One of the benefits of working as a consultant to NYC public schools is that I get to spend loads of time on the subway. And loads of travel time equates to one huuuge benefit: reading. In recent weeks (more like months, really) I have not spent one single minute on the train reading, save for the occasional glance over to my neighbor’s jealously guarded NY Times, openly defiant Hoy or Post. No, I have been writing.
I have also been battling with New York City’s transit system, as some of the express trains (the 4, the 5, the 2…) tend to get somewhat bumpy, especially in the Bronx. My sense of accomplishment, is now two-fold: I am writing somewhat consistently (some things I publish here on this blog, some I’ve kept in my trusty notebook) and, behold! I can now write most leggibly, something that had been quite impossible just a few weeks ago. When I first got the urge to write, I would desperately scribble words on a page, quietly cursing at every bump, and try to retain as much as possible of the stream of ideas in my head, inevitably managing to scribble two or three sentences during the train’s stops. A writing experiment indeed. I thought myself at the avant-guard of NYC underground writers, a new mode of writing had come to me. Writing in-between 149th and 125th street, brilliant! Of course all of this was futile because upon reading the garbled, jumbled sentences that had seemed so profound, by the time I got to Union Square made absolutely no sense.
In any case, I still cherish my writing time, as it affords me to commit thoughts to paper when taking out a laptop is really not a good idea. And by the peering glances of newspaper readers, they all seem very curious at the lady with red hair who furiously writes between stops.