2

The shrill cry of the brakes interrupted my subconscious thoughts and caused me to momentarily glance up from my sketchbook to survey the mass of New Yorkers presented in my subway car. New York: A city who's every inhabitant displays such an overwhelming ability to stand alone, and infallibly resist any eye contact with others. Yet hardly anywhere else in the country can such a diverse group of people stand shoulder to shoulder in such an intimate area and feel this at ease with a transvestite's crotch a foot away from their face, or a homeless man rocking back and forth in the seat next to theirs. Maybe it is the constant physical closeness in the city that provides every New Yorker with the innate need for a sense of family and community. The momentum of the train causes the entire mass of people in the car to lean for a few seconds, looking like a room from a carnival fun house. We recover, and the doors open to exhale the departing and inhale the newcomers. I inconspicuously prop my red moleskin against my purse until the car settles - I haven't quite been able to let go of the desire to keep my personal artwork out of the view of strangers. The page in progress now consists of three layers - an original sketch, a jumble of scribbles over it that I proceeded to do in a moment of frustration after intensely disliking that sketch, and finally the statements "TOO MUCH FOR ANYONE" / "NOT ENOUGH FOR ANYONE" written vertically mirroring each other in large black sharpie letters. I watch an older, slightly worn-around-the-edges man search for a seat and fatefully sit almost directly across from me. The funny thing is, I don't remember ever making eye contact with him (How could I have, if he was a native New Yorker?). But I don't think that I've ever in my life felt such mysterious, overwhelming energy between myself and a stranger. In the short time that we shared together in that subway car, I became certain that this was a person in which I shared a deep connection beyond any understanding of the physical world. It was different than lust. It was a feeling that everything that had ever happened to me or that take place in the future in my life without this man was horribly pointless and insignificant. He was in no way a head turner; his age was difficult to place, anywhere between mid thirties and mid fifties. He donned glasses under almost shoulder length, unkempt hair, and there was a look of a scholar or a professor about him.