Under

I love the new york city subway. Now you guys who are just here for the evening, the weekend, or a business trip may think I'm crazy but in all the time I've spent here its one of the places that I feel the safest. In between intermittent glances exchanged by strangers, this time is the only time when new yorkers have time to breathe. Now the air may not breath with the freshness of california's majestic coastline, but it breaths real. It breathes the blood sweat and tears of a single mother in light blue scrubs who spends her whole day nursing everyone else back to heath that she cannot find time for her own. This city breeds an infinite number of the struggling. struggling artists, struggling lovers, struggling mothers, struggling husbands and struggling brothers. Its one of the only places you'll find new yorkers with their guard down. Strangers sit within inches of each other unified in one goal. Just get me home. Underground, the perils of the rest of the world stop. You can't get us. You can't text, tweet, email, call, bbm, IM, ghat or facebook me. You.can't.touch.me. The burdens that resurface when I hit ground level are temporarily at ease. The stress is gone because for the six stops between here and Carroll street the world does not exist. And should I be so lucky to hear the, "ladies and gentleman we are delayed because of train traffic ahead of us" I know I've stolen a few more minutes for my mind to be still. Be still. Be still with an ipod that is connected to nothing and just listen. Listen with every morsel of your being. You'll hear things in that "I am old fashioned" arrangement you didn't know were there and that, for the final time will have proven john coletrain's residence amongst the best. Read. Read a real book. Pause. Look around. And the look condescendingly at the hipster elitism that resides in the 9 kindles on your car alone because you just so happen to be going into brooklyn. Feel the pages, the grainy texture of a modern library classic creased four times at the most telling places that you can't wait to get to. Ingest every word as though it is a part of your diet that you cannot be without; for missing it means you would not have made you daily nutritional requirements. Feel the authors brush strokes as he paints the image that will continue to evolve with every page. "The artist is a creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim". Oscar Wilde's starting blocks to a journey to two hundred and sixty six pages of freedom from my own skin. Damn. "Please stand clear of the closing doors". Above ground. I'm me again.