Standing, watching, an orange robed woman roasting corn over a pile of charcoal and dirt
“Sometimes,” he said, pointing to the woman,
“They cook corn over used crematorium coals”
Indian mornings rise as a continuation of the night before
The inevitable cycle forward
Circle, onwards and onto itself
Over its own people
Own suffering
Own surrender
And sudden
Burst of color
Thursday, January 01, 2009
At eight o’clock this morning I arrived home from what was quite possibly the most horrible New York City night I’ve experienced in the five plus years Manhattan and I have been involved. Alright, perhaps that’s an over exaggeration. Perhaps Manhattan would say I am prone to make mountains out of urban molehills and perhaps Manhattan would be right. But having recently spent five hours on a stalled metro north train with no heat or electricity, I feel entitled to a bit of drama.
It all started with the snow. I saw the snow yesterday afternoon and sensed a distant, but distinct feeling of foreboding which I promptly tucked away, bound and determined to enjoy my New Years Eve for ONCE goddamnit. Last year I recall ringing in 08 surrounded by lovely friends but distracted by an unreturned text message from a lover who later turned out to be markedly cursed by an inability to return phone calls and texts on New Years or any other night, a tendency that grew over time until said lover decided never to text back…ever again. But such is not the point of this story and too much of the woe is me and I will lose you, my reader, so here we go, back to the series of unfortunate events that will forever mark New Years Eve 2009.
As I was saying, the snow should have been my first hint that the evening’s energy was off. Still, I forged ahead, driving to the train station in New Haven with plans to leave my little car in the garage there and train it into grand central. Were I paying closer attention I would have noticed clue number two: No parking spots. Not at first, anyways; I did find one eventually, but only after I drove in circles for twenty minutes, my road rage growing with the pressure of concentric movement the way tension builds with a wind up doll or jack in the box.
After leaving my car, “Blue”, in the snowy outdoor lot, I trotted into the station, bought my ticket and headed to the train. For some reason, perhaps because of the snow or the scores of New Years revelers making their way into the city, the Metro North staff were taking tickets in the hallway that leads to the tracks, as opposed to on the train itself. A man was walking just ahead of me and when he handed in his ticket to be punched, the conductor asked, “are you two together?” motioning at me as if to ask, “should I punch this ticket twice?”
“Absolutely,” the man said, turning to look at me and revealing a thin, impish face that looked to belong to someone in their late forties. His words made plain an Australian accent. “No no,” I said, smiling at the confused ticket taker and brandishing my own overpriced, piece of MTA currency. Regardless, this interaction served as a green light of sorts for my new Australian friend who promptly glommed onto me, peppering me with questions that I answered with single worded sentences while pretending to receive text messages on my phone.
As we climbed the steps towards the train, I serendipitously ran into a kid I went to high school with. Saying hello and remarking on how small a world it really is served to separate me from the Australian for an opportune moment in which I hung back, chit chatted with my high school comrade and watched which car the Australian entered, making sure to seat myself several cars away. But alas, as the train rolled into motion, the Australian reappeared, sitting down beside me. By this time he was calling me Heidi and informing me that my Dutch parents had abandoned me at birth. I faked a telephone call and removed myself from the seat, walking as quickly as I could between cars until I arrived at the opposite end of the train.
Things went peacefully for a while. At one point a group of high school seniors got on and proceeded to mix vodka and red bull in the seats in front of me. This was amusing and I enjoyed watching the strange sexual tension developing with each drink they imbibed. Such was shattered however, when my Australian buddy returned yet again. I sighed and gave up, recalling the phrase, “grist for the mill” and reminding myself that we were, after all, only 20 minutes from Grand Central. Or so I thought. The train stalled somewhere near Fordham and we sat for a half an hour in the cold darkness before lurching into motion again.
I will not attempt to relay the extent to which my conversation with the traveling Australian man was surreal, poignant and terrifying. Rather, I will sum it up in bullet-point form – see below:
Him: “Look at that high school girl, she wants me, she wants an older man. Look at her, she keeps looking over here and licking her lips.”
Me: “Why don’t you go sit with her then…please?”
Him: “She’s the bombshell type, you’re more of the intellectual, better stick with you till she’s had another drink.”
Him: “You have to follow your intuition. It’s all about your heart. I mean look at me, if I were thinking logically I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you, I would be thinkingboy she is obviously not interested she won’t look at me and will barely talk to me.But here I am, talking to you.”
