Inventory

Do you remember how at first you carried Google Maps printouts to guide you from SoHo to the East Village? Do you remember how you stuffed the folded maps in your bag, how they’d crinkle, how months later you’d find them crushed in a canvas corner, edges ragging and begrimed?

Remember the moist tension of those first weeks and nights, the way the yellow lights ate up the dark of the streets, the way they made stages out of them. Remember the scant layer of soggy yellow leaves squelching underfoot, remember how quickly the leaves disintegrating became unbeautiful. Remember the trash scattered on sidewalks and streets like leaves, how you didn’t understand it, the aggravation it stirred in your throat. Remember how the trash too disintegrated into the pavement and concrete.

Do you remember how ugly every unbeautiful thing used to be? Do you remember the day those unbeautiful things stopped being ugly, started just being?

Do you remember the first day when emerging from a midtown subway station didn’t send the opening notes of Rhapsody surging to the sliver of a sky?

Remember when you saw that man masturbating on a subway car. Remember how his mouth hung open, how his eyes were closed, how his face and shoulders twitched and shuddered, how he moaned, how he hid his dick in a blue Doritos bag and pulsed his legs in and in and in. Remember how distant the disgust felt. Remember how much more present and urgent was the knowing what a story this would make, the high clammy man masturbating on a late night F train. Remember it was the F.

Do you remember the first time you took the N train over the Manhattan Bridge? Do you remember crossing over the East River for the first time, and remember seeing the vertical giants of Lower Manhattan rear through the smeared window?

Yes but do you remember how it felt, seeing that glass concrete and steel manmade massif? Do you remember wondering how the island didn’t buckle under the weight of the buildings piled upon it, how the buildings didn’t teeter into the water shimmering all around them?

Remember the days the water didn’t shimmer, the days the river was flat, a floor of rooftop gray. Remember too the days it came alive with wild sprays of rain. Remember the N-train day Lower Manhattan stopped hulking so huge for you, the day that scape diminished to a tableau framing the woman who stood south and east of it, her back to the window. Do you remember not understanding how N-train riders could turn their backs to the sight of Lower Manhattan?

Do you remember the hours you spent kissing in subway cars, aware but not caring what anyone was thinking? Do you remember the hours you spent crying in subway cars, aware but not caring what anyone was thinking?

Do you remember how many others you watched kissing or crying in subway cars?

Do you remember the day you thought about coffee, about millions of cups and mugs and pots and vats of it sloshing around in the city, millions of pools of hot black liquid contained in cardboard, ceramic, glass, steel, passing from hand to hand and rising up elevators and shooting through tunnels and into offices and up to lips, all those instances of almost identical liquid sloshing and splashing and spilling on white shirts, burning pink tongues, marking sterile rooms with acrid aroma? Do you remember the coffee you drank that day? Do you remember whether you added milk?

Remember wondering whether the city contained more trees or buildings. Remember wondering whether the city contained more coffee cups or windows. Remember deciding the city must contain more leaves than windows. Do you remember deciding whether this would still be true in winter?

Do you remember the trail of pink bedbug bites constellated on your calf? Do you remember the trail that dotted your lower back, the one that braceleted your wrist? Do you remember how wary you grew of your crimson down jacket?

Do you remember the night on that sagging rooftop with no railing? Do you remember the other night on that other rooftop with the F train snaking through the black distance? Do you remember the cold gleam on the Gowanus canal the first time you walked over it? Do you remember how romantic that night seemed to feel?

Remember you compared the scene to moonlit Venice, though you’ve never been to Venice.

Remember the lusty dawn gleam of the Empire State Building from the Sunnyside 7 platform, the rosy gold of midtown from a morning distance. Remember orange sun glinting off countless windows.

Remember when you started saying you thought too much about trains.

Remember how many times you stared over the shoulders of people reading books on trains. Do you remember how many times people noticed you staring? Do you remember how many times you determined what book a person was reading?

Do you remember dragging your dirty laundry tote along the sidewalk even though you knew you shouldn’t? Do you remember how it finally burst, scattering your dirty clothes like leaves on the concrete? Do you remember the face of each person who helped, and each who laughed?

Remember every apple core lodged in every gutter. Remember every word of every language you heard spoken everywhere.

Remember the first night you felt like the loneliest person in the world. Remember the third, fourth, fifth and seventeenth nights you felt like the loneliest person in the world. Remember the obese scooter-bound lady ahead of you in line at the grocery store. Remember how she bought a quart of ice cream and you thought maybe you weren’t the loneliest person in the world. Remember the taste of guilt for connecting the lady and the loneliness. Remember paying for your eggs.

