Exchanges

I was on another crepuscular bus ride to the LaGuardia Terminal.  Early morning, the breaking, cracking, of day, and I was wedged within that miraculous event of turning earth.  And I was writing in a very New York-style way, bluetooth keyboard and smart phone, piled on my stuffed all-in-one-carry-on backpack.  As the sun pulled apart night, I could feel the leaving that is coming for me in less than two months.

After living here for nearly three years, I recently discovered another truth about the feeling of New York.  If only there were a German word I could conjure.  That feeling, just before entering a turnstile to the subway, or turning the corner to catch the bus, of hustling for fear of just barely missing it, of seeing it, hearing it drive away.  What if I enter the turnstile to discover that the last train just left and I have to wait 9 minutes.  Woe is me!

But trains are always leaving the station, buses are driving away without me.  I'm missing them constantly.

The bus I was on went through Harlem, and at the St. Nicholas and 125th St. stop a deluge of people got on, likely just off the A or C trains.  Middle of Harlem; Spanish, and English, and silent tired faces.

It's another exchange.  And there are so many that we have to make.   Being one place, going to another, transferring from a train to a bus, from work to home, from one life to another.  The trains are always coming and going.  Sometimes I'm there to catch them, and sometimes I'm still walking.  Sometimes I'm nowhere near them in mind or body, but will still call upon their service.  When does an exchange begin, and when does it end?  I have been leaving and arriving forever.