I’m standing at 96th and Broadway on this past Tuesday, in the subway system. I’m on the downtown #1 platform, and after a few years of avoiding summertime subway travel, it all comes back to me. I’ve never been one to avoid people’s faces, I love watching those around me.
I glance from face to face, body language to body language. That thin veneer is thinning as I watch, the heat is sapping away the tattered bits of social propriety. Saying that the platform was filled with highly edgy people would be the understatement of the decade.
Being the rare sort who snaps under severe cold and operates pretty well under extreme heat and humidity, I empathized with my underground compadres and yet did not suffer as they did. I always wondered…
What’s going through their minds as they stand, weaving slightly. Eyes glazed, bodies slickened with an early-morning sheen of sweat that by 3:15pm will have soured and tainted them with the odor of adulthood. Where do they go to escape? How close are they to snapping?
Where do you go to escape, inside your mind? How close are you to snapping?
Don’t know how close I am to snapping, I’ll let you know after I eventually snap. Usually I just keep telling myself “hey, it could be worse!” and keep on truckin’. Seems to get me through the days a little easier.
I live in a hole in the middle of a dry lake, smack-dab in the center of nowhere. I don’t have to go any further than my climate-controled garage/shop/gameroom for escape. One of every tool known to man, and two if I know how to use em’. Always Ice Cold Beer at the ready, tunes blasting and motorcycle racing on the tube. Pinball, darts and amusements abound.
As a result of the short distace required to escape, I’m pretty far from snapping! (good thing, too, cause I have a notoriously short fuse!)
“The Thin Veneer Of Society”. I thought this was another Ikea thread.
Brings to mind something I saw recently. During lunch in the park this perfectly ordinary looking guy – glasses, nice business suit, briefcase – was talking text to me. Carrying on a rather in-depth conversation as I recall. Nothing out of the ordinary there.
Then I turned and realized he wasn’t on a cellphone. He was talking to the briefcase like it was a person.
And all the while as I was carefully and slowly backing away and making no sudden moves that might be interprieted as hostile, I thought to myself “I’ve had days like that”, where it would’ve just taken one last catalyst – a dent in my car door, a jury duty summons, a bad traffic jam – and I too might find myself having a discussion with Mr. Samsonite.
Heh. Taking the #1 usually made me about ready to crack, even when it wasn’t hot. But that’s prob cuz it’s a looong ride from downtown back to the Bronx…
I generally realise I’ve snapped when I find myself sitting in a shower cubicle with all my clothes on and the shower running. Never can tell when it’s going to happen I just kinda come to out of a daze and realize “Oh I musta been stressed”.
Always very hard to explain to people afterwards, what sort of excuse can you use? “I was testing the fire sprinkler system and it got out of hand.”
I’m unsnappable - maybe because I take frequent flights of fancy. I hate to drive, but when I’m forced to spend hours behind the wheel, I watch myself in mini-plays, doing and saying the things I never seem to do or say in life. I’m witty, composed, engaging, decisive, always ready with a clever comeback or a thought-provoking comment.
Then some yokel slams on his brakes and I’m back on this planet. At least my car has air conditioning, so I don’t stink when I get where I’m going.
I don’t snap at all. Having lived in Asian cities where the crowding an pollution make a New York summer seem like a breeze in Elysium, there’s nothing that the city can’t throw at me I can’t handle.
Here in DC, I ride the Orange Line, which is crammed with hot, sweaty bodies during rush hour. But I am not there–I am lost in my own quiet island of peace, thinking happy little thoughts until it is time to get off at my stop.
I keep thinking of the movie “Falling Down” while reading this thread.
I could actually feel the anxiety starting to close it’s grip around my neck while reading the OP’s description of the #1 platform. My breathing was getting faster and shallow. I was starting to prespire.
Then I jerked my mind back to where I am and gave thanks that I had the good sense to get out of the city.
I actually start to have a panic attack. Not on the platform, but when there are too many people shoving to get into the train. You’ve got somebody’s hair or underarm in your face, someone’s backpack sticking in your back, and someone trying to grope you without it seeming like he’s trying to grope you, all while trying to remain balanced and in an upright position as the cars lurch around.
If I start to feel like “IhavetogetouttahereIhavetogetouttahere” there my be a couple of well-placed elbows, or concentrate on how my feet feel: the socks touching the skin, the foot touching the ground, etc.
“Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about…”
Hee hee! Okay, I will stop compulsively quoting T.S. Eliot. I will. I really will.
On the subway? I usually try to read, or recite poetry in my head, or, like FairyChatMom, i have mini-plays in my head.
