I’m on the train.

Which is really to say, I am lost in the kind of trance that you feel yourself slip into when traveling through the blackened tunnels of an underworld at lightning speed.

ON THE EDGE OF LIMINALITY

There is nothing to ponder except your own ephemerality, nothing to stare at except the blackened abyss of New York City’s intestines.

The subways opened in 1904 but you get the feeling that you are barreling through centuries of secrets when you’re in those tunnels. There are centuries of secrets within the shadowy landscape of that rat-run world.

I won’t deny the filth. I won’t defend the utter obscurity that your singular existence dissolves into as you descend those metallic steps.

But I will say this.

I read somewhere that there are 10,000 stars for every one grain of sand on the beach. I suppose that makes sense. I suppose that you could, theoretically, contain every grain of sand if you wanted to. You could gather all of the sand and know that there is no more sand. But there could never be a net wide enough to encompass the universe. You will never be able to contain the expanse of something that has no end.

That is what it feels like being down in those tunnels. Like having no end. No beginning. When you step over that yellow line and peer down the tracks, willing a delayed train into existence, you are hovering on the very edge of liminality. The in between. Through some kind of magic sorcery you escape daylight on one street corner, close your eyes, get spun around, only to emerge someplace else entirely with no real coherent concept of the journey.

In California, you memorize your routes. You know the roads, the buildings, the exits, the lights. I can still visualize every second, ever detail, of my old drive to middle school, high school, college. The beach, downtown, and home. I close my eyes and my body sways to every turn. You know how you got there. You know how to get back.

RELINQUISHING CONTROL

New York only let’s you know so much.

You can trace the outline of your walk to the train, you can know the names of the streets and the letters of the trains, but once you descend underground, once you fall into one of those dug-out portals, you are no better than Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole. You are no better than a child, following your own curiosity into a world that will make you no promises. You relinquish all logic and control, succumbing to the utter anonymity of location that underground trains run off of.

There are pennies on the ground and paint falling out of the ceiling and someone has lost their hot pink thong on the tracks. You feel the train before you hear it. The wind always comes first. I could stand there forever, right next to the tracks, feeling that wind blow through my hair. The doors open. Like the cooler, older kid, it stops and asks, Well, are you in or are you out?

You are, of course, in. Every time you are in because what you will see and what you will hear you can never be sure of. In California, my drives were highly controlled experiences. I was driving, for one. I controlled the music, for two. There were not ten strangers mouth-breathing next to me, for three. But how plain. How predictable. How safe.

Maybe I like the mouth-breathers. Maybe I live for eavesdropping on conversation. Maybe every book recommendation I will ever need from now on will come from staring a second too long at the title in that person’s hands. I can’t not know. I just can’t.

Just like how I couldn’t not listen to the conversation two girls my age were having right next to me about some guy who, god help him, was really getting torn apart. Something about not even being able to believe that he did this and not even beginning to mention how he did that. Something about a Robert. Something about his cute friend. Something about how crazy it was that she was there. Her, of all people!

I smiled under my breath, trying to think of what my friend and I must look like when we are out talking about boys in public.

SONDER

I look the other way and see people lost in their own worlds, much more like me. I remember that word, that word for the feeling that comes over you when you are walking down the street and you realize that everyone around you has a story as complex and labyrinthian, as personal and important, as yours.

Sonder.

Whoever came up with that must have been sitting on a train, noticing how so many people can be so close together, yet so far apart. You see each of their faces and wonder, you wonder with everything that you have, what their story is. Because this is your life and it’s your story and you are always the main character. But so are they. So is everyone.

It strikes me every time.

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