“Dear God,
Why? Why I ask, why do certain people exist?

Picture it, a muggy Spring morning in late May. The 6:00am 2 train. Abnormally packed train for this early in the morning. Seating is limited. As I go into my usual morning trance during my 90 minute commute I am rudely interrupted by foul play. That foul play my friends is Body Odor. A 6′ 5″ inch male, approximately 40 years old, still rockin fubu hard as if they were ever cool or like they ever made anything of quality…or perhaps his Asian themed button down is a “Dragon Ball-Z” shirt. Nonetheless his shirt sucks. His jeans are visibly filthy and 2 inches too short. He is wearing crew cut socks (do they even make those anymore?) and his new balance sneakers look like his lawn mowing sneakers however somehow I doubt he has a lawn to mow. Too harsh? Well you try sitting down wind from this motherfucker standing over you with what I believe to be 2 days worth of underarm body odor. There is no escaping this. I tried plugging my nose, burying my face in my arm then my bag. Shallow breaths from my mouth did not do the trick. “Ding!” The train doors open after this 15 minute violation. He takes two steps toward what I believe will be my freedom to breath. NOPE sits right next to me. I thought for a moment the smell would die down since I was no longer right beneath his armpit. 5-4-3-2-NOPE.

A long day of work and running around on a hot day justifies why he might not be so fresh… but it is 6am.

What made him leave the house without a shower? A few swipes of deodorant? Some cheap cologne to mask this odor?
Time? No time was on his side because he had the time to put on his tarnished rhinestone bracelet that looks like some shit from an old lady’s garage sale that he probably got for a steal still pondering the possibility that it could be real.
The gentleman enjoyed several games on his iPhone and bopped to the beat of whatever music he appeared to be too old to be listening too.

“Ding!” He gets off at 125th in Harlem which allows me to drawn one conclusion for a man not dressed for work traveling this early. Off to the DMV to stand in line to pay off his 64 parking tickets for his car that he has found himself behind 5 months on his car note because he couldn’t afford it o begin with. It was either this or jail time.

So God I ask you why. Why does this human exist? What purpose does he have on this earth? Answer me this.

Sincerely violated,

Bianca”

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Railroads cut through some interesting places, unlike the terrifying view of clouds above a very-far-away earth, or the monotony of a never-ending concrete highway with spotted lines (that will hypnotize you if you stare at them too long). On the train, you cut through some pretty amazing places of nature, cross over rivers, fields… and see the scars of human habitation and time.

Lest you leave with a romanticized view of the railroad, it is when your eyes are above the railroad horizon that all seems serene. Lower your eyes to what lives right beside the railroad track and you begin to wonder when the great comet of the apocalypse will come raining down on us as punishment for being born human.

Life along the railroad tracks is pretty grim. It is as if humans can’t resist throwing all their waste down any type of slope or cliff. Though I am willing to consider that floods of water may also be the culprit, the evidence is pretty convincing; the household garbage that splays out from the houses along the railroad all seem to carry the fingerprint of the litterer. You can see it in how the shreds of plastic, tattered clothes, fast food containers all hang from the sides like someone’s squeezed out shit.

There are so many houses abandoned by the railroads.

There are so many graffiti murals on the railroad track walls that block the garbage from the tracks- it is like a 3 hour journey through an art museum. It reminds me of when we had those mini-murals in the tunnels of the D train. Are they still there?

How many factories do you see? Dated machinery from an industrial age that is leaving behind now only skeletons?

Looking out the window of an Amtrack train is like reading a book, or writing one in your mind.

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Whatever happened to street performers?

“It only takes a great musician, battery powered amp, eye seeing dog and a banjo.  Subway music Boston style.”

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Further reading: Camile Paglia, Sexual Personae.

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There is an accordion player whom I see on Sunday afternoons at the Broadway-Lafayette subway stop. She is young, has white skin with almost a talcum powder glow. Her hair is raven black. The music coming out of her accordion sounds so old… as though she channels an old Eastern European soul from its wooden frame by pressing its white keys.

