Monster in the Subway

I am very, very disappointed in myself, and this disappointment turned me into a terrible monster today, made better now only because e made breakfast for dinner and helped me henna my roots, a process my mother used to call a “hennema” (pronounce like “enema”), which makes me laugh. And a hennema’d laughing monster isn’t so scary after all, now is she?

Reason for disappointment and resulting monster? Many. But mainly the fact that I got excused from jury duty today way, way early and could have snagged a secret writing afternoon and no one would have known and yet for some weird mysterious reason I did not want to go home and emailed my boss that I was coming in. I regretted it on the subway, and wanted to turn around, wanted to GO BACK, but by then it was too late. Grrrrr.

So basically I could have written today and didn’t.

But, you know what, the monster was awake this morning, long before this happened. She was filled with intense frustration and anxiety over the fact that it took the 6 train almost twenty minutes to go three stops downtown, idling in the dark tunnels between stations at every turn. The metallic computer voice on those trains explaining the delay did not soothe the monster. It was between Canal Street and Brooklyn Bridge / City Hall that she felt sure she would rise up out of her orange seat and tear silver poles out of the floor and slam them against the windows and shake the car with her ROAR. I guess she was just nervous about being late for jury duty.

But then the monster saw this quote by E. B. White on the subway wall about the very city in whose tunnels she was stalled in:

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.

The monster faltered.

You see, she—I, I’m losing sight of the monster now—I am a settler here. I’m here for a reason. On this quest, the one that has nothing whatsoever to do with my day job. I adore New York, remember? My monster really does want to be here.

So I have to be here. Take advantage. Because who knows how much longer we can afford to stay.