2001-11-10

Riding the subway at a busy time of day -- morning rush hour, evening rush hour -- and having the good luck to find a seat. Counting the newspapers not written in English, scanning the titles of books and watching people read (the mystery of it, the impossibility of entering another person's mind), listening in on conversations, sneaking a look at the baseball scores over someone's shoulder. The thin men with their briefcases, the voluminous women with their Bibles and devotional pamphlets, the high-school kids with their 40-pound textbooks. The variety of skin tones and features, the singularity of each person's nose, each person's chin, the infinite shufflings of the human deck. The panhandlers with their out-of-tune songs and tales of woe, the fractious harangues of born-again proselytizers, the deaf politely placing sign-language alphabet cards in your lap, the silent men who scuttle through the car selling umbrellas, tablecloths and cheap windup toys. The lurches, the sudden losses of balance, the impact of strangers crashing into one another. The delicate, altogether civilized art of minding one's own business. And then, never for any apparent reason, the lights go out, the fans stop whirring and everyone sits in silence, waiting for the train to start moving again. Never a word from anyone. Rarely even a sigh. My fellow New Yorkers sit in the dark, waiting with the patience of angels.

-Paul Auster, writer