note on the C train

Coming home from the city on the train, I think about how I haven’t been going to Manhattan much these days. Part of me misses this – C train hurtling under the city…people doing their trainy things. We are different creatures, underground. What else are we to do? We’ve got to move, we’ve got to get to where we’re going. If it makes us more snaky and dark, well…

I need to keep coming to the city. I loved it, long before I learned about Brooklyn’s charms. Long before I knew about neighborhoods, and what that word meant. Long before it was time for me to actually come here.

I loved it for a reason, for lots of reasons, none of which I fully understood before I moved here. I loved sitting on a fire escape, listening to the city. I loved all the people, all the movement, all the directions of everything, everything seeming to move forward and out at once. A match continually striking. Fire, or the smell of it.

Go on, city: Be dirty and loud and full of people pushing. Don’t change. Don’t become a land of rich people growing richer. Who need necklaces for their couches. Be what brought a lot of us here.

You can find what you need here. You just have to want to look.