I walked a friend to Penn Station so I took the 1 train home. At 14th Street, a man with glasses got on and sat opposite a woman engrossed with paperwork. While she read printed emails and scribbled notes, he opened a notebook and began sketching her.
The two women sitting on each side of him watched intently as he shaped her eyes, nose and mouth and finally enclosed it in a round face scattered with hair. She looked up once, probably perceiving she was being watched, but never noticed what the man was doing. It was intriguing enough for me to stay on the train three stops too long to watch him finish.
He looked up every once in a while but focused on the paper. When he was finished, he turned the page and looked for a new subject. He scanned the pair of lovers sitting in the corner, an old woman with groceries, a police officer staring intently out the window and even me, hanging loosely from the pole. He decided on a bearded man reading the newspaper and began again, the woman already forgotten.
Now tell me this kind of thing happens on the bus.
I like the subway for the timeliness, speed and predictability of temperature. But there's something other than that to consider. Few cities have subways. My native town did and, even with its two lines, it managed to captivate my attention. Buses and cabs operate in the real world, whereas subways work in their own. Their stations and the tracks have no other purpose. It is like a reverse surface under the ground. Whatever the weather or time of day, it's always the same in the subway. I even like the graffiti.
There's nothing new about this opinion, as I find many New Yorkers prefer either the subway or the bus to get around the city. I never bothered to learn the bus system unless it was in areas beyond the subway's reach. The special thing about the preference is that those who prefer subways seem to share similar characteristics:
- Organization of mind and space
- Good memory
- Romantic to the point of cheesiness
I missed a lot. Help me fill them in.
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2 comments:
-terribly imaginative
-cheaper than the cab people and less stingy than the bus people
-environmentalists
--good at delayed gratification (walking farther to a subway station rather than a bus stop to get the faster mode of transport)
--too distracted by music/books/ their own weighty thoughts to recognize their stop unless a voice over a loudspeaker is saying it and the name is printed all over the physical location
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