THE POWER OF NOW

At 9:10 a.m. I enter the F-train from my usual spot: the no-man’s land between the two stairs going up to the main level of Roosevelt Station in Jackson Heights.

Inside, a roomful of open seats becomes the setting for a game of musical chairs—and the music has just stopped.

When everyone’s finished jockeying for a seat, I find one in the corner at the bottom of the “L.” My bags between my legs, my pad out and my pen jotting. Two seats are still free in my third of the car. Nothing unusual, except three commuters happen to remain standing.

I know why nobody has taken one of the seats. It’s next to a man who is asleep and seated in the pair of seats at the front of the car, next to the door. He also has placed a shopping bag and two suitcases on the seat next to him against the wall. Wearing a black baseball cap, he’s maybe in his forties and using his fist to keep from nodding forward. His belongings aren’t moving, and nobody’s asking him to move them.

The other seat is across from me, the center seat of three. A middle-aged woman is to one side, reading Oprah-champion Eckhart Tollet, and an older guy is to the other with a book of his own on his lap. The female bookend seems approachable, sit-down-next-to-able. In black slacks and a white shirt—a hard glasses case bulging through the pocket—the male bookend reads a small-print volume with glasses that he squints through and he underlines passages with a blue pen. He’s also holding a Dunkin Donuts coffee cup, regular size. I bet there’s three sugars in it. When he takes a break from reading, he turns the cup around, examining the circumference.

The train passes two stops. Nobody takes the empty seat. I don’t get it. There’s nothing on the seat. And the people on either side are not so big that there’s only a smidgen of seat available.

Finally, a man enters in navy slacks, wingtip shoes, white shirt and red tie. This passenger looks Indian, probably in his fifties, and carries a big, black briefcase. He looks at the two people flanking the seat. They look up at him. Eckhart Tollet gets placed on the woman’s lap.

“Excuse me,” says the man in the red tie says, as he turns around and sits. The man with glasses has just enough time to shift out of his way before Red Tie’s butt grazes him. The woman reading Tollet pivots to move over—but her hips are already against the partition. She has nowhere to go.

Red Tie chooses the elbows-forward position, ceding the back of the seat to his neighbors, who, with a joint sigh, rest their elbows back and down. Red Tie hunches forward some. The train pulls out of the station; we all readjust our positions. Eckhart Tollet rises from the woman’s lap. She shifts a little left and right, acquiring a bit of space with the movement. The blue pen resumes underlining.

The excitement over, I close my notebook, lean back and shut my eyes. I’ll rest them for a moment—before 23rd Street arrives, and I depart.

—Joe Lunievicz

Holding Doors for Osho

I’m about to enter Roosevelt Station at 74th Street just as a woman is about to exit.

I open the door before she even puts her hands up to push against it. I pull hard on the handle then hold the heavy frame while she exits.

She doesn’t look at me. She walks through, not even attempting to hold the door or even pretend to push it open further. She walks by me and dissolves into the crowd surrounding the taco stand.

I take a step forward but two more people run to the exit and I step back to let them out, still holding the door. Now there’s a line of five or six commuters rushing towards me and, trapped in place I hold the door for all of them, one after the other.

Two look at me and nod. The rest pretend I’m a doorman and exit. Finally the last person leaves and I’m about to take a step forward to enter the station. I swing the door open again and a woman tries to pass me on the inside track. The street light changed on 74th and Roosevelt and I can see a crowd of commuters swarming across the street behind her. I say, “Excuse me,” and enter, placing my left side in front of her – without body contact - but I keep the door open with a final push as I go by so she won’t get hit by it as she follows me.

As I push the door open I can see her face, an annoyed look imprinted there. A short “huh,” sound emerges from her open mouth.

This is not the first time this has happened to me and probably won’t be the last. I am amazed at the way people assume you will hold a door for them and just go through it, without even an attempt at holding it themselves — no acknowledgment, no nothing.

Now Osho (philosopher and spiritual leader, TJ, in case you were wondering) would say, do good things for others because it’s the right thing to do, not because you want to be thanked for it (ie: for the glory).

“Osho, Osho, Osho,” I would say. “You haven’t ridden on the New York subway. It’s about respect, not acknowledgement. I simply needed someone to stop and let me enter so I didn’t have to cut someone else off to get inside.”

