new york

or is it?

I am sitting on the 4 heading down. At 59th, they really crowd in, humid from the rain. I look up to see who is with me.

There is a man standing over me, gripping the ceiling bar with both hands. He is in his twenties. His eyes are closed. He is wearing a beige sweater with one of those turtleneck collars that comes up around the neck and flares out at the top. Black rimmed glasses, thick eyebrows. I know, somehow, that he hates his reflection today, that he will not see a world that might see him.

He is making these deep rasping sounds, sniffling. At first I think he has a cold, and I wish he wasn’t standing directly over me. But as I study him, I see that his face is turned inward. He is crying—

crying in, toward himself, crying in the most lonely of ways, the way you cry when you are not letting your suffering flow: jerky, swallowed, grasped and withheld. Two thoughts run through my head: his father has died; a lover has rejected him.

He knows no one will see him. Certainly not the 30 something man next to him wearing that olive patchwork scarf, reading an old issue of The New Yorker. I thought maybe the girl next to me with the patched up soccer jersey might have noticed, but I couldn’t catch her eye.

There he is and here am I, staring. I want to reach out to him; I want to touch his hand. I want to give. Have you noticed that it is hard to witness someone's pain? I want to look away. Open your fucking eyes. Look at me. I see you. See me. We are suffering too. Please, I don’t want to sit here, watching your pain, alone. Be with me, for a moment. It doesn’t belong only to you!

No surprise: shortly after these men arrived at the fence, their conversation turned philosophical.

This is one of the most poetic places in the city. When it is gusting, I like to lean over the fence. I find myself suddenly reconnected to space. Here, feeling flows through the body like wind. It is less contained—the recollection of an ancient memory, so intrinsic that it is effortlessly freed.

The buildings from this vantage take on a scenic majesty that often reminds me of looking at mountains. Always, I feel a surge of joy and relief followed by a sense of calm. Physical landscape and consciousness mirror each other. The visual perspective of this place provokes reflection, introspection, depth. On cool windy evenings when shadows are long and the light is deep, many people simply hug the fence and gaze out.

How is it that what we experience as isolation in crowds becomes attentive, expansive solitude in open space?

Together we made strangers of ourselves. We knew this and bore
it with dignity. Of the things we did not speak, the tacks
we made in mind and poise, the coolness with which we moved

in crowds, each of us encased as if by glass, none
would meet another gaze. It was this merit that afforded us containment.
It was this inwardness that held us out against annihilation.

We moved in multitudes, our erratic swarming
well channeled by the canyons of the country we inhabited—
the philosophical repose our buildings held, the cool formality of light

upon our towers. To each other, we were a restive scenery,
like the sidling forms of cats, the emergent patterns of the ants.
Upon us, an otherness crept. We moved privately

through the public spaces of our lives. We learned not to see
what we were, even when forced violently into intimate proximities,
even when we held each other to keep from falling.

We held our lives in thin separation above and below, left and right.
Years might have passed, we might have never learned who we were.
We made strangers of ourselves and to ourselves became strangers—
in our absence, we grew frozen and small.

Sometimes we were quiet, alone in the spaces we inhabited but did not share
We moved down the stone steps of our architecture, clutching
our briefcases, our jackets, our selves. Sometimes we waited,

our hearts silent in the greatness of the private country that we had built.
We looked out upon the longings of our consciousness.
We felt sadness in what had entered us. For the newness of our love unborn.

I feel affection for the man in this photo. He seems content to me, eating alone on a Saturday morning, reading his paper. This does not feel like a photo about loneliness. Although you can see out into the street and feel the presence of the empty chair, all the energy is centered on his face, his gaze down to the paper, the small island of solitude he has created. I did not see him look up once, but he contributed such a positive energy to the room.

That was some frothy cream

They felt private. It was hard to know what there relationship was like. They are distant, if not from each other than certainly from the collective consciousness of the room. Two beautiful people, more alone with each other than the solitary man sitting behind them.

she didn't seem too happy about this photo...