If you follow the news at all, you already know that NYC has endured a two-day transit strike. Day one, I took the day off and ran errands after sleeping late. I felt the freedom that only unemployed people feel. Actually, that’s not so much freedom as it is aimlessness and desperation, huh? Let me revise. I felt that freedom that college students feel when they have completed their finals or a class gets cancelled and suddenly the universe expands. Who knew that all that time they were in class and taking quizzes that places like coffee shops and movie theatres were open? Who knew?! The streets didn’t seem any more crowded than normal yesterday. Except for one very rude worker at my branch of the NYPL, Upper West Side people were acting normal. Life was good.
It all started to change when I walked a total of 78 blocks last night to see Syriana. In the cold winter weather. Don’t these sound like conditions in a story your grandfather would tell? “When I was your age I walked uphill both ways…” You can talk about a lot of things in 78 blocks, so it didn’t really bother me. It felt kind of like those times I’d go into the woods behind my old house with Shawna and we’d explore the nothingness. We’d occasionally eat prickly pears straight from clusters of cacti. A few times, we walked all the way across a field and over the train tracks to Dairy Queen. It was a great adventure. New York City isn’t quite so abandoned, and I couldn’t watch for lightning bugs or cottontails this time. Instead, I noticed all the homeless people who had been kicked out of the subway stations. It’s so cold right now, and it’s really unfortunate that there are so many people here who have no destination. I’ll walk block after block if I must, because I know I have somewhere warm and safe to go. Too many people here do not.
Today I walked a total of 52 blocks to get to and from work. It really wasn’t so bad. Mind you, I will be glad to have a warm train to get around in again someday. And mind you, I hope that day is soon, but after fifteen blocks, you start to feel invincible. You really do. You are warm and radiant and so long as you have an ipod, the star of one long music video. The walk home was a bit more difficult, because I’d had time to develop some sinus problems, so my eyes kept tearing up. I felt very conscious of the fact that I might look like some grim worker from a Dorothea Lange photograph, so I wiped when I wept. The walk to work, though, was kind of nice. I think I may have been smiling even, because some strange man saw me and said, “Sweetie pie!” It was quite endearing. Maybe he just liked my pants that Bobby bought me for Christmas… I rock the tweed, yo.
So I’m home now, but may venture to mi thrift store favorito in order to return two pairs of pants I bought last week. That’ll be 56 more blocks, though. Hmmm… I may go for it. After all, “Ask not what your legs can do for you, but what you can do for your legs.” I believe John F. Kennedy said something like that.