Forget nothing. Forget nothing.

Union Square Park

          “Look at the dog! Look at the dog! Look at the dog! Sophie Sophie Sophie Sophie, look at the dog!” Peter and Harry look at the dog.
          “Ewwwww,” says Harry. “It’s all wet. The dog is all wet.” The dog is all wet. Sophie, circling the stroller, is uninterested.
          “It’s still—it’s—why is it all wet Mummy?” Thomas says. The day is sunny and warm. The few clouds don’t forebode rain.
          “Perhaps he had a bath,” Mummy says. She is seated on the bench where Peter is dangling and Thomas is standing. She is holding two small bags of potato ships, a fancy brand. Piecemeal lunch items are scattered all around her.
          “He’s a rat dog,” Harry says. “They take a rat and they take a dog and they make a baby and it’s a rat dog, innit?” He nudges Peter.
          “I reckon,” Peter says. The dog is black and white, some sort of small terrier. It shakes water drops off itself. The man holding its leash wears a tank top that displays his toned arms and shorts that display his lean legs. He and the wet dog are walking away down the path.
          “Can I pet him Mummy?” says Thomas.
          “Course not. He’s not your dog, is he? Here, have a crisp.” Thomas takes the proffered potato chip. He puts the whole thing in his mouth at once. His mouth isn’t quite big enough to crunch it easily. Sophie has tired of circling the stroller and makes a sudden run for the faded green lawn in front of the benches.
          “Hup hup hup hup hup,” says Daddy, grabbing the back of her bright pink dress. Sophie is shocked to be stopped. Her big blue eyes bug. Her little red mouth opens but she doesn’t cry, just reaches—
Daddy swings Sophie around, setting her on a trajectory towards Mummy, who is now dispensing chunks of cantaloupes from a clear container purchased at one of the food carts that ring the square. Sophie accepts a chunk with two hands. She sucks and gums and gnaws at it.
           Daddy wipes his forehead. It’s his job to keep the family all hemmed in to the little fort they have created in the park. It’s about as easy a task as sweeping spilt water. Just now, for example, Harry has—he has dropped a twig on Peter’s head, and he is scampering away screeching but Peter tackles him, they tussle, laughing at least — “Boys,” Mummy says, and “Boys” when they don’t respond at first. The tone of the second call makes them lift their heads.
          “Get over here,” Mummy says. “No fighting.”
          “We weren’t fighting,” Peter says. “We were playing.” Still, they untangle themselves from the mess of little-boy limbs. They are filmed in pale dusty dirt.
          “Stay where I can see you,” Mummy says. She fixes a tiny bonnet on Sophie’s blond head. With that and her ankle-length pink dress, Sophie looks as cupcake-like as a toddler can. The children’s hair color signifies their age as accurately as their height: Sophie’s hair is blinding in its almost-whiteness, Thomas’s bowl-cut locks are golden, Harry’s shoulder-length mane is sandy, and Peter’s close-cropped hair is nearly as brown as his Daddy’s.
          “John,” says Mummy. “Do you remember what the weather’s supposed to be like tomorrow?”
          “Not as nice as today I think,” Daddy says. “Rain maybe.” Sophie has batted her bonnet to the ground, which is an asphalt-paved path that borders this side of the park.
          “Look look look look look,” Thomas says. He is pointing to the retreating form of a tall man in a body-length black coat.
          “Stop pointing, it’s rude,” Mummy says.
          “He’s wearing all black,” Thomas says.
          “Doesn’t mean you should point at him.”
          “But he’s wearing a coat. Isn’t he too hot?” Mummy retrieves Sophie’s bonnet and tugs it back onto Sophie’s head. Sophie fusses and throws her mangled lump of cantaloupe to the ground.
          “I reckon he is hot,” Mummy says.
          “So why’s he wearing a coat?” Thomas says.
          “He’s being foolish,” Mummy says. Thomas tugs Peter’s leg.
          “Foolish. He’s being foolish,” Thomas says.
          “Cut it,” says Peter, who is teetering on the brink of adolescence like a puppy about to grow into its oversized paws. Peter is all elbow and knee and scabby shin. His skin is brown for a Brit’s, but it is midsummer. Peter kicks with the leg that his brother is holding. This sends Thomas tumbling into Sophie, who plops to her bum in surprise.
          “The museums then,” Mummy says. “We’ll go to the museums tomorrow, in the rain. And today—”
          “Statue of Liberty!” says Harry, now standing tall on the bench. He thrusts up on arm as though bearing a torch, then jumps down to the ground. He lands inches from his little sister.
          “No, Empire State Building,” says Peter. Sophie’s bonnet is on the ground again.
          “Look at the man! Look at the man! Mummy Mummy Mummy look at him.” This is Thomas, of course.
          “Thomas, I told you. Don’t point.”
          “But he’s sleeping.” The man does appear to be sleeping. He has one leg up on the bench across the path from the family fort. One hand covers his face.
          “He looks like a bowling ball,” Peter says.
          “He’s all dirty and hairy,” Harry says.
          “Why’s he got bandages all over his arms?” says Thomas.
          “Shhh!” hisses Mummy. “You’re being very rude.”
          “Baaaaaaaaaa,” says Sophie.
          “But he’s sleeping,” says Thomas. Peter swings Sophie onto his shoulders. She opens her mouth in a smile and drums her sticky hands on his head.
          “It’s rude anyway.”
          “Can I touch him?”
          “Absolutely not.”
          “Why?”
          “Would you want a perfect stranger touching you?”
          “But he’s sleeping. He won’t know. I promise.”
          “No.”
           Thomas has been edging towards the sleeping man. Now he makes a run for it crying “Just with one finger I promise I promise” but Mummy leaps from the bench and grabs his skinny arm. Her fingernails dig into his tender skin.
