I wrote something for a UK-based website a long while back, and they changed my suggested title to “Make It Happen.” Anyone possessing remote familiarity with my take on things could tell you that I’m not a “make it happen” kind of guy. It isn’t the instinct that eludes me, but the phrasing. “See What Happens” would have been closer, but wouldn’t have fit this particular piece, which centered on the exhilarating challenges involved in adapting to New York City. I was going through a certain phase of brain chemistry back then – interesting, but neither more nor less insightful than those before or since. Steve Earle has a line in his song Fort Worth Blues – “they say Texas weather’s always changin’ / and one thing change will bring is somethin’ new.” This and Tony Soprano yelling “I get it!” to the dawn breaking on a Vegas desert gets close, but I’m obviously off on a tangent here. One thing that did result from that particular stretch was a tendency toward first-person prose in the present tense.
I’m crossing Atlantic Avenue this afternoon with the intention of walking all the way to the 42nd Street Library. Something in the ominous cloud formation over the Brooklyn Bridge tells me I might be swimming if I persist with pedestrian plans, so I retreat to the F stop on York Street. (Funny how “F stop” has come to mean something other than a camera setting this past near-decade.) A father and daughter, she maybe seven or eight, get on at East Broadway. She’s a cool-looking girl, well-behaved with a pretty but thoughtful face and dressed kid-appropriate but stylishly. I’m instantly envious of this guy, who’s about my age give or take a few years, and wonder how he can appear oblivious to his obvious good fortune. Why he isn’t smiling or taking advantage of this father-daughter bonding time is beyond me. Can’t he see that in a blink of an eye she’ll be married to some window insulation distributor and living in Seattle?
The flip-side boards at West Fourth Street. God (in whatever form you choose to interpret the word) is good with those flip sides. An empathic-looking but terminally tired mother enters the train with her own two daughters. The first is about the same age as the girl from the earlier stop, and she’s looking cautiously back at Mom wheeling her younger sister in via stroller. The other girl is about four and screaming in a manner that goes beyond anything identifiable with a human child of this or any other age. Her choleric outburst is near demonic and draws horrified glances from other passengers; cautious looks reserved for a problem that might go beyond a mere temper tantrum and cross over to darker territory. She’s flailing at the air with her fists and rising from the carriage to kick at it and her mother violently, punctuating each foot strike with shrill exclamation. Mom has a hollowed, soundly defeated look, clearly having been here before. Similar displays aren’t uncommon on the subway, but something is far wrong here .. so much so that the typical “can’t you control that child?” vibe is absent. It’s bad enough for most to move away and crowd the middle of the car. I pump the volume on my iPod, put my shades on and wait half a stop for 42nd Street, where I bolt.
At the library, I write this shit. Late April rain pours steadily outside the large windows just below the magnificent, raised ceiling of the Main Reading Room, much as it did on occasion back in ’03 and ’04. The same old guy, who must have been at least ninety back then, shuffles by in his dusty but formal suit, with an armful of hardcover volumes clutched near. A young, French-speaking couple sits beside me, both hunched over their laptop trying to solidify some sort of New York plan. I try to come up with a clever closing sentence but unzip my backpack instead, gathering my things and letting it go.
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