31+31+30+31+30=Pazzesco

Sometimes when the express train and the local train pass each other in the tunnels, you can see across into the other one. They speed up and slow down so that you can catch someone's eye and not know if they will soon surpass you or fall behind, or if the two trains will actually diverge into the dark, on separate routes.

Today I saw a boy, brown hair, red cap, playing with an orangey-tan-skinned action figure. He doopty-dooped it about the window on the C Local and glanced up every so often to see if I was still watching from the A. It was a moment of self-awareness on both our parts, and eventually the boy fell behind as we zoomed past him. (It was also a moment where I felt oddly transported to the 1950s. Boy in cap plays with action figure on train. Stickball. Newsboys. The Dodgers.)

I spent the rest of the trip trying not to touch the fur rimming the jacket of the Upper East Side Lady on