          “Owwwwwwwwwwww,” says Thomas.
          “That man is dangerous,” Mummy says. She drags Thomas back to the family bench and settles her plump bottom amongst the clutter of their lunch litter.
          “Owwwwwwwwwwww,” says Thomas, though Mummy has released his arm.
          “Why’s he dangerous?” says Harry.
          “He’s dirty,” Peter says. “He’s got bugs and viruses. And he pees on himself, innit Mum. You’d get sick if you touched him.” Peter dangles Sophie by her ankles. She squeals with pleasure. Thomas has stopped squealing, though sustains the trauma with a minor whimper. Mummy’s fingernails have left red marks.
          “Why’s he so fat?” Thomas says through his pout.
          “I ‘spect he eats a lot of rubbish,” Peter says.
          “Looks like they’re equally easy to get to from here,” Daddy says. He is consulting a large unruly map and a guidebook. Daddy is young but worn and very thin. He wears a loose T-shirt, a non-baseball baseball cap and three days stubble.
          “Dangerous,” Thomas says.
          A breeze through the elm trees shuffles the sunlight. Sophie, back on the ground, looks up. Thomas is tugging Harry’s arm.
          “Whichever one has less walking,” Mummy says. “I can’t take much more today.”
          “Looks like—” Daddy says.
          “Harry,” Thomas says. He has moved to the left, and he is looking to the bench left of Mummy and Daddy. They can’t hear him.
          “Well it looks like—like—” Daddy says.
          “Bog off,” Harry says to Thomas. He’s not looking at his little brother. His eye is on a particular elm tree. Peter is giving this tree a serious assessment. He is running his hands against its trunk.
          “Well the Empire State Building’s much closer to the hotel,” Daddy says.
          “Brilliant,” Mummy says. “Then that’s what we’re doing.” Mummy is heavy and already dowdy. She is wearing a plain cotton T-shirt and loose jeans. Not much care has gone into her dark hair. The ponytail can’t restrain its coarse frizz.
          “That lady,” Thomas says to Harry. “She’s got – she’s – she’s got a knife.” Harry sneaks a look. She does have a knife. “Is she — she’s — she’s dangerous, isn’t she?”
          “Quit being an idiot,” Harry says.
          “But but but she’s got a knife,” Thomas says. Harry has skirted away. The elm that Peter is eyeing has a particularly thick trunk and a profusion of knobs. Peter is testing it for footholds, running his precociously gangly hands up the bark and making first endeavors with his feet.
          “I could climb it faster than you,” Harry says.
          “Could not,” Peter says with all the authority of an older brother. “You’re shorter.”
           Sophie has discovered the iron-wrought leg of the bench where Mummy is sitting. She pats her hands against it. Her face is close – a model baby girly face, round and milky, symmetrical, no flaws to throw in question the potential for future beauty. She licks the bench leg.
          “And after the Empire State Building, I’m perfectly content to go back to the hotel for a nap. I’m content staying in the hotel the rest of the night.” Neither Peter nor Harry is having much success scrambling up the tree. It has no low branches.
          “Mummy Mummy Mummy,” Thomas says. Half of his golden hair is sticking straight up on his head.
          “Fine with me,” Daddy says.
          “Mummy!”
          “What is it, Thomas?” Mummy says. She smoothes the errant hair.
          “I have something to tell you.”
          “Alright.”
          “That lady. She’s got – she’s got a knife.” Mummy’s face stiffens. She turns her head in the direction Thomas is pointing.
          “Keep your voice down, Thomas,” Mummy says. There is a thump. Harry has landed flat-footed, bent-kneed on the pavement. He holds his arms out in front of him longer than necessary before standing. Peter’s jump from the tree doesn’t make nearly as much noise.
          “Sophie’s licking the bench!” says Harry.
          “Soph – Sophie – grab her –” Harry is already dragging Sophie away from her iron lick as Mummy frets.
          “But Mummy,” Thomas says. He has clambered back up onto the bench next to Mummy. His hands are pressing into her left shoulder. He can still fit into her lap, but he does fill up the whole thing. “Isn’t she dangerous?”
          “But I want to go to the Statue of Liberty,” Harry says. He hurls his cap to the ground.
          “Harry, you’ll like the Empire State Building,” Daddy says. “It’s much higher up than the Statue of Liberty. You can see farther.”
          “Mummy Mummy Mummy,” Thomas says.
          “She can hear every word you’re saying, Thomas,” Mummy seethes. This is true.
          “Up,” Sophie says. “Up. Up!” She is stretching her hands up above her head.
          “Can’t either,” Thomas says. Harry picks up his hat and beats it against his pants. He creates a cloud of dust.
          “Sophie said ‘up!’” Peter says. “Did you hear that?” she said ‘up.’”
           Everyone is silent. The park continues to bustle. Sophie is silent. She is looking up at the bench and her brothers and her parents and the trees and the sky.
          “Up, Sophie, up!” Harry says. Sophie flaps her arms up and down, up and down. Harry lifts her high and she squeals.
          “But Mummy—”
          “Thomas—”
          “She can’t hear me or she’d look over,” Thomas says.
          “Will you shut it,” Mummy says. She is wearing a self-conscious expression.
          “Only, only if she’s got a knife, isn’t she dangerous?”
          “Thomas another word and I’ll punish you for the rest of the holiday and—”
          “But isn’t she dangerous?”
          “She’s using the knife to slice a tomato, Thomas. And now I’m embarrassed.”
          “But she’s not looking over so she can’t hear me,” Thomas says.
           Up to this point he was correct. But then, maybe to make Thomas happy or maybe to make Mummy happy, or maybe just to see all six pairs of their eyes at once, I did turn my head and look over.

