New York City feels like an never-ending expanse of empire. Everything from the endless steel and brick buildings to the concrete arteries laboring to move cars and trucks through the city screams empire and power. It’s what I came expecting, and it didn’t fail to deliver. Thing is, that pre-conceived notion doesn’t do anything for me. I came here expecting something and I got it.
The key to this city is to look past what everyone else takes for granted; the ugly square foundation that holds up even the most elegant of structures.
It’s found a story or two underground.
His name is Lyle. He’s been working in the subway for over 30 years.
You have to strain your eyes to see through the clouded glass of his compact but neatly organized subway booth.
His aged body is gently placed on his stool; his movement labored but deliberate. He rubs his hands constantly to relieve the visible arthritis in his long and gangly fingers. He has chronic pain in his back that no doctor his city health plan provides can treat. The creases in his face are filled with grime. He is the watchdog of this small terminal but now too feeble to protect it. Lyle’s presence is a monotonous and almost invisible reminder the world is still spinning for the thousands of heels that clack by.
A sly grin meets the occasional face that presses up to the glass. He says he’ll work here as long as they let him.
Lyle knows people, and he knows the city. Thats how he figured out something was changing.
His city is changing. His people. He doesn’t like what he sees.
He speaks in rambling but calculated metaphors. His eyes betray nothing except the humble wisdom learned from years of weathering life.
“This city, these people…they’re cars. And cars never change much. You get from one place to another. Cars get faster, bigger, sleeker and stronger. But they don’t change. Don’t misunderstand me here. The motor does change. Not the pistons or the jet engine or the fusion core that throws you across the road or sky or what have you,” he says, hands motioning toward a horizon as if his own booth walls didn’t exist. “The reason is the motor. The why we go from one place to another. That’s changing.”
He sits back comfortably. He feels better having explained what troubles him so.
“People move different. They appear different to one another. There is peculiar distance in how they carry themselves; it wasn’t like that before.”
It’s nothing political. Nothing tangible. Nothing anyone’s eyes and ears but his could unravel from the tightly wound ball of twine that holds the world’s secrets.
“It’s like the motor that drives this world is broken. And no one knows how to fix it.”
