Dan Mooney

I rode the 3 train back uptown the other night. With nothing to read or listen to, I rested my eyes after what had been a long, tiring, trying, productive Presidents’ Day.

From my left, eyes closed, I heard singing, but not any of the usual singing – a cappella groups, wandering minstrels, talented lone panhandlers, Mexican bands, even literate youths passionately reciting along with their favorite spoken-word albums – none of those.

This was awful, awful singing. And it was loud.

The most striking part was that this was happening at all. Everyone around me did as I did, hearing the horror, locating its source, then looking away in embarrassment and confusion, trying to piece together any of the poor guy’s motivation.

Disturbing, too, was his level of confidence. He wasn’t just some guy singing more loudly than he thought he was, with us being too polite to call him on it. He didn’t look like much of a physical threat, so it also wasn’t the case that we evaded outright the suggestion of a lower volume.

He was just a headphone-wearing, average-looking guy, who was hardly normal. I’m sure he was challenging us to confront him. Maybe he was lonely. Surely he was a jerk of some kind. At the very least he wanted to impose himself upon on us, and thankfully his approach was mostly harmless, involved no actual touching and was not at all violent (though horrible dying barnyard animal sounds did come to mind throughout the experience).

Someone said something. It was a homeless lady, with a very small face and a very high voice. The train clattered on the tracks behind me but in the spaces between I could just make out what she said to the guy:

“You can sing loud, if you have a good voice. If not, you have to sing lower.”

She said lower with a great “lowering” gesture of her arms, hands spread, palms down. The circle of people nearest the confrontation all laughed in relief 1) that the man heard the message, even if he didn’t get it, and 2) that each person was in the end not the one who had to deliver it. Everyone was happy.

The lady of the moment walked in my direction and said to the girl to my left, “I needed a laugh today.” She kept moving, until she stopped at the middle of the car and gave her plea for alms. She didn’t ask merely for money – she also suggested that we part with any leftover food we had on us. It was a good strategy, and her recent heroics weren’t ignored – others gave cash as the same girl to my left reached into a bag and held out a small plastic container of Chinese soup.

The lady inched back over, held the cup with grateful hands and thanked the girl for her generosity. Almost as an afterthought, just before the lady put the soup into one of her many bags, she asked the girl with a certain assurance of the answer: “There’s no pork in here, right?” The girl shook her head. The lady nodded hers in thanks, then went on her way.

I thought the lady must be religious, asking about pork. I pondered what would have happened if there had been pork in the soup – would the lady have just declined it? How hungry was she? If not then, would she ever compromise her beliefs to sustain her body?

I stopped myself and just fixated upon the scene’s uplifting moral: Beggars CAN be choosers.

New York’s new subway trains are cleaner, sleeker, brighter, and quieter versions of their veteran counterparts. The yellow and orange colors of decay and dying (think of Autumn) have given way to the hygienic gray and silver of the future, a Winter of Content!

The new trains are also one step closer to being self-aware machines ready to kill us all. They speak.

The older trains, of course, have human conductors that announce the current and next stops, the train and its destination, even if they pull a Fenster and mumble through the whole thing.

The city’s new AI trains seem downright educated, being polite and informative and enunciating clearly.

What throws me is that each speaks in two voices – a woman’s, and a man’s. The woman’s voice gives station information, this is…, the next stop is…, and so forth. Then, when she’s done filling us in, the male’s voice, authoritative and melodic, orders us all to “Stand Clear Of The Closing Doors, Please!!”

The good cop/bad cop mentality has spread to mass transit. The calming, motherly figure builds up our confidence by telling us little stories, a bit about how the world works, keeping us calm by telling us where we are and where we’re going. The father figure then throws in his two cents, tossing his weight around, telling us what to do and what not to do. He says “please,” but his commands has already been given and for us the soothing female voice is already a far memory.

In the eyes of the MTA, we are all children.

Hey there, girl reading a book–

You probably think I’m checking you out. Yes, I am looking at you with some interest. If this boosts your mood, I am fine with that, since I generally don’t mind creating small pockets of joy, even when I don’t mean to.