What this leads me to believe is that it’s better not to hold the door for anyone. Either that or I need to bring a tin cup with me and ask for money while I’m holding it.

–Joe Lunievicz

Pi

I found myself on the Upper East Side this morning waiting for the 6 train, Lexington Avenue line, the Green line, at the 86th Street Station. Some things I noticed about the folks commuting from there as compared to my usual base in Jackson Heights.

* There were lots of people wearing wool coats, nice ones. The men wore a lot of navy and there was little dandruff. One guy wore a black and white herringbone. I think he was at the wrong stop. The women wore tan, red, gray, and blue.

* There were a lot of white folks.

* I thought I was crazy taking my Espresso 77 hot tea on the subway but up there on 86th Street it seemed pretty common. There were six people with coffee/tea/hot beverages in hand. One, obviously a veteran, had his own non-spill cup from Starbucks.

* There were a lot of iPods with white ear-buds. One woman was using an iPod touch – I could tell by the way her fingers swept across its surface.

* A young man had his book wrapped in the Daily News, its cover hidden. I recognized it as a Mortgages For Dummies book. His cover was blown. There were five other books out in commuters’ hands – one of which was a hardcover ­– and only one other paper in sight. The paper looked like The Book Review from the Sunday Times.

* There was one person wearing a NY Giants Champions hat, and it was a woman.

Overall people were pretty nice. I smiled at a woman and she smiled back. People made room and there was very little pushing or shoving even though it was pretty crowded.

A man and a woman, tourists probably, searched through a map of New York City and spoke to each other in French.

There was an advertisement from NYC Teacher’s Fellows lining the wall from one side of the subway to the other. They were all white letters on black background – very stark. One slogan that caught my eye read, “Teach them that Pi can be a piece of cake.” (Of course, they used the symbol for Pi, which gets lost when posting on the blog.)

So I wondered about this for a while. Are they saying that working with Pi can be easy or are they saying that Pi can be a piece of cake? It can’t be a piece of cake, of course – because it’s a Pi. Even if it was a pie rather than a Pi it still can’t be a cake because it’s a pie. Perhaps I was being too literal this morning.

By the time I got to 42nd Street the racial make-up of the car had changed. By the time I got to 23rd Street most of the car had emptied out. I came up to ground level and it was raining. I had forgotten my umbrella but being able to walk through Madison Square Park made the light rain bearable.

Passing the Comfort Diner, famous for its apple pie, I smiled.

Going home I’d be taking the F and all would be right with the world.

–Joe Lunievicz

OKs 

Leaners

I know, I know. The sign says, do not lean against the subway door.

But have you ever noticed how many people do? I did an informal survey today on the F train, 8 o’clock run from Jackson Heights. We averaged one person per door in a crowded car. In order to hold the study to a higher standard I chose my car by random, closing my eyes as the train pulled up and opening them only as I heard the sigh of the doors ease open.

I entered the closest car. I observed only and did not push or shove anyone against the doors, even though I had to mumble curses under my breath as I entered because two people were blocking the entrance and I had to squeeze between them.

To muddy the waters though, I have to count myself as one of the offenders. I’ve read the sign so I know what I’m supposed to do – not lean on the door – but I find my body drawn to that stainless steel door with the black rubber guard like a fly to a bug zapper.

Don’t go towards the light.

I have to.

But the light will zap you.

I want to be zapped.

The light is good.

The light is bad.

I want to be bad.

I can’t help myself.

Even when I lean away from the stainless steel, a bump or sudden jerk of the car on the rails usually throws me against its shiny surface, sometimes three or four times in rapid succession with enough force to cause a concussion, or at least a wicked coffee spill.

Is it dangerous? It must be. That’s why the sign’s there. Do I generally take risks like bungee jumping or riding a mechanical horse or leaving the toilet seat up in my house? No, but I did play rugby for 16 years.

But that’s neither here or there. I’m a leaner. It’s what I am. When I can’t get a seat and my legs are aching from a day of teaching, that door is my nirvana.

Leaners of the underground unite–and remember to watch your back when the train doors open at the station.

–Joe Lunievicz