Him: “I was one of three women’s studies majors in all of Australia.”
Him (talking to a passenger who inadvertently walked into me upon leaving the train): “Oh don’t mind my girlfriend…oh you see she doesn’t like it when I call her my girlfriend, it’s all an act really.”
Him: “You should come to Australia. Seriously, here you are just a plain Jane but over there, with your accent, you could pass for a model.”
Me: “gee, thanks.”
Him: “So what do you say, Heidi, want to have a tryst? It’ll be a night you will never forget. I am a tantric sex master. Here, let me take your number down.
Me: “no thanks.”
Suffice it to say I didn’t take him up on his offer. Instead, we parted ways in the Grand Central Terminal. He hugged me and I yelled very loudly “DON’T TOUCH ME.”
From there I made my way downtown to my darling friend Alex’s party at the Thompson hotel. I walked in and promptly took several shots after which I promptly answered my phone and promptly encountered a disappointing situation involving my New Years date who was supposed to meet me at the party but, instead, called to cancel. At this point it was around 11 pm. At this point I’d had several strong drinks. At this point I began to cry.
My date who is, in fact, a lovely person, offered to meet me to discuss the reasons behind his desire to avoid attending parties with me. And so, we met. We met at 11:30 on New Years Eve at the Ray’s pizza on Astor Place. From there, the conversation developed into a familiar, repetition compulsion rife discussion summed up best by the following quotations:
Him: “I’m not ending things, I just don’t want to be in a relationship right now.”
Me: “Ok, I understand, but what does that mean?”
Him: “I don’t know, I just don’t feel right, I can’t stop thinking about my ex.”
Me: makes despondent facial expression and slaps hand against forehead. Immediately begins picturing him and his beautiful ex-girlfriend locked in tight, forgiving embrace…
Him: “I don’t miss her really, I just…I can’t be tied down right now, I want to hook up with other people.”
Me: “Great (again slaps forehead but considers considering his idea)…well do you have specific people in mind?”
Him: “I mean, one or two, I’m a guy…”
Me: comes to senses, “Yeah, no, there’s just no way I could do that.”
Him: takes a bit of pizza, “Can’t we just pretend it’s the sixties?”
Suffice it to say the conversation didn’t go much further and I headed back to Grand Central, feeling dejected and missing in no particular order but with all my heart: my girlfriend Ariella, my old apartment, my car, Ham, my jammies, and Mr. Owl, my trusty stuffed animal. Nevertheless I forged ahead, missing by a minute the 1:33 am train and opting then for the 2:03 from track 25. With plenty of time to spare, I bought a Reeses and settled into my seat, willing the wheels into motion and the time to pass quickly by.
And it did….helped along by sympathetic, vodka soaked text messages, and the combination of chocolate and peanut butter…until the clock struck 3:00 am anyways. That was when the journey came to an abrupt halt, physically speaking. The train stopped – we were somewhere outside of Bridgeport, not 15 minutes from New Haven – the lights went out, and the heat shut off. This time, the situation lasted. Apparently the wires that power the train had entangled and ripped apart, crippling our train as well as the one that followed it.
So they sent a rescue train. But that one broke down too.
Then they sent a truck with repair equipment, blankets, and maybe hot chocolate, probably not, but blankets for sure. That truck hit a pole on 95 and caused a large traffic jam.
All this information we received over the course of several hours and via the conductor’s radio, which was easily heard given that we’d all been gathered in two of the head cars so as to facilitate our hasty transfer to the rescue vehicle, when and if that vehicle ever arrived.
It was very cold. Very very cold. And dark. And because I was in a slinky party dress and stockings, and because I was feeling particularly sorry for myself, I was reduced to an extreme state of sadness. On the bright side, I was comforted by several kind passengers with whom I’d entered into a commiseration and comradery with. One of them even shared his last cigarette with me, which was fabulous, given the circumstances…given that such was exactly what I wanted at the moment…aside from heat, food and hot chocolate of course.
When, after three hours in the cold darkness, the rescue train arrived, it took another hour or so to get moving and back to New Haven, at which point I literally ran to my car, frozen joints cracking and high heels clacking.
It was on the entrance ramp to 95 that I started to scream, the volume of my own voice reverberating against the car walls, raking the walls of own throat satisfyingly. I’d left New York, which is an hour and a half from my house, at 2:03 am but did not walk through the front door until around 8.
