One Day

Late morning light

Morning: I woke just like any other day, to the sound of an alarm and that minute measure of dimmed light that falls through the torn curtain over my window. In paisley underwear, I adjusted to my surroundings and departed from the dreamland of the night. Remnants of sleep stayed in my eyes as reality commenced once again and the hours stretched out ahead of me. I felt better after a cup of tea.

Early afternoon: I walked the now-familiar path to the grocery market that is two subway stops and a walk away from my apartment. Rounding the corner to the last straight away, I smiled as I always do when I see the street’s people sitting on stoops, lazily conversing with one another or talking on the phone, or the elderly woman who leans over her windowsill, just watching as the younger generations pass by below. A mother grabbed the hand of her toddler child, and I passed my favorite car in Brooklyn, a worn blue Volkswagen van that’s always parked on the right side of the street. I picked up some groceries and then trailed back, seeing much of the same as I mimicked the walk there. A blonde haired boy walked ahead of me, and we rounded the corner in the unity of strangeness back onto the main street where all is less intimate and affable.

A familiar landmark of my Brooklyn life

Mid afternoon: The subway never ceases to make me smile. Families arrange themselves in the cluster of seats that are as close together as they can manage. Couples sleepily hold onto one another, and often fall asleep on the shoulder of their dearly beloved. A man sits alone in the back of the subway car, absorbing the daily news in its black and white print, sometimes good and sometimes that which warrants tears (and other times, both). Adolescent girls group together and alternate between complimenting one another, conversations that seem to take a turn for the somber, and the most commonplace yet happiest laughs on earth. I take all of this in, intoxicated by the all too rare displays of domesticity, intellectual pursuits, and the foreign familiarity of friendships. Sometimes I’m caught in the act of observing my fellow commuters and must make a choice to either avert my gaze towards the most recent advertisement or smile in the way that means our existence for the next few minutes is kindred. I will not question them as the world so often does. I will not wonder if this is an affectation or if their world has become more insincere than they care to admit. I will share in their madness and happiness, even if only until the car doors slide open and we walk out to the world again.

Where I go to go somewhere else

Evening: This is when the lies come. It’s so easy to feign contentment, until it’s not anymore. Sunset can be beautiful, but it is as though I learned in that literature class as well as from my own studies of the world; if there is beauty, there must be an opposite. And at some point we all meet it.

Sunset in Union Square

Night: My tendency towards bedtime comes and goes. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a particular fondness for it, but even I can admit that there is a certain peacefulness and tired relinquishment that cloaks someone in those few moments, however long or short, that pass between waking's malaise and slumber's restfulness. Maybe we will dream tonight and maybe not. Perhaps the strangest thing is that so often we don’t even wonder whether we’ll dream. That, I think, is the mechanistic side of living. There are good things about the night though. Spotting stars and the glow of the moon in its phase for the passing moment can capture a sort of strange hopefulness for the umpteenth time, as we become sanguine once again, echoing the light of those stars and moon above, wondering what tomorrow may bring.