the habit of being

Below my window a power line crosses 43rd Street. A trio of tennis shoe pairs dangle from it, like relics of a 1950’s sitcom. The children play ball in the street and wait for the ice cream man, but the difference is that they are constantly shouting “fuck you” and other obscenities at each other. I can hear it from my little bedroom on the 4th floor, and sometimes the lady who shares the fire escape with me will lean out of her window and holler down to whichever kid is hers to shut up.

* * *

To get from Astoria to the Village, it’s a fifteen minute walk to the subway station from my apartment and then another thirty minutes on the train if there aren’t delays. There are often delays. When I first moved here, I was really annoyed by the commute, but there’s nothing to be done about it. Now that I’ve gotten busy, I find it nice to be forced by the MTA to just sit still for a while.

I do almost all my pleasure reading on the subway, and it goes to show you how much time I spend on it that I’ve done more reading since I moved to NYC than I had in quite a while before it. I might have a coffee in my hand, and music in my ears. I might be lost in 1920’s Paris when the delays happen and I might not even notice them. All around me, the car will empty and get crowded again and people will stand clear of the closing doors. I can find it a warm and peaceful ritual, a something that is always the same. When the train gets really slow I can see all the graffiti and trash and homeless hotels set up in the tunnels, and somehow it gives the City life. When I get out and exit the station, I might swipe my Metrocard for someone coming in, which is the best thing about having an unlimited monthly pass and a long ride in.

* * *

The happiest bit of my day is walking through Washington Square Park on the way to the lab. Whatever anxieties I may be having about math or my competence in general, I wake up from them then, to feel the crisp morning air and October drizzle washing my face. The world seems full of photographic possibility. A woman holds an umbrella over herself and the book she is reading. A student with no umbrella sketches her. White men walk little dogs and black men sit at chess tables. The fountain is on. Under the statue of Garibaldi, my 18-year-old self sits in her big black sweater that falls off her shoulder, waiting for her boyfriend to arrive from out of town. I walk past the ghost, lightfooted, and feel content for that for this moment, I am exactly where I should be.

* * *

At the big tag sale in Central Park, I choose only white shirts in soft fabrics. I rummage with the masses, but my hand finds only these out-of-season angel clothes. I leave all the colors and the patterns for the stylish indie girls whose asymmetric haircuts match their asymmetric hips (one or the other is always jutting out). I’m sure that those girls can find something to do with them.

* * *

When Mark was here last weekend, we had a late brunch in a French cafe in the East Village. We sat outside and he let me have the chair facing the sidewalk and we sipped a mimosa. Mark ordered in French and waiter called me Madame. I don’t remember talking of anything more important than puppies and how Americans don’t have conversations like Europeans do. The lady who owned the restaurant asked me if her beaded bracelet was purple or brown. I said it was purple and she didn’t believe me. We lingered a long time and felt happy and didn’t think about how he had to go home tomorrow. We had espresso in those tiny cups they have and split the raspberry on the creme caramel. It was the first nippy Saturday of the Fall, and we’d made love that morning, and we would go drinking that night.