Now that I’ve had some sleep, a shower, and a few hour’s perspective, I’m still not exactly sure what to make of my most recent New Year’s experience. Strangely, and quite frighteningly, it all circles round to the Australian. Something he said about intuition, about optimism in the face of disappointed hope, about life and our hearts. Something about trust and unity. About surrendering to what is.
Fiction she says, and the melding of it in this piece, into non-fiction.
She is talking about Jackson Pollack Our desire to inhabit a character through fiction
She says, read with your senses as I always encourage you to do, and I think I am in love with her. With her fuchsia lipstick. With the ethereal thinness of her white blonde hair.
She is talking about Ishiguro: In any fiction workshop they’d say, ‘no! cut this! This needs to stop!’ but not here, no.
Forms of fiction are a reflection of how we see the world. In it we search for our childhood questions.
My questions:
What is the nature of memory? The importance of objects? The color, yellow?
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Yesterday, election day, I rode the downtown three train from 96th street to times square, heading towards eighth street and my weekly writing workshop. I’d cast my ballot hours earlier, but the experience of doing so is with me still. It sounds corny, but I wanted so deeply the outcome that, ultimately, came to pass, that I think I filled a little bit of my soul into the empty circle beside the name Barack Obama. Anyways, the importance of the election was on my mind as I stepped onto the three train and plopped down on the slippery blue bench. The car was crowded, peppered with difference – the woman in tweed pants and sneakers, the heels of her work shoes poking out from her handbag; the man in his carharts coming from one of the many construction jobs clogging up the UWS; and a kid in a football uniform, shoulder pads and all, smelling of sweat and looking nervously at the subway map posted across the aisle from him. I glanced at each of them, careful not to let my eyes rest too long on any one thing, but the woman looked up from her blackberry and caught my eye, forcing it upwards.There I saw it, posted in between the ads for 1 800 DIVORCE and Dr. Maury’s laser skin correction:
"The only freedom deserving the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest."
I’ve read this before – Freshman philosophy I believe, but never felt it so pertinent to my life as I do now. Here it is, republican and democratic ideals fused into one graceful form. And isn’t that what we are striving for? A balance of self care and respect for others, the kind which inherently affects a coming together of different political parties, different races, different places, and different ways of seeing, not with the aim of conversion or blame, but of common resolve to live peacefully and to strive for a greater understanding.
Yes, I thought as the doors dinged shut at 72nd street and the train moved on, moved forward through the darkness as will we all, with Obama standing beside us at our collective helm. Yes we can.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
End of the summer
Fake baked and orange Metallic blonde Beached out on blanket Watching
Hoards of women in floral patterned Skirted suits Pass by with plastic buckets in their hands Picked up from where they were discarded By translucent skinned boys Asking why Standing with small stomachs sticking out Coral colored bones visible below the skin
“We have four jelly fish” “Release them! Release them into the wild!”
In fact, it was far worse. Rather than depict a slew of sexy New York women obsessed with their boyfriends and husbands, The Women simply depicted a slew of sexy New York women obsessed with material things. (It also operated as a veritable 2 hour commercial for Dove bath products and Saks Fifth Avenue department stores, but that’s another essay altogether)
To be fair, a fixation with fashion is present in Sex and the City as well, but it takes a back seat to endless array of coffee and lunch dates during which the four friends discuss their love lives, sometimes with a modicum of introspection. Not so in The Women where the pursuit of Prada directly distracts from Meg Ryan’s suffering daughter, who not only professes a foreboding fixation with her weight (which her mother shrugs off with a chuckle) but who, at the age of 11ish is carting around cigarettes, contemplating sex, burning tampons and having inappropriate conversations with her father’s mistress who is simultaneously soaking in the tub. To top it all off, the film ends without addressing any of the aforementioned issues, but focuses instead on the central character’s self-staged fashion show, a parade of wafer thin models in Calvin Klein-esque pieces. The daughter, of course, is starry eyed, joining her mother on the runway and beaming like all is well. This parting scene is pointed at female empowerment but left this viewer wondering what the director/producer was smoking. Put the budding anorexic eleven year old on the runway alongside a string of walking hangers and an oblivious mother and you’ve got a recipe for disaster, not empowerment.
