special delivery from the departed (pt.1)
i tried to put myself in your shoes, New York...
Dear New York,
The other day, I was standing by the door of the A Train express (6pm rush hour) and I recognized the fear of the rushing man, knowing that if he were to miss the train that I was on, he would have to wait another 5 irritating minutes on the platform waving me away.
In solace of my reflection, I stuck my right foot out: vintage black converse already too scuffed to care. Not only was I in his shoes, I almost gave him my shoe as the train doors stubbornly attacked the obstacle that is my foot. The man recognized his eyes in mine, waved pleadingly to "Remove your foot! Thank you but yank out your foot!" The doors opened, he slipped in, nodded in my general direction, and the experience was over.
Back in my shoes, back in his shoes, standing 5 inches apart, a glazed look over our eyes. Strangers, fellow commuters, only identical in our fatigue and sweat.
It was American Thanksgiving and our building had a power outage. Minutes before the lights went out, I noticed a figure out the window on the roof (we lived on the top floor). Fireman off-duty, disguised ConEd technician, or robber? Well, it was Thanksgiving evening and many turkeys residing in that building went cold (at least metaphorically as this was #5 of the 7 months where we didn't have gas, thus no functioning oven, but at least got 15% off our rent.)
My eyes have an aversion to lights over 120 lumen, so thankfully we were well equipped with white candles and a candleholder. We step out our front door and listen: nothing. No inquiries, no peeks, no creaking doors nor shuffling footsteps, we are living amid neighbourly ghosts in this apartment building who have not noticed anything strange in this evening's unfolding. Faint light of the evening sky runs into the 1900s stairwell and as I begin to descend the 6 mighty elevator-less floors, I hear a faint voice.
Emile B., the neighbour residing in #30 for 40 years, says he’s never seen such a thing before. "Never been a power outage like this," and while we hand him some candles, I omit any mention of the figure on the roof. With no cellphone, no wifi, and his bathtub still in his kitchen, he hopes he saved his work on his home computer.
On weekday mornings, my shoes carried me up out of Penn Station's botched system of veins and platforms. These are the ones that live solely off the fumes of nearby Hudson construction that promises an uplift, a new station, and new-found respect for the infrastructure that carries its 2.4 million people on a daily (hello 4.8 million shoes).
On this 5 minute walk from the platform to the office door, I was always assured to pass through the trifecta of food carts on 10th Ave serving breakfast sandwiches, iced coffees, and glazed donuts galore. As I jaywalked my choreography between delivery trucks and e-bikes, the mouths with their steel-toed boots would yell for a "chorizo sanwich n cawwfee, pleez!"
Emile moved to New York City in the 70s, moving right into this same apartment, back when he was a model, a dancer, an artist, and one of the many who moved to the city with a rent of $100. He's been working on his “Memories of Yesteryear,” the collection of his life stories, and hopes he saved his edits. "I might have to do it all over again! And who knows if I'd remember it; my memory isn't too good these days."
We tell him we'll keep him updated on the outage situation with our cellphones and our 3G and the chatbox of the ConEd app that I am vigorously exploiting for any information on the roof-man.
Days later with the lights back on, we greet Emile at the mailboxes and he asks for our names again with his familiar smile we know quite well by now.
(end of part 1)
Tu as une belle plume, Rasha (that means i love your writing, the expression would directly translate to --> You have a nice feather, that sounds weird in english, but that's how I felt reading this.