When I descend the stairs into the underworld of the MTA and hear her accordion cry, I freeze. I am chilled by its misplaced melody, as though someone opened up a jewelry box somewhere and its notes are echoing through the labrynth of tunnels. I feel I am suddenly being haunted by a ghost. The accordion player smiles if you smile at her. I often wonder her story, and indeed took a card should I want to end the mystery. Her song makes you think you have time traveled back to the cobblestone streets of early 20th century Prague. Seeing her as the source of the music is just as unexpected as first hearing the notes; her modern image jolts you back into the present. I see her as an unlikely historian, a priestess of an old craft, keeping what’s dead in history alive in our memories.

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NYC’s free newspapers, Metro and AM New York, have resurrected a chummy memory of the 1930’s: the talking newspaper, or the paperboy. Newspapers usually remain mute, sitting on newsstands, bookstore racks or milk crates outside a deli or bodega. They lost their human liaison of the 1930’s, a time when we relied more on human interaction to learn of local and global events, to discern our individual and collective experiences, and when information downloads were less a private affair than a community one.

But walking out of the subway in the morning recently, I’m hearing not just the hustle of Metro versus AM and the advertiser of the day who happens to be sponsoring the news… Now I’m hearing clips from what you read inside. And I time travel back to the 1930’s. I feel a momentary connection to the news bearer. It is pleasing because besides reminding me of the chumminess of the old newsboys, it forces me back to the collective world of news and not just my office-based and personal one.

For a history of newsboys, the Depression and the marketing scheme that helped bring it to be, read: Masculine guidance: boys, men, and newspapers, 1930-1939 Postol Enterprise Soc.2000; 1: 355-390 .

For an early history of newspaper publishing in New York, “The Early History of Newspaper Publishing in New York State”

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“Sowers of discord” are placed in this circle of Dante’s Inferno, and who’s going to argue that those shrieking gargles we often hear on the subway or the platform do not perform such a function? In with air-conditioning you go, broken MTA announcement systems, and here’s why: when you’re broken, and broken real good as you often are, every minute or so we have to hear horrible scratchy blaring screams from subway speakers that are supposed to be in English, but are actually a high frequency form of alien language that must be meant to make your ears bleed. We’re already pissed we have to go to work, the caffeine has already got us jittery. We need to also listen to a cacophony worthy of the late X-Man Banshee?

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GNR fans will appreciate this story. I was coming home from one of those miserable days at work, when a cloud follows you from the office, to the stairwell, to the revolving door of your work building, creeps down the subway stairs like a horror-movie mist and stands beside you in the smelly underground world of the subway. (People, wise up-it is not a coincidence that you go underground like a troll every day to be barfed up an hour later onto the surface to enter a slave-master’s domain. Think you’re any different because your job is “helping the world”? Its slavery nevertheless and will stay that way until our world and its masters start respecting the holistic individual). I was waiting for the A train, when a middle aged man with dirty-blonde (in every sense) long hair clad in jeans (pants, jacket and shirt) started to stumble towards the benches where I was standing. The man was drunk; he was clutching his forty-ounce in a crumbled brown paper bag that reminded me of life at the corner bodega before plastic bags. He suddenly burst out in chorus, air guitar and all, to the lyrics of Nightrain, except he changed it to match the train he was waiting for. So goes his song: 

Loaded like a freight train,

Flying like an aeroplane…

(pause)

I’m on the A train,

Bottom’s up!

I’m on the A train,

Fill my cup!

I’m on the A train,

Ready to crash and burn, I never learn…

I’m on the A train,

I love that stuff!

I’m on the A train,

And I can never get enough!

I’m on the A train,

Never to return!

I found it very humorous, and it did add a smile to my journey home. I had to hold myself back from joining him in song because I do know the lyrics and appreciated his spirit… I changed my mind when his attention turned to singing about my legs.

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