To me, womanhood is about connection and unification, about nurturance and self exploration. This movie, however managed to affect the reverse, reducing, objectifying and stupefying women while professing to do the opposite. It doesn’t help things that Meg Ryan started the film curly-haired, flat soled and digging around in her garden (pre-adultery induced epiphany) and ended it with stick straight locks, sky high Christian Louboutin heels, and a budding career on the New York fashion scene.
This transformation was intended to affect a “you go girl” sentiment, particularly because it followed the antics of a philandering husband, a disappointing father, (both alluded to, not shown) and a nasty divorce. It seemed to me, however, that the change was more indicative of a loss of self than a discovery of one. Perhaps I’m dragging my own baggage in here…or my own allegiance to curly-haired keds-wearers, but it’s been my personal experience that, regardless of the circumstance, and particularly when it pertains to females, movements away from the natural (curls, minimal makeup, gardening etc) and towards the artificial (flat ironed, manicured, couture clad, etc) indicates a movement away from one’s essential self. The fact that post-transformation the character is suddenly attractive to her husband again is beyond me as well.
This film was the Sarah Palin of the cinema – seemingly supportive of women but secretly pointed at demeaning them, an aim obscured by sharp words, perfectly painted lips, designer labels, and of course, XX chromosomes.
Several years ago, inspired by what seemed to be a shortage of subtle, classy t-shirts in the horse world, I hatched a plan to turn my sketches and designs into an original line of shirts, appealing to fashion forward horse women. It's taken a while, but here are the images of my first batch of "Hamgirl" original t-shirts!
These shirts will not fit baggily, they are not silk screened so that the design is all rubbery and textured...I put a lot of thought into their creation. Am totally open to feedback and suggestions, however, so let me know what you think! Also, I have a limited number of these tees available for sale. Take your pick - American Apparel unisex size small or Tultex brand women's size large (fits me loosely) Anyone interested, shoot me an email (hamshoegirl@gmail.com) and visit my new web-store at: http://hamgirl.bigcartel.com/ where you can buy one of your very own!!!
P.S. The sketch is my own, the quote is from Shakespeare's Henry V (gotta give the man some credit) "When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk, he trots the air, the earth sings when he touches it, the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes."
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
So the other morning I had this crazy experience…I awoke at a leisurely hour and rolled, half asleep, out of bed. As I headed towards the lu I had a half-conscious memory flash in the form of an obscure but recognizable image that projected itself across the forefront of my mind for a split second. In it I saw a curled up cat in a dimly lit room, set upon a window sill that overlooked a rainy outdoor setting. This flash of recollection startled me as it was at once opaque and intensely familiar. I quickly scribbled it down in my journal and spent the rest of the day mulling over where it could have come from. Acting on a hunch that said image had originated from some sort of cinematic experience I turned to youtube and, after many hours, found it’s source.
Upon stumbling upon the above clip I knew at once it was correct. What is more, as I watched the film, I found I knew it completely, singing along with whole songs and recalling with glee the names of pivotal characters. In short, am delighted, not only because I have reclaimed a movie that was central to my childhood (it is so fitting-watch and see) but also because I’ve been left to wonder what other treasures of love and loss and memory I’ve tucked away in my mind….to be continued I am sure….
