Several Observations As I Ride The Subway Home: Wednesday 10-3-12 - By Allan Raible

1.  I actually left work today at the time I was supposed to, rather than stay late.  Partly due to the fact that I had a weather-induced migraine that was hellbent on killing me.  Usually leaving work an hour or so later, I noticed a difference in the level of train traffic.  Interestingly, since I was not feeling my best, I closed my eyes for a few stops.  When I opened them, I discovered the car was mostly empty.  I panicked for a second.  When did I miss the evacuation?  But then once I realized nothing major had happened, I calmed down.

2. At certain stops, crossing from train to train can be tricky.  There are people dead set on knocking you over.  These are people who do not wait for the other people to exit out of the subway car before shouldering their way in.  Rudeness. Even worse, is when you are trying to cross to a train and as you are crossing, trying to reach your goal before the doors close, people are coming in both intersecting directions towards you.  If everyone is in a hurry and everyone is oblivious to each other's movement, it's a real recipe for disaster.

3. There's a woman on the train reading Nylon magazine with the kind of stern, calculated focus economists would reserve for Adam Smith texts.

4.  Truth be told, I'm feeling pretty crappy as I wander out into the murky, foggy night.  As I go down the street, a cop-car passes, flashing its lights.  I cannot figure out why.  But because I'm not feeling well and perhaps due to the flashing, I trip on the sidewalk.  My glasses fall off of my face and I'm on the sidewalk, stunned.  No one pays attention, with the exception of an older guy who kind of glares at me with his mouth hanging open.  I pick myself up and declare, "I'm OK."  He doesn't even nod.  He continues to look at me with disdain and I continue my walk home.

Several Observations As I Ride The Subway Home: Tuesday 10-2-12 - By Allan Raible

1. It's really easy to spot tourists in the New York City subway system.  They always have glee-filled looks on their faces as if they see rainbows in all directions.  They don't look like they are being killed by the every-day grind.  I see a couple who are perhaps in their fifties.  I've decided that she is a tourist and that he isn't.  How do I identify him as a native?  He's wearing a Brooklyn College shirt and is taking everything with ease.  He looks around like he knows the place.  She, on the other hand seems like a wide-eyed innocent.  She musses his hair with her hand and loses her balance while not holding onto the pole. (For god's sake, hold onto the damn poll! ) This happens a good ten times.  And she always seems to keep her "We Are Not In Kansas Anymore" grin.

2.  A woman gets onto the train dressed in a flowing, navy blue shirt.  The sleeves even hang.  It is way too long for her.  As she enters, I make sure Pac-Man isn't following her, because there is something about her straight hair in combination with that ridiculous shirt that makes her look not unlike a ghost monster.  Yes.  It's Atari chic!  I heard next fall that the "Space Invaders" look will come back into style.

3.  There's a teenage kid standing by the door, shoveling fries from McDonald's into his mouth.  What's weird is that he is doing so at an alarmingly fast rate. It's a strange image, because the kid is strangely scrawny for someone pulling off this kind of movie.  He looks like he weighs thirty pounds.  His head looks like it is aiming to tip his body over.  Maybe this is his first bag of french fries ever.  Maybe he is trying to eat them all so quickly because he doesn't want anyone at home finding out.  Or, maybe like most growing teenagers, his metabolism is good enough to handle the shock of quickly consuming a large bag of fries.

4.  Is the glasses industry suffering?  It seems to me like it would be a rather self-maintained business without peaks and valleys.  I ask this because I have never known "Cohen's Fashion Optical" to resort to using such sexuality in their ads.  The woman in the advertisement has her head tilted to the side and her mouth slightly opened.  Her hair looks a little messed up. The ad offers up a deal on glasses.  I know that "sex sells" and all, but glasses seem to me to be an oddly utilitarian product to resort to applying such an adage.  That being said, they are, after all "Cohen's FASHION Optical" and thus are subject to the rules of the rest of the fashion industry.  I suppose it all comes down to way more than, "if you can't see and you need glasses, you will get a pair!"  They have to add a little spice.  And I suppose, since such an image immediately caught my eye, the ad was truly effective.

