In the middle of a writing induced trance while on the subway home to Queens, I was startled by light, outdoor light, light that flooded the interior of the train. I looked outside my window and became frightened by the height as the train began to traverse the 59th Street Bridge. I thought, did the R take a detour? The yellow symbol that said W told me no. It was the wrong train. I quickly formed an escape plan. Get of at the next stop, and hope ther’s a train to take me back to the last overlapping stop in Manhattan.I got off at Queensboro Plaza and walked quickly towards the down staircase marked by the Manhattan-bound W. I descended the stairs after dismissing the thought of seeing where the 7 express train might take me. A W train had just arrived, and I got on board with some Hispanic day laborers wearing vibrant hats and hoodies, along with 3 teenage girls, one black, one Asian, and one Hispanic, all chattering excitedly about dancing. I stood by a door and held onto an overhead bar, as the train scaled the tracks, ascended over Queensbridge, displaying the Housing Authority’s handiwork of red brick slums provided to the people by Robert Moses all those years ago, and then the train tunneled into darkness as we made the approach to Manhattan. I was not paying attention, obviously, the first time I passed the upcoming station, so now, I wondered how far I had veered off course. The subway entered the station, but moved too fast for me to make out the signs that whizzed by in a blur. Be a stop, I prayed, be a stop I can use, and as the train slowed, I heared murmurs and whispers of the word “Lex,” and I turned and craned my head in order to find visual confirmation that this was indeed Lexington Avenue and 57th. It was. I was back on course. The doors opened, and I got out and crossed the platform to await the R. Now, with my detour in the past, I just hoped for a seat. The train arrived, slowed, stopped and opened its doors, so I stepped inside, and found a window seat. The train smelled like garlic, but at least it was going my way. It was the right train, and I sat down, and went back to writing.

I stopped by the corner of 14th and Broadway in order to indulge in something I had not had for several months. That day was one where I needed a quick lunch while I did a time trial walk from my office to Center Street in order to make a manual bank transfer by 2pm. This lunch, which I craved and had forgotten about, was a hot dog, and, God, had I missed out. No hot dog in all my Tri-State Area travels could compete with the dirty water dog found on every busy street corner in Manhattan. I asked the vendor for my usual, one dg with sauerkraut, and he obliged for the price of 2 dollars, which I furnished immediately. As I took the dog, I thought about this idea of the hot dog cart, of the mobile food cart; the cart is a mobile piece of architecture, itinerant, only dependent upon the busy built up intersections of streets. It existed within a symbiotic relationship to the streets, to the buildings, to the city. I walked back to my office, and as I approached 13th, a scaffolding covered me overhead, about 2 stories up to the platform, to the corrugated steel covered perpendicularly by 12″ wooden planks. The scaffolding existed only to provide an area, a surface for the construction workers assigned to restore the sculptural facade of the building at 13th and Broadway. I meditated on this as I took bites out of my hot dog, trying my best to not eat the napkin or the wax paper in the throes of hunger. The juxtaposition of scaffold against scuplture was the most fascinating of all the subjects regarding beauty that this scene could raise. The buildings as object, a sculpture of busts, gargoyles, pilasters, cornice work, frieze work, rake, a facade composed of art work which clung to the structure, to the walls of brick, concrete, and steel to remain frozen forever just to make sure every generation would see the craft that went into this labor of love. Attached to the facade like a lamprey to a fish, the scaffold obtains life in use, in function. It feeds on the building decay, expends energy to repair it, and the works get money in return, money with which to live. Owner and worker, the scaffold the facilitator of their symbiosis. It is not a parasite like I suggested, nor is the vendor on the street. Both architectures are mobile, transportable. The architecture facilitates the relationship between the two, in service, in goods.

Fiction is the method by which the truth can be expressed without facts.

Sunday. 4:59 p.m.

The world around me condensed into one Target store. People of every race, ethnicity, gender, and social strata all descended upon the store to line up for bread sticks at Pizza Hut Express, for Hannah Montana 1gb flash drives, for Rayovac batteries with free High School Musical trading cards enclosed, for PS2 Black Axes, for pink furry digital picture frames, along with all the normal groceries that get bought at the local supermarket. They crowd the registers and clog the aisles, just for the sake of crowding and clogging, to give the 50 year old man standing out in the cold to direct traffic in the parking lot and divert cars between the entrance and the drive-thru for the McDonald’s/Starbucks

 Saturday.  11:59 p.m.

I sat in a chair, typing words into sentences, then forming sentences into paragraphs, with the hope that some short story or idea would result. I had no audience, no one to entertain except my own brain. Writing was the only addiction I had left to indulge freely, without fear of recourse or negative health benefits. I got no other high from anywhere else. Writing made me look forward to train rides home, and it forced me to look carefully at the world around me just in case a spark of inspiration lit my heart and brain afire.

I had plenty to write about, but I feared the need for organization, for clarity of thought. I do my best now to push that fear aside. I move boldly into this world of writing down my thoughts once again, and perhaps re-writing old thoughts again, with some years of experience under my belt.