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
The other day, when futzing around on my mom's computer, I came across this speech I wrote my senior year of high school. Upon reading it for the first time in years, I was struck by the extent to which it moved me, not only because it inspired a surge of appreciation of my own writer-ly self at seventeen, but because it still applies to our social climate. See below:
"Members of modern-day society move through life at a frenzied pace, always competing, afraid of being left behind or trampled. We have established a “power-over” culture, one in which we fight to control others, bending them to our wills with manipulation and destruction. At the root of our violent behavior is patriarchy, the empowerment of males at the cost of women’s equality. Taking into account the war, terrorism, and inhumanity that currently comprise our cultural struggles, it seems that now, more than ever, we have created an estranged global community. The closer we step towards components of distrust such as isolationism, nationalism and militarism, the farther we get from growth. Connection has been constant throughout history. Issues and ideas that are seemingly unrelated are, in fact, linked together as part of the cyclical stream of events that comprise the past. Only through connection can we see the division that our society has created. We have become so clouded by the media and the culture of excess in which we live, that we cannot see how deeply embedded patriarchy is. But every time we subordinate ourselves, soften our voices or lower our heads, every time we obey the inner voice that punishes us for being too much, we feed the establishments that enable patriarchy. We succumb to the patriarchal system unconsciously and should not reprove ourselves for doing so. Punishment only serves to disconnect us from ourselves and to disallow the inner strength that is essential for change. Rather, we must educate ourselves, we must nurture ourselves; for it is only once we are empowered within that we can empower each other. In a way, adherence to a patriarchal world view is inevitable. Oftentimes we do not recognize its existence because it is all we know. Women occupy the margins, not the text of our history books.They are objectified on billboards and underrepresented in every area of government. Above all, they are told to be silent, quieted by a culture that nourishes itself upon their oppression. Balance is essential to a healthy lifestyle. With women so clearly marginalized can anyone, male or female, reach their full potential? The answer is no, by suppressing women, we disable men as well. Just as we expect women to strive for an ideal defined by their gender, we expect men to do the same. Where women are encouraged to be unnaturally silent and submissive, men are expected to dominate, a role which separates them not only from the female gender, but from the female within themselves as well. Enter feminism. A movement that is so often considered “man-hating” is, in reality, focused not only upon women, but upon humanity as a whole. Misconceptions of the feminist message keep it from total success. Labeling women as radical devalues their cause and it becomes acceptable not to listen. Although militant advocates exist, change will come from those who seek to unify, not divide.This “real” feminism, what author bell hooks calls “revolutionary”, is centered upon (in her words) “being able to confront head on the ‘enemy’ no matter what form the enemy might take-man, woman, child, state, church, school, friend, lover, and most frightening, “the enemy within”. [1] Today feminism is associated with the woman’s movement of the 1960s, a time when women like Gloria Steinum and Delores Williams lent their voices to the feminist cause, silencing the inner enemy that kept women in the kitchen instead of the working world. We recognize these advocates for their innovation but forget the past from which their message sprung. Before them, centuries of feminists hadwoven together their visions, creating a tapestry in which the female voices of the past and present combine to cronicle the history that is ignored by most accounts; the history of women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton once said, “The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”[2] I believe that with these words, Mrs. Stanton has summarized the objective of feminism. It is the furtherance of thought for all people that defines the movement and prompts the “divine floods of light”, establishing the inner-powers essential for growth. But to meet ones inner strength requires connection and introspection, factors that are discouraged for the threat they pose to the patriarchal power. Instead we are taught to disconnect from ourselves, a separation that Starhawk, a modern-day witch and scholar, calls estrangement. Without autonomy we unconsciously maintain the patriarchal norms, trapping ourselves in a cycle of destruction. Detaching us from our individual power stops us from relating to the exterior world; it is no wonder that we culturally disregard our responsibility to the environment while we defend a propensity for violence. This destructive trend is perhaps the most guarded of our cultural doctrines. Change is associated with fear rather than perceived as natural. Indeed, people will go to extreme lengths to maintain a setting in which they feel comfortable. The cultural disconnect that enables our estranged behavior needs mending. The dynamics of our “power-over” society must shift, causing people to seek power in positive, not negative forms. The awakening of our connections is vital to our survival and requires the discovery of what Starhawk calls immanence, the power from within. Unification within ourselves is only as strong as the connections it inspires with others. For women especially, who have been historically isolated from knowledge, from their bodies, and from each other, the formation of sisterhood is essential. Change comes slowly, requiring the strength and support that is the basis of sisterhood. Alone we cannot accomplish what we can as a cohesive whole. Unification within oneself is essential to establish a power from within; only then can we form a female power impassioned enough to counter patriarchy. Looking inside oneself results in the discovery of human nature and our connection to the earth. Recognizing power as internal and enabling instead of harnessing it to disable others would prompt our society to empower, not cripple, and love instead of hate. There is no denying that history excludes women. They are omitted from documentation because to include them would be to acknowledge and empower them. Many of the challenges faced by women today are rooted in the same issues that they have struggled against throughout history. Education, for example, has been continually denied to women. Throughout the ages, female education has been halted at an early age, replaced with lessons in etiquette and home economics, areas of study which encourage restriction rather than expansion of thought. Even today, in a world that claims equality, women comprise two-thirds of the world’s 876 million illiterates, a statistic that is not expected to decline.