5.  In the eighties, the subways were messy and filthy and covered in graffiti.  In the years since then, they have really cleaned themselves up.  It seems really odd to me to think back and remember that people used to be able to smoke on subway platforms.  The cars used to be full of trash and dirt.  That usually is not the current case, today.  However, I look down and the subway car looks like it has been through hell.  There are random pieces of trash everywhere.  A box which once held gum.  An empty bag of fruit snacks.  Random pieces of paper and receipts.  Who was here before me?  Why didn't anyone teach them to clean up after themselves?  Why, further down the car does it look like the end result of a newspaper being ripped apart section-by-section in a wind-tunnel?  Was someone training a dog, here?  I always find it odd when people leave their newspapers on the seat.  I guess the thought is, "Well, I'll just pass it along so someone else can read it."  It seems, when framed in those terms to make sense.  But the truth is, when I see a newspaper lying on a seat I want to sit in, I view it as annoying trash someone left behind that I now have to clean up.  Couldn't you have taken it with you?  Usually after someone has sifted through a paper, too, it is oddly rearranged.  So, the idea of someone leaving a read newspaper behind as a sort of selfless form of paying it forward doesn't really work.  The reality says, "Hey!  Why don't you toss this?"  So many people, too, end up picking up the newspapers on subway seats and placing them under the seats.  I'm guessing the paper strewn across the end of the car began life that way and then as the crowds grew, it gradually moved itself further out into the center and went rogue.  Think about it this way.  Most people who want to read on the train provide their own reading material.  So you should clean up yours when you are done!

Several Observations As I Ride The Subway Home: Monday 10-1-12 - By Allan Raible

1.  I am not sitting anywhere near the map, having learned my lesson on Thursday.  However, there is a woman leaning down over me as if she is looking at the map.  I suspect she is checking out her own reflection in the window.  From within the confines of the dark tunnel, the light gives the window a strong, definitive mirror-like quality.  I only look at her for a brief second, but I get a pretty good view of her.  She's forty at most, but her face looks weathered.  What causes this?  Smoking?  Too much sun?  It could be the fact that she's probably a bit thinner than she should be.  In a few years, the weathered look that has given her face character may spread down to her neck.  Whatever the cause, whether outside or simply genetics, it makes me think about how it's all a crapshoot.  We end up aging the way we do because of a simple luck of the draw.  That's how some people at fifty still look 25 and others look like they are 75.  She wears a pair of those ipod earphones. Have you ever sat next to someone wearing those?  Noise leaks out like crazy, reducing everything to a tinny static.  And usually, when that happens, they don't even have to be very loud!  It's crazy.  

2. Another woman down the way keeps catching my eye.  I don't know why.  I look at her.  She looks back.  Then we pretend we aren't looking at each other.  What is this?  She's probably ten years younger than I am and it's probably just that we just happen to be in each other's eye-line.  Interestingly, she, too is wearing the stock ipod ear-buds.  Did I miss something?  When did people stop buying decent headphones for themselves?

3.  It's a bumpy ride and it gets a little surreal as my music switches from the Bees' "I Really Need Love" to "Washed Out's "Feel It All Around."  As the latter track's woozy beat thumps us each that much closer to our chosen destinations, I watch the bodies sway back and forth from my seated viewing position.  It's as if they are all passive victims of gravity, moving at the train's will.  

4.  We are living in a very ugly time, fashion-wise.  Not that I have any fashion sense, myself, but I've never seen so many ugly plaid shirts as I do during my daily commute back and forth.  There's one guy in a somewhat reserved, but still heinous red and white number.  He's wearing Dockers and conservative business shoes.  I have no idea what he is listening to.  Judging from his look, I'm guessing it could be anything from the Dave Matthews Band to Michael Buble.  He seems to be doing a rather spastic neck dance, so I'm thinking it might be something harder. Perhaps some Slayer or maybe even some Ice Cube.  As I'm noticing his neck movement and subconsciously mocking him for it, I realize that I'm doing the same idiotic move, myself to my music!  People is glass houses.....   Then I wonder, what kind of music do I look like I should be listening to?  If people were to guess would they be right?

5.  As the train heads out of the tunnel, I attempt to take a picture of the sunset against the deep, blue sky, thus momentarily freaking out the woman sitting next to me until she realizes what I'm doing.  I take this picture too quickly and it comes out blurry.  (See side exhibit.) Not wanting to freak the woman next to me out anymore, I stick with it and put my phone away.  

