Nuts

I'm almost done with White Teeth by Zadie Smith. It's been great, but I find that when I'm in the midst of reading a book I begin to see and feel like the author. Everything becomes ultra bright, visual and sensitive. I feel poetic about pigeons fighting over breadcrumbs or plastic bags caught in a gust of wind. I speak less and listen more; I pretentiously observe passersby or fellow train riders and imagine whatever broken home or loveless relationship that strikes my fancy.

Over the weekend I was lucky enough to observe a funny moment. I wasn't so lucky yesterday. And even if I wasn't busy writing the great American novel in my head as I drag myself through the city, I think it still would have bothered me a lot.

Waiting for the train at the end of the day sucks. You just want to be home. You don't want to wait, you don't want to hear that the train is having technical problems and will be 10 minutes late... you just want to call your spouse/significant other and play the "what's for dinner?" game. Last night the train was 6 minutes later than usual. When it arrived, everyone scrambled towards the door as usual. I took my spot just to the side of the door, but one brave (or stupid, or just not thinking) woman stood directly in front of the door with her briefcase on wheels stretched out behind her. That was the first mistake. The second mistake was that the second the train doors opened, this woman tried to dart in instead of waiting for everyone to exit first.

Well, the young woman waiting to get off the train wasn't having any of this. In my hypothetical novel I imagine that maybe her boss just took some serious shit out on her at work, but in reality I have no idea. Woman waiting to get off the train screams, "FUCK! Can't you just wait for me to get off the fucking train first?! JESUS CHRIST!" And simultaneously with the yelling of "Jesus Christ" came a swift and hard kick to the other woman's briefcase on wheels and she stormed off.

I think it's a combination of the author in me as well as my sensitivity to verbal violence which caused this incident to seriously upset me. On the ride home I sat diagonally from the woman who without a doubt, thank you law school, was victim to an assault and battery. She was younger than middle aged, maybe. She was South Asian. She was completely silent.

I don't know what it is about public transportation, or even private transportation, that enrages people so much that they explode. Maybe it's not the transportation, it's just the icing on the cake after a long day of being shit on. You wake up to shit transportation, spend 8 hours of shit job, and at the end of the day you've reached your breaking point. But everything we do has so many consequences spiraling out like purple veins.

I wish I could focus on the funny or absurb, but there's so much anger in this city hidden just beneath the surface.