[3] Without the opportunities afforded by literacy, women are left with little opportunity to challenge the social constraints that influence issues such as infanticide, genital mutilation, and spousal abuse. The gravity of our global disconnect is overwhelming. Faced with a multitude of complex problems, one wonders where to begin change. So many of the problems that affect today’s women are established at adolescence or earlier. We are programmed from birth to fill our gender roles, boys get blue blankets, and girls get pink. For change to begin we must first come to terms with the masculine or feminine parts of ourselves. For men especially, the accepting of their own femininity serves to dissolve the cultural expectations that their gender includes. No longer bound to dependence upon “power-over” to define themselves, men, through knowledge of their own female identity, can cultivate their power-from-within and break away from the fear that supports estrangement.The world in which we live has been stripped of personality, power, and connection. Our society reserves value for a select few who are, traditionally, white males. The belief that they are somehow superior and more powerful is supported by the destruction for which they are responsible. Power is measured not by the strength of our connection, but by the range of our destruction. The more one devastates, the greater one’s power and the more societal fear and respect. Instead of spirituality and introspection we revolve around machines and technology; they have become our religion. We are constantly striving to create moreand to further our profit, trying to fill a void with money that only connection to ourselves can dissipate. The domination of patriarchy remains, enabling the destruction that will eventually result in the demise of all things. To prevent ruination, we must overcome the fear that has trapped us in a “power-over” environment. This fear has to do not only with each other, but with what would result from change. What would happen if we were to cease dependency upon violence and manipulation? That is the question we must pose to future generations, and we must begin now.
[1]Bell hooks, Challenging Patriarchy Means Challenging Men to Change
[3] UN Document: Main Findings and Future Directions
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Urns for the ashes of tired hearts. Disappointed hopes.
I write because I can’t live otherwise.
I draw the sponge lengthwise over the countertop and watch as it inflates, one crater-like receptacle at a time, filling with the wetness I left when I washed that lettuce. Red leaf. Dirty. Outside a choir of birds are singing down the sun, one shade of orange at a time until it blends into the dark horizon and disappears.
We can’t see how much we’ve lost until we see how much we had.
How I’ve come to love the water. And this bug filled garden. This dirty, speckled lettuce. These three ripe tomatoes.
Carol Maso: “the desire of the novel to be a poem. The desire of the girl to be a horse. The desire of the poem to be an essay. The essay’s desire, it’s reach towards fiction. And the obvious erotics of this.”
The black woman beside me in a sleeveless blouse. The white roots woven into her arms, marking the places where her skin has stretched to hold her, all of her, in.
Coca cola in glass bottles, clinking on glass topped tables. This is how I remember Europe.
That feeling, lodged beneath my ribcage, seated beneath my heart, that momentary rising. Excited and desirous. The moment before you’re inside me. Before the food filled spoon fill hits my mouth.
Moving fast to a slow song This train set to speeding against a background of melancholy And music Autumn in the air.
To give a rushed kiss goodbye. To know you’ll kiss again soon. Assuredly.
a wise man once said that, "knowledge is power." In regards to the current political climate, it seems to me that the past eight years have shown that, despite cultural ideals of what is powerful (i.e. the ability to wield massive force) such has the tendency to affect only suffering and fragmentation. Perhaps, therefore, when we examine each candidate and compare what we consider their qualifications, it's time to revise what we believe makes them capable.... just some food for thought....
Saturday, August 02, 2008
These Friday afternoons in Grand Central Station, standing in line for Metro North, waiting behind rows of tartan shorts for my overpriced ticket on a crowded and sweaty train.
I judge them, those in front of me, standing in their sandals like caricatures of themselves, the men with collars perfectly popped, the women with pink pedicures glistening in the soft station light.
I judge them before I recall that beneath my canvas sneakers, my own toes are painted a pale pink, albeit by my own hand.
So I move my eyes upwards and leave them to linger on the Louis Vuittons slung over the bony shoulders before me, and the platinum cards being brandished nonchalantly at the ticket taker.
But I am saved from myself. For somewhere in between my stares and the prejudgment they inspire, I remember that despite the bags, the brands and the impeccable grooming, the wasps who flock eastwards on Friday eves with weekender’s plans for golf and boating and cocktails and beach...well, at 5:01 they’re all squashed onto the same sweaty train as the Bridgeport bound hard hats and the New Haven headed teens and one frizzy haired blonde girl with a big eared puppy and a bag full of books.