6.  There's a woman across the way from me who is listening to something funny.  I know this because she keeps laughing to herself.  I've been there.  Listening to comedy albums while you ride the train can easily make you seem like a crazy person.  She gets off of the train the stop before me, being followed by a guy who for no reason seems to be giving me the stink-eye and a guy who looks like Butch Vig's straight-laced yuppie older brother.  

Several Observations As I Ride The Subway Home: Friday 9-28-12 - By Allan Raible

1. Several people sit next to me through my ride home. The first is a woman who gets up at just about the second I sit down. She is replaced by a guy who is way too large to fit in the seat. He also has no idea how much space he takes up. As he gets up, he brushes my ear with the strap at the end of the umbrella handle sticking out of his back p

ocket. (Thanks, bro! Good lord!)

Upon his exit, he is replaced with a woman who is miraculously rocking both a faux-hawk and a leather jacket. It takes a special person to pull that off, but surprisingly she does.

A teenage kid with a skateboard and a backwards baseball cap sits down next. As someone with balance issues, I've always envied skateboarders. (I wonder if he can do an ollie!)

The kid gets up quickly and is replaced by I guy wearing really ugly black and white plaid pants. He crosses his legs almost entirely (Ouch, man!) and puts his arm over his face away from me. (Is that a relaxed position?)

2. The guy sitting across from me looks like an even cross between Charles Barkley and Yul Brynner. He's got really expressively cartoonish eyebrows that point upwards, so he sort of looks like Mr. Clean's evil twin, too. He's texting as we exit the tunnel. Given the fact that I've decided he looks like a (slightly jovial) super-villain, I'm wondering if he's texting Dr. Octopus about their next plan to attack Spiderman.

3. I have so many questions for the disheveled hipster guy with the bad, bright orange seventies-porn mustache who is holding what looks like an opened Amazon box with little stuffed animals peeking out. He's also carrying an umbrella, a backpack, the kind of canister one would use to house a a rolled poster. In addition, he's carrying countless other items. He's got a blackberry that he is glued to. He's got a pained look on his face, as if he's a human game of Blockhead ready to be knocked over.

4. Why aren't the digitized signs synced. One sign on one end of the car says the next stop is Fort Hamilton Parkway. The other sign on the other side says the next stop is Queens Plaza. I imagine as if the car is going to divide itself in a minute and I look around for any attractive women in my half of the car. No. The car is virtually empty. Just my luck. It would be me, the plaid-pantsed freaky guy and Mr. Clean. Oh no!

Well, at least it is Friday...

Several Observations As I Ride The Subway Home - Thursday 9-27-12 By Allan Raible:

1. When you sit in front of the map, you will have strangers leaning down, invading your personal space. (This includes their B.O.)

2. If the woman and man who were standing in front of me and arguing passive-aggressively with each other are a couple, my guess is that they very soon won't be. She's very attractive but seems like she's on her last

 nerve and he comes off as a smug self-absorbed and self-satisfied jerk. He keeps coyly smiling at her, thinking he's funny and making cracks. She keeps saying, "Enough. Shut up!"

3. The older gentleman sitting across from me obviously dyes his hair. That shade of yellow does not exist in nature, sir.

4. Somebody will always step on your feet when you are sitting on a crowded rush-hour train.

Opinion: The Slowing Down of The New York MTA – By Allan Raible

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> Do you know that feeling when you are already running late for work and you find yourself sitting on a platform waiting forever to just see those train lights coming toward you?  Do you know that frustration when you were once making good time in the morning until something unexpected happened and threw you off schedule?  Do you know what it is like to sit in a train for twenty minutes with no announcements explaining why you haven’t moved?  Do you ever wonder if there really is “train traffic ahead,” or if it is just a catch-phrase that is thrown about to make people not question being held hostage by public transportation?

Growing up in the eighties, it always seemed to me that the trains went rather quickly.  I remember hopping on an A train and rocketing to my destination.  Of course, back then, people were still smoking on the platforms and the trains were tagged to oblivion.  But at least the service was faster. 

