wandering

The bright gold and marble of Grand Central always leaves me disoriented. Times Square might be busier, Penn Station might have more trains, but standing in Grand Central immediately pulls my eyes up to the constellations above with as much awe as the very first time I came here, a visitor in a strange new world. I’m jostled a little by a passing commuter, and I watch as their individual shape emerges in front of me as they reorient themselves, and then melds back into the pulsing flow of specks being pumped through this station. Finding a vantage point outside the currents, I allow myself to properly admire the Sky Ceiling. Sea-greens and blues swim between glowing stars and constellations, opposite to how they’d appear on Earth, and even though the piece is painted from the perspective of the gods, I’ve never felt smaller. In one corner of the hall, a strange section of black ceiling touches the vibrant color: a small piece left untouched after a renovation cleaned up the rest of the artwork which had been tinted soot-black from decades of smoke and pollution. A simple reminder to everyone that beauty left uncared-for will surely tarnish.

I glance over, and my eyes are dragged to the dark spot, lines and colors barely recognizable within it. As I trace its outline, circling again and again, the decay almost feels inevitable, the darkness the fate of all things.

Even this place is not immune to time. Mortal, like the rest of us.

(Darkness reaching out and taking hold of me as it spreads from the inside out.)

I’ve always had a soft spot for the subway. When my mind is occupied by the existential and my soul aches for a reprise from the routines of life, these underground arteries are where I head - amidst the bustle and bombardment of the senses - to think. Traveling through this beating heart, I allow myself to just wander, exploring the subway not as a means to an end but a place and a world in and unto itself. All the while in my busy mind, I find myself searching the depths for…something. Maybe it’s beauty; or the answer to life, the universe, and everything… I don’t know if it really matters. All I need to know is when I feel it pushing me, nudging me onwards, whispering in my ear with its siren song.

Keep going.

The familiar patterns trace themselves along the tiled walls as I descend deeper, crossing the threshold into an open car on the platform with the lightest touch of a thought. With a lurch that jostles my mind for a lucid moment, I watch the platform blur and stretch. The train plunges into the darkness, its cry against the tracks enveloping me.

When we stop at Canal St, I make my way down the corridors between the platforms. As I walk, simple “C” decals morph to renovated mosaics in glimmering sea-green and gold tones; an extra two tracks, one with rails and the other torn up like a long abandoned worksite, lie dormant in the center of the Broadway local. The pieces of this station feel connected but distinct, a collage of different histories and styles turned into something new of its own. Ahead of me, a strangely familiar figure turns to walk up the stairs. With a shocked breath our eyes meet - and I’m looking at myself what feels like a lifetime ago. As they turn to take another cautious step forward, eyes dancing with anticipation and fear, I realize I know where they’re headed that fateful day, and I find myself smiling with the knowledge that that face won’t be long for this world.

I wonder if they could see me now, if it’d feel like me walking through this station - the two of us connected, but made of new parts, the new extending but never touching the old. As I catch up to them, their image fades in my mind, and they’re gone. They were never really here, and neither was I.

(The shards of a shattered self dig into my feet with every step.)

Keep going.

The station I find myself in now feels… off, in that curious way where my conscious mind has to catch up to what, exactly, my subconscious has noticed; and then I see it, and suddenly it becomes very clear. There’s more station, two whole platforms, mirrors of the ones I’m standing on, lying in the dark on either side of the active tracks. The green mosaic designs on the walls just barely stand out in the void that has half-consumed the station. At either end of the dark platforms, a look into two extra tunnels reveals nothing but darkness and a sense of dampness, though I know not far through there lies the transit museum in the otherwise-abandoned Court St station. The tracks to the museum were never used for their intended purpose, nor were the “Spanish solution” double-platformed tracks which no train of the last fifty years can use. And yet the station still sits here, in use, a strange testament to the future of the past and what they imagined the city would look like now. Standing in it, there’s a sticky feeling, somewhere between sombre and terror, that catches my thoughts and lets them hang in the damp air as in the reflection of the platform I see a reflection of myself.

A mistake. A failure. A waste.

(Green mosaics lit by moonlight and the glow of the skyline.)

Keep going.

As we accelerate and my mind wanders, the green tiles blur from one shade to the next and I find myself walking through a passage and changing trains, traveling further out into the city. Greens have passed into deep azures and violets, until the express train rushes by platforms glazed sunset orange. I see Briarwood, with its mosaic signs reading “Van Wyck Blvd”, and in the back of my mind I reflect on how old names stick around, and whether the small “Briarwood” subtitles in the station would one day take their true place. Another part of me wonders if the past really ever lets go like that.

