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| Image of Subway: http://www.allposters.com/ |
Repost from January 14, 2007 MySpace
People at the bakery think I'm illiterate. I've been reading the same book for six weeks.
Every day, I sit at my desk and sip my Slim Fast, packed carefully with water, fruit and good intentions, and then I clock out and go next door to the bakery for cookies and coffee.
Not for company. I bring the book.
At first it was a good defense. Do NOT ask me to pass the salt or comment on the weather, Survivor, your job, my job, the food, the president, the holidays or your feet. Keep it to yourself. I am READING here. Busy, very busy. EATING and READING. Move on.
But now, I don't know. Perhaps if you only stay a minute.
The book is called "The Subway Chronicles." Editor Jacquelin Cangro says in the foreword that it began as a dinner conversation, as in "I can top that subway tale. Once, when I was on the E train…."
And like any clever dinner conversation, at some point someone always says "Hey, this would make a great book!"
In my life, when someone says that, the project is doomed. It never happens. I could fill a library with the great books of dinner that were never written. But of course I won't.
Just can't get round to it. So much to do.
This book, an anthology of writers telling their best subway stories, is only 200 pages.
There are 28 stories. I thought after reading two or three of them, I would be finished. How many good subway stories can there be? Turns out, quite a few. And I am reading them slowly, very slowly; sipping them like Springbank Scotch, holding them up to the noonday light.
Now, halfway through, I can almost see the bottom of my glass and it is getting harder and harder to swallow, knowing after this there will be only thirst. Isn't that how a good book should be? You shouldn't be able to imagine your afternoons without it. You will never find another book like it.
Here is the passage that drew me in, from a story by Colson Whitehead:
"Look down the tunnel one more time and your behavior will describe a psychiatric disorder. It is infectious. They take turns looking down into the darkness and the platform is a clock; the more people standing dumb, the more time has passed since the last train. The people fall from above into hourglass dunes. Collect like seconds."
So, if you see me in the bakery, do NOT politely ask how my day or my diet are going. Do NOT sit down and block my light and above all, do NOT ask me what my book is about.
Because I'm not really there.
I'm in the vibration, pulsing into a harmony of hammer tone and spark. I'm patient on the ghost platform at Hoyt-Schermerhorn, staring down the darkness, waiting for something to surf up, cresting behind a tube of oily wind, off the tracks, past the mole people and 100 pages from anywhere I really shouldn't be.
Image of Subway: http://www.allposters.com/
Also see http://www.thesubwaychronicles.com/
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