As a commuter who relies on the subway as a means to get from here to there, I find it shocking how slowly the trains are running these days.  The MTA touts how they are working harder to serve us better, and I believe there are improvements being made, but I also feel like they use said construction as an excuse to slow down service.  It is so frustrating.  I don’t always believe those announcements.

Photo-illustration by Allan Raible

When I was little I dreamed of the future in New York being filled with hustle.  I dreamed of bullet-trains shooting us through tunnels in a faster way than ever before.  I didn’t dream about routinely worrying whether I was going to be stopped in between stations because of a “signal malfunction.”

What really makes things worse is the fact that the fare keeps seemingly exponentially getting higher.  In the seventies, the subway cost thirty-five cents. In the eighties, it was a dollar.  It is now $2.25.  If you can’t count on being anywhere on time (or without over-estimating your travel time) it still offers a dollar ride in value.  I swear something crooked is happening. 

Maybe it is that the tracks are old.  Maybe they are really working on everything.  But as a rider it gets extremely frustrating.  Maybe it is due to increased rider-ship.  Maybe due to a larger population there have to be more trains than before, thus clogging up the system.  These are all valid possibilities. 

Someday, I would like to get anywhere around the five boroughs in under an hour, door-to-door.  I don’t know if it will ever happen, but a rider can dream.  I know more express trains are reportedly on their way.  I’ll believe it when I see it!

It would also be nice to be able to travel on the weekends without being re-routed a dozen times, thus creating more delays and frustration. 

Of course, as angry as it makes me, New York probably has the best public transportation system in the country.  I still wish it was better.  

“The Escalator” – Short Fiction by Allan Raible

George Schneider was a hard-working man.  He had a corporate job with an ad agency.  It was nothing fancy.  He was mainly a copy-writer.  In his thirty-eight years, he hadn’t amounted to much.  In fact, the actual copy was being written by the newly-hired twenty-somethings.  George was merely a glorified proof-reader, cleaning up syntax and phrasing to make sure that little Johnny Suburban really believed that that cologne might make him score.  Yes… George was going nowhere.   The promises of tomorrow had never come to fruition. 

He was loved, though.  He had a wife, Stephanie and two daughters, Willa and Taft.  They had a nice house in the suburbs of New Jersey.  Stephanie was from money and so in spite of George’s lack of career propulsion, they could afford a good life. 

On one particular Wednesday afternoon, George was heading out of his office building.  As he boarded the escalator, a chill hit him.  Something strange was about to happen.  And so he held onto the railing as tightly as he could.  Just then, the railing stopped moving, but the escalator itself continued its trajectory downward.  George could feel the veins in his eyes beginning to burst as he tried to regain his composure.  He was fifteen steps up.  The fall would be messy and there was a clean, hard layer of greenish grey marble awaiting his soon clattering body.  He summoned all his might to keep himself upright, but as he moved his feet back and forth, he caught an edge of his left shoelace with his right foot.  It would soon be over.

Screams echoed through the hollow halls.  It was a horror like no one had ever seen.  Wasn’t a man in a Brooks Brothers suit being catapulted across a lobby a routine sight?  George was completely aware of his fate.  As he flew, he took a few milliseconds to remember his childhood, remember his first date with Stephanie and remember the short, but treasured time he had raising Willa and Taft.  As he was beginning to feel the air envelop his body, everything went dark and the last sound he heard was his wounded skeleton being served to the marble. 

As it hit George that he was in fact dead, he suddenly got alert again.  He opened his eyes to find he had actually dozed off in a business meeting.  Considering this a new lease on life, George vowed he was going to change his reality.  He walked into his boss’ office and asked for more responsibility and a raise.  He was not going to have the escalator be a metaphor for his aimless career. 

Upon said requests, George was told to pack up his things and leave.   And so, that’s how George discovered that in a round-about way he could in fact predict the future.  

He now works children’s parties as an (assistant) clown.  It’s quite sad, really.  But his family still loves him.  So, that’s good!    

Wasted Time, Repeated Tasks: Fighting Against A Repetitive World - By Allan Raible

The other night, while walking through the subway station on my way home from work, about to board another train, it occurred to me.  How much time do I waste commuting?  Every day, I walk through the same stations.  I take the same boring walks to and from the train.  I look at same faceless mass of folks in a slightly different configuration and most of the time I spend this time half-asleep, with my earphones blasting music in an attempt to half-heartedly convince myself that this is possibly a different experience than I had the day before.