Two thoughts

1. I populate the escape


I want to sit with my knees spread
wide
elbows resting on thighs,
hands clasped hanging
in the middle,

my spine
a casual curve and only the trees
to see me.

My generous jeans will barely skim
the skin of my generous thighs and
the plain top pressing my chest
will never have heard the word
style.

A cap will hold back my hair
still long so dark like silk I sighed
when he used to touch it

when she used to touch it I
was Sampson.


2. and return.


I discovered the pillow speckled
with drops of your old blood:
an unfinished Seurat

from the night you had
that ear infection —
I remember how your

pain and my inability
to make things better
pierced me.

I shouldn’t address you.
You aren’t here and you don’t
hear.

Tell me: should I throw away
the pillow?

Waiting

Why am I writing? I am writing because I need to make myself believe that two unbearable hours of my life were not a complete and utter waste of time — my time — my scarce, precious, valuable hours and minutes and seconds ever diminishing and always not used as they should be used.

I arrived at the train station on time. So on time. I had twenty minutes to spare, in fact. I ducked out of work a full half hour early, left myself forty minutes for the 15 minute subway ride from Union Square to Penn Station. I’m an anxious traveler — no, I’m an anxious person — so when preparing for trips that matter to me, I give myself plenty of minutes as padding against a fit of panic.

In this instance, the caution was unnecessary. I printed my Amtrak ticket, heart full with anticipation of the four day weekend about to begin: an escape from the steamy city, time to see family and friends up North, a day in the plain hominess of Boston and then a quick trip to the White Mountains for hiking, quiet breeze, the smell of pine, the primal pleasures of backcountry camping.

