "I don't have $2.25 in quarters." And there's that shrug, and suddenly, I'm standing back on the street, defeated, getting ready to walk 15 min. in the rain to get a new card.

It's true. No matter how far away you get from the highway, the noise is always there. But, secretly, we all love it. Our ability to survive. To adjust. To challenge everything we see, everything we experience. To, always, always find a better way. They say that New York is a city that never sleeps. But, I think it's a city that never settles. For anything. If there is an alternative, we'll find it. We have to.

Step Right Up and Sit Right Down

I have a confession to make. I am completely and totally obsessed with getting a seat on the subway during my morning commute. I leave during peak hours and very rarely get a seat right away. But when we roll into the Jay St.Borough Hall stop, all of that changes. It's a hot transfer spot from the F to A. I am ready to pounce on the next available seat and no one can stop me.

So, I'd like to report my findings on the 3 best ways to get yourself a much coveted seat on the New York City Subway:

1. Position yourself next to the right kind of people
Pregnant people, the elderly, the disabled...they are my subway seat archenemies. I have no chance against them, so I position myself as far away as possible. They get the seat. There's no point competing. Fortunately, there's still some kind of weird chivalry on the MTA and if I stand next to a man, the odds are better that if a seat becomes available, I'll get it. Female Brooklynites in their skinny jeans and slouchy boots are another story. They, like me, are ready to pounce and they can often squeeze into tiny spaces. They're more likely to fit next to large people who take up the space of 1 and 1/2 average sized people. They are the biggest competition. Proceed with caution when you stand next to them.

2. Figure out who is getting off
I always place myself near someone who is seated and who I believe will be getting on the A train, so that when they get up I can immediately take their seat. It's a little game I play but it's becoming increasingly hard. The A train, perhaps more than any other train in NY, is incredibly diverse. It stops in the financial district, TriBeCa, the West Village, Chelsea, the theatre district, the Upper West Side, Harlem, and Washington Heights. I mean, this could be anyone from a business suit to a hipster to a Dominican person to a Columbia student to a tourist. It could be anyone! Lately an A train passenger is just too hard to point out. But say you need a seat just when you get to Chinatown, I'm not trying to be stereotypical, but the odds are a little better that you know who is getting off.

3. Keep you eyes open. If you see something, don't say something: JUST GO!
Since #2 is proving to be difficult, keen observation is my next trick. As people approach their time of exit, some shifting is bound to happen. Books become bookmarked, iphones get tucked in the pocket, newspapers get folded, and bags are placed in prime position for subway escape. But guaranteeing that you are standing in just the right spot to grab the seat from that one person who is getting off is next to impossible (nevermind that some people are just antsy. Not that I would know anything about that...)

In conclusion...there is absolutely no surefire way to obtain seating in a crowded subway car. Everything and anything you can do is absolutely futile. Luck is never on your side during rush hour.

Despite all of that, I sincerely hope that you all fight the odds and find yourself a nice, cold, hard, plastic, covered-in-is-that-poop-or-just-a-frito seat on your next subway ride. Godspeed.