On an average day, it takes me roughly an hour and ten minutes to an hour and twenty to get to work.  If I get in the habit of listening to the same music several days in a row, I can hit the same spots right when my ipod hits the same songs as it did the day before.  It’s calculated synchronicity. 

There was a time a few years back when I lived in a different apartment, when I was walking back home and thought, “I feel like I spend too much of my life making this walk.”  When you can do this with your eyes shut, it is hardly stimulating. 

Photo by Allan Raible. 

Telecommuting doesn’t solve the issue.  It makes it worse.  You end up stuck in the same four walls that hold you while you sleep.  You never see the world.  Of course, you don’t see the world in a cubicle either.  But at least you are in a DIFFERENT place.

The problem doesn’t really lie with commuting.  The problem lies with all the mundane, repeated tasks we do on a daily basis.  How much time do we spend preparing food?  How much time do we spend watching television shows we only partly like?  How much time to we spend not really being true to our dreams and ourselves?  It’s the human existential crisis in action.  For as short as life is, we sure do waste a lot of it. 

If only we could spend our time running through the fields.  If only we had more time to fall in love and to spend with our cherished loved ones.  If only we had more time to create and make our unique marks on the world. 

Modern society is wasting our time and squandering our potential.  But we need to work.  We need to eat.  We need to make money.  Even if repetition stifles the creative spirit.

The key is balancing the equation so you can create and live up to your societal obligations, while living up to your own creative potential.  This means hard work all around.  If you can make something unique in your spare time, maybe you’ll eventually break through the noise and be able to make it a full-time experience. 

We must win the war against wasted time. So live life to the fullest.  Smile more.  Give more hugs.  Tell the people you love that you love them as much as possible.  Never lose sight of your self, your own wellbeing or the wellbeing of those that matter most to you.  Multi-task like crazy.  Keep yourself active and stimulated.  Don’t be afraid to occasionally take a different route.  Change is good.  Think as much and as deeply as possible and figure out a way to make this life better for the others around you. 

It is too easy to fall into patterns.  There are times when you must resist doing so for your own good.  If you succeed, maybe your actions will make someone else’s life slightly less repetitive.

New Poetry/Prose By Lia Parisyan

Cold and jittery, wearing a damp winter coat, well past

December on a snow drift afternoon north of New York City,

watching Q-tip cotton flakes fall, melting the instant they meet

pavement miles

apart though wide-paneled windows

as a woman laments in minor, her voice rises

and soothes the quiet worries of wrinkled brows,

frowning over clock faces as I listen to the drink

orders of a hundred strangers, well into my third

refill (that's 60 ounces of steaming bold-roasted coffee).

My heart is racing, and I'm still, twirling, it seems

the world is pirouetting out of control, like a father waiting

in a room with candy and roses because first born

cigars are reserved for the black and white spaces

of 50's sitcoms, "I Love Lucy's" lung cancer, twiddling my thumbs

my head's spinning from the rush of caffeine as my phone

blinks, and makes its final sounds,

as if I needed to be alerted to digital death-- it's no surprise,

I can't afford a meal, let alone, a replacement charger

Two week withdrawal has killed my immunity to

the synthetic surge.

I walked through the park, my hair was white as a

widow's and my lashes were wet, coated with a thin layer

of delicate powder. I wandered miles today because I have no place

to call home, an atomic shadow of a nuclear family, no job, no income,

a hundred dreams, a long-distance, perpetually absent father, who

left me, pinching my cheek as if, I was some rapscallion, some coach's

star athlete, injured and replete with nothing to offer, the last words

he ever spoke, "I'm done," and he wasn't kidding

I have yet to see a dime from the child support he owes me,

a decade overdue, and it's a good thing, I haven't approached Life

like a tunnel, waiting for the glorious light at the end-- I didn't hold my breath

by now, I would have been dead and purple. Instead of Love,

I'm strangled by expectations, choked by hopes as thick as jungle vines,

wrapping around my neck and my tired limbs, waiting for my veins to swell

and pop, surrounded by predators, ready to swallow me whole like

boa constrictors.