I see you peripherally, looking back at me just after I’ve looked away. You surely do the same. The dance continues.

But let’s be clear on this: I’m really just trying to see what book you’re reading. Your left hand is covering the title.

I know it’s not one of the hardcover Harry Potter books because yours lacks the distinctive color pattern on the cover and spine. I know some readers take off dust jackets all the time, as I know some adults were embarrassed by the thought of reading the last Harry Potter book in public, especially in that first week after it came out. Wouldn’t want to be part of the flock – rather, wouldn’t want to broadcast it, would we?

Anyway, pardon my prying eyes. I’ve learned a little something about the people who live in my world. Thanks for that. Thank God you’re reading.

Today on the Q train I saw a young man polishing his sneakers.

We’re not regressing?

Took the N train home from work yesterday.  I usually drive, but when gas went over four dollars a gallon (I chose to write that out because the number is too staggering) I decided to mix things up a bit with my commute and lighten the load a bit.  Like watering down scotch.

Took advantage of the train ride to read a good portion of Colin McGinn’s intellectual memoir The Making of a Philosopher.  This is not bragging.  I brag later in the entry.  Really, I only mention the book because it has a lot to do with what actually transpired on that train ride I mentioned before these eddies of exposition.

Was standing on the N train towards the middle poles, a few feet from the door but not too close since I got on at 34th Street and was headed to Astoria and got pushed toward the middle (as so many independent minded folk eventually join a mainstream).  Somewhere in Manhattan, I’m betting, a guy got on the train and stood next to me – and even though many guys and many girls have stood next to me on the train, without actually seeing this gentleman’s face, I thought I knew him – it was only his frame and his head, but I swore he was familiar.

When we got out from underground I was still entrenched in my philosophy when the gentleman next to me started with the Blackberry.  Even that wouldn’t have caught my attention as being so outlandish if, when the train made its next stop at 39th Avenue, the man hadn’t been so busy caressing the device that he couldn’t spare a hand to hold onto the rail before the train stopped a smidge abruptly and sent the man hurtling softly into my bony side.  Undeterred, my eyes didn’t leave the book.  I remained undeterred when at 36th Avenue, the same exact thing happened, only the impact was more forceful – not enough to disturb my focus, but enough for the man to say “Jesus Christ,” as a form of apology that, while not explicitly offered, I accepted in my own tacitly inexplicit way.

I glanced over again and saw the man in profile, now convinced I know who he is.  And what he’s doing on that train.  And where he’s going, if he’s the man I think he is.

Broadway.  We both detrain.  He heads back down 31st Street, I across Broadway to my own block.

Ladies and Gentleman, WFAN’s Chris Carlin.

I think.

See, WFAN has its studio just down the block from my apartment.  Totally reasonable that Mr. Carlin would be heading over there on the N.

The point of this post is first of all not to scare Chris Carlin or even to namedrop, yet still not to hammer home that I read philosophical memoirs on subway trains in mid-spring.  It’s merely to highlight the connection I saw between what I was reading and what I soon saw.  In the memoir, McGinn wrote of both his focus and his luck – of his proactivity, and of the worldly circumstances that accepted, encouraged and accelerated his achievements.  You might say it’s like howling at the moon and the moon howling back.  Only when you think about it a little, it’s not the moon that you’re hearing at all, but an echo of your own voice in the forbidding canyon below.

The world we see is in our head.  If we’re lucky, and faithful, the creation we see does correlate to an external world.  But as a tree is contained in a seed, truly our whole lives our held in our minds.  What if the things that happen to us, that surprise us, delight us, are really surprises we withhold from ourselves – since they’re in our minds before we can acknowledge them?  What then?

For now, for me, I love the irony of the situation – I listen to Carlin on the radio in the morning on my drives to work, yet I see him in person during one of my very few subway commutes.  It’s cool to have had him run into me.  It’s also cool that I’ve gotten a post out of something so small, yet has made me think so much.