And in the hazy reflection of the window as the train drags itself out of the lights once more, I see a reflection form. It wobbles and flickers in the uncertain lighting, and for a moment I see myself; and then, as if scared away by my gaze, she’s gone. In her place is another ghost of my past, copying me. I look away, but the pang in my chest stays.

(Running from the spectres of my past.)

Keep going.

The train cars drag themselves and us up into the dimming light of the surface, winding through the city on glinting metallic structures older than anyone aboard. Tendrils rise out of the streets like limbs of a sleeping colossus; in time, more join from left and right, merging into a great figure climbing out from the earth and looking up to the sky. There are pieces missing and torn from her body, leaving scars, holes, tracks leading up and then abruptly ending in midair - but in that moment I fail to find anything short of beauty in all of it. Staring out the window, there’s a moment of silence, briefly, shared in the bustle and noise of the city; a solitary moment between her and I, while everyone around me looks but does not see the well-traveled paths of their commute, and I stare into the face of the expected and am overwhelmed by what stares back at me. I disembark and wind down the stairs and escalators to the station’s core, and I pass myself on my first wanderings, watching the sun rise and trying my hand at some urban photography. I sat for many long minutes watching that dawn, wondering about transition and life and waiting for the next train to whisk me away. So much of who I was back then is gone - broken, cast aside, or just plain wrong.

Are those scars beautiful too? I wish I could see my own through the same eyes that see the colossus in all her glory.

Is that why I’m here, wandering through this place again?

(Why am I here at all?)

Keep going.

Under the surface, another platform lies, and I board a train there as almost everyone else gets off, heading back up the way I came. I peer out the window as we start moving to admire the cream tiling and shimmering blue accents leading out to the Rockaways, pristine and relatively unscathed by the decades of repairs and refits which have been done across the system. As they flow by, they always remind me of the ocean to which I’m heading. With a flourish, the sky and streets appear again as the tracks curve south across the bay. The warped voice coming from the conductor announces the last stop, and I step out into the cool air of the above-ground station. The almost-sea-breeze coming from the south beckons me towards the very edges of the city. As the sun casts its rose-gold glow between the skyscrapers behind me, I walk out across the street, down the block, and in a short while reach the boardwalk; Rockaway Beach waves a quiet hello and the breeze blows my hair across my face. Finding a place to sit and watch the light fade and what stars will fight through the haze to greet me, I see shadows of myself, all the times my wanderings have led through here. There are years of history here, different versions of me all pulled by the same unnamed force. All me, and yet all so alien.

Why can’t I recognize myself?

(Reflections in the still, black water, shimmering with silent lights.)

Keep going.

Turning my back to the wordless sea, I can just make out the end of the tracks a block inland, tracing their way back where I came, back to the rest of the city. In the dimming light, the iron and concrete arches of the trackway catch the sun, every imperfection and eye-sore glowing with a quality that I can’t quite place. There’s almost a charm to the imperfections, one that would be missing if everything had been planned out and executed perfectly like it could have been, and… looking back from the very end at all the system’s ethereal form, in her mistakes I see myself, and in her beauty I see the world. And so through her, through this strange camaraderie between the heart of the city and a young woman making her way through it, I feel for a moment like I’m brought closer to all the world.

(A veil between worlds.)

Keep going.

The evening air feels chilly, and as my thoughts crash against the beach like waves, the feelings of wonder begin to take a darker tone. I can’t ignore the feeling of my breath in my core, the pause between inhale and exhale, each exhale shorter than the inhale before. After the journey, all the wandering, all the beauty… why can’t I make myself get up and leave? Sitting here after a long day searching for answers unknown, supposedly content, all I can think of is it pushing me, nudging me onwards, whispering in my ear with its siren song.

Keep going.

Is there a difference between wandering and running away? Sometimes I wonder if this part of me is driven less by wonder of what’s out there, as much as fear of what’s in here. Maybe I’m not trying to find anything at all. Maybe I’m wandering further and further away until I’ve lost myself… except it doesn’t work. I’m still here with my shadows. Still staring at my reflection, the one thing you can’t run away from. In the water, in the shadows, in my head. All I can see.

Keep going.

Darkness reaching out and taking hold of me as it spreads from the inside out.

The shards of a shattered self dig into my feet with every step.

Small green mosaics lit by moonlight and the glow of the skyline.

Running from the spectres of my past.

Why am I here at all?

Reflections in the still, black water, shimmering with silent lights.

A veil between worlds.

Keep going.

The loudest beat of silence, a whole life splayed out on these tracks. Beginning, middle, end. A blink, empty hours passing me by in a weightless instant, and then -

Warmth in my chest.

And I wipe the tears from my eyes, and try to dry them off my shirt, and look up from my bed in to see raindrops dancing on my window in the urban twilight.

And I’m back home.

Except maybe part of me is still out there, trapped in that reflection in the water.

Or maybe I’m not here at all.