When I saw the Departures board, my heart sank. It’s a cliché, but it works. In my case heart-sinking feeling is not even a little bit metaphorical: when I learn time is being stolen from me, my chest literally clenches. My heart thuds. My brain reels. My breath goes staccato. 5:40 REGIONAL TO BOSTON: 1:00 LATE, the board said. For half a second I let myself believe the train would be one minute behind, but the information lady banished my hope. “Do you know why?” I asked. Pleaded. She clicked her mouse a few times, pursed her lips. “Mmmmm, hon. Looks like—yep, looks like the train’s experiencing mechanical difficulties.” “Will it really depart in another hour?” She shook her head, ever so slowly. So calmly. “That’s what it says,” she said.

To make a long and agonizing story short, the train left Penn Station an hour and fifty minutes after the scheduled departure time. Why is the story long? Why so terribly torturous? Did I lose luggage? Was I mugged in the meantime? Did I miss all my important evening engagements in Boston? No. I didn’t have evening engagements. My Dad was to pick me up at the station and drive me home, where I would flop in front of the TV for a couple hours before flopping into bed for the night. But the delay meant that I — me — Stephanie — had to wait.

I know people who wouldn’t be fazed by this inconvenient turn of events. Most come from California. It’s an hour and a half, they’d say, an hour and a half in which you have no other plans, an hour and a half over the course of your whole life. This is the situation. It is out of your control. So calm down and get over it. Stressing out won’t make you feel any better, and it certainly won’t make the train come faster. These people are absolutely right, and I admire and detest them in equal measure. I wish my mind could be appeased by such a lucid line of reasoning.

But I come from a long line of worriers, and at 23 I fear that a combination of genetics and conditioning has engrained inerasable panic patterns into my neural pathways. I never really minded traffic on childhood road trips — after all, I was usually curled up in the backseat, more or less asleep — but the merest whiff of a jam could transform my slightly on-edge Dad into a raving lunatic. His shoulders tensed. He slammed his hands against the wheel. He couldn’t bear the sound of anyone’s voice, and his own voice grew harsh and raspy. I can’t count the number of times over the years that my Mom threatened to get out of the car if he didn’t calm down. (“Fine! You’d get there faster walking!”) She never made good on it.

Now, living in New York, I feel the same uncontrollable rage surging in my chest half the time I ride the subway. My pulse races a little just thinking about the torture of being stuck on a motionless N train for minutes on end (two, maybe!) due to “traffic ahead of us.” It’s funny and it’s not. If I were someone else on the car, watching the freckled girl swell more like a hen with each passing second, I would probably laugh. But the thing is, I’m me. And dammit, I want to get where the hell I’m going.

So take your mind off it, I tell myself. Do something productive while you wait. That was my goal as the interminable minutes ticked by at Penn Station. After all, I’m a writer. I had pens, I had paper, I had a computer. I had several projects to work on. Get to it, slacker. Okay. My resolve lasted 90 seconds. I’d found a seat directly in front of the departures board, opened my laptop, clicked into a Word document. Then I looked up: 5:40 REGIONAL TO BOSTON: 1:10 LATE. The cursedly calm among you will have to imagine how this new development affected me. Imagine canon-balling into an icy lake. Then lightning strikes the water.

But why? Will your mother die of grief if you’re home a few hours later than planned? Do you need to disable a bomb that will destroy the whole city of Boston if you don’t make it in time? Of course not. But — but — what if —

The sentence cannot be completed because there is no logical reason for the panic that seizes every square inch of my body when time eludes my control. My rational half tells my frenzied half to calm the fuck down: no one is dying, no one is hurt, nothing is wrong. You’re a selfish little whiner, my brain tells me. All the problems in the world — famine and cancer and war and dying polar bears — and all you can think about is your own infinitesimal blip of a nuisance. Bitch.

My brain (and the Californians) are absolutely right, but their wise words don’t me calm down. Nor do they allow me to focus on my work: the Word document remains blank. It’s the same on the subway, where I always read. If the car grinds to a halt, even for a moment, I drop my book and look around — for what? Clues? And I can’t re-immerse myself until we’re on the move again.

In the tendency of our era, I assume this panic impulse is biological. I don’t want to leave my survival (or morning commute) in the hands of another — I want control over my own fate. In caveman days, there would have been no one to forage berries for me, no one to run from the saber-toothed tiger on my behalf. It was fend for yourself or die. No time to rest.

But, Steph, those days are long over so—

I know!

However, knowing doesn’t make it any easier to start typing when God only knows how long it’ll be until the train finally makes it to the station and I can — the Departure Board blinks — 5:40 REGIONAL TO BOSTON: 1:20 LATE.

