The longer mile
I desperately want to write, but have nothing to say and am too stressed at the moment to even have time to write or think of anything to write. I went for a run the other day. I ran to Shore Road from the house where I’m living in Bay Ridge. I got to the river, and “Ah ha! There’s Staten Island. There’s New Jersey. Where’s Manhattan?????” That hour I spend underground on a wobbly train everyday really does take me far far away from where I want to be. It takes me to a place where you can hear cicadas and leaves rustling in the wind and dogs barking in their backyards. It’s a far cry from the honking, screeching brakes and jackhammers of NYC. But man, I miss the jackhammers. Give me jackhammers any day if it means I can walk home from work.
Another thing I did recently was get sick on the subway… I hopped on having made the mistake of drinking coffee without eating. Two stops and I had to get off. I sat on a wooden bench in the sticky air of the Rector Street subway stop, and held my head in my hands, waiting for my insides to stop twirling. They didn’t and they weren’t going to, but I needed to get home. Did I have $50 for a cab? Hell no, so I got back on that train, and at Whitehall I had to jump ship again.
I headed up the stairs to the mezzanine and up the escalator into the cold black air. It was all I could do to walk straight as I found a Bon Pain and bought a bagel. I sat myself on a marble slab that held in a flower bed where I could stare at the bright blue sign on the glass windows of the Staten Island Ferry terminal. I inhaled my bagel.
My bagel and I headed back underground and slumped into a seat. My head flopped to the side as the train crawled under the river. Forty-five minutes of sea-sick agony; Bay Ridge is done for me. Time to move back to the city.
Tags: 7. USA, 7A. New York City, Travel
Drea
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