Okay. It’s fine. Just another ten minutes (but what if it ends up being another three hours?) Forget about work. Just pass the time. There’s Wifi. (Should I trade in my ticket for another train?) I check my email. Chat with some friends. (There’s no way of knowing if switching will save you time. No.) Craigslist — a friend is looking for a new apartment. Might as well see what’s out there. (Is there anything else I can do to get home faster? Should I ask?) I try reading the paper online, but my eyes drift to the Departures board every other sentence. Ditto when I try reading my book. My palms are slippery with sweat.

There are drugs for people like me. As a policy I maintain a holier-than-thou attitude regarding Ativan and Prozac and Zoloft and whatever else, but tonight I swear I’d go Rush Limbaugh on any pill that promised to release me from my ridiculous panic. I wonder if they sell sleeping pills or even Benadryl at the newsstand. Whiskey would work too. A burning swig of it. Had the train been on time I could have made it out to Cambridge for a quick drink with my friends but—

Stop. It’s not just the caveman survival thing. Or maybe it’s the same thing at its core, but nurture has beaten it into such a different shape and wrapped it in so many layers that maybe it’s time to give it a new name altogether (or maybe not). I simply believe that my time — my minutes, hours, seconds — are more valuable than anyone else’s. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. After all, trains are delayed. Planes are late. People are late. The world is constantly disrupting our schedules with engine breakdowns, volcanic eruptions, whatever — and time is ever leaking like water from our fingers. But I only really care when it happens to me.

(A side note: my Dad and I differ in this respect. Driving on the highway, he actually gets worked up to see traffic stalling in the other direction, even if our side of the road is clear.)

A couple questions arise in my mind. Why do I find my own time so valuable that losing a mere hour or two of it can throw me into inner hysterics? If it is so damn important, is there any way of reclaiming that lost time, any way to convince myself that it wasn’t wasted after all?

Regarding the second question, I’ve got to start by saying that not everyone thinks the way I do. Some people read mass-market paperbacks for pleasure, enjoy blow-‘em-up action movies, take trips to Vegas. They are — you know — normal. Before I start sounding too uppity, let it be clear I don’t consider myself even a smidgen smarter or better than people who partake in these activities designed for amusement. After all, they have the good sense to give their minds a break. Studies show that people who can “live for the moment” experience lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity, and all the other maladies that make health care so stupidly expensive.

I, on the other hand, let a claw of guilt circle my neck every time I engage in an activity that’s not somehow educational, healthful, productive, or caring. Going home counts as healthful (social), as does hiking in New Hampshire (active, restorative, contemplative). New experiences and good literature count as educational (enlarging perception of the world); any work, writing or otherwise, is productive; and any act of giving-back-to-others is caring.

Amusement parks do not count. Nightclubs do not count. Waiting — in a heart-banging ear-buzzing throat-choking state of absolute helplessness and uselessness — most certainly does not count. And the more I agonize over each wasted second, the less I am able to focus on other tasks and thus redeem the time, answering my own question.

If this were a proper essay with a conflict, argument, and tidy conclusion, this is where I’d check into a Zen monastery and learn how to meditate (to date, my meditation attempts have felt like a waste of time). Or I’d sign up for yoga. Start drinking green tea. If all Eastern calming cures failed, I’d tap a shrink and learn that my fear of waiting has a name. Late-train-a-phobia. But I haven’t done any of those things. I’m 23 and don’t have money for fancy solutions. Thankfully my anxiety hasn’t been severe enough to land me in an emergency room or a psych ward.

So without a conclusion, without that final step where I “accept” those hours in the filthy pit of Penn Station as lost and move on with my life, without “coming to terms” with my propensity to lose control when time is out of my control, without stepping onto the Amtrak and soaring north into New England and my weekend, without any ability to move forward, how do I — how do I—

Those hours. My hours. I won’t release them into the pit where so many others have tumbled and will tumble. I think you see where I’m going. I think you see what I’ve managed to wring from them. I think you must now decide whether or not those hours were wasted — and, frankly, whether the last twelve minutes of your life were wasted as well. Deciding for myself, I’m left with new questions: does all writing (mine and others’) derive from some neurotic human need to justify how we spend our hours? Is this impulse the seed of all creative expression? If it is, do we need to reevaluate the worth of creative expression? It’s a possibility I won’t be pondering next time I’m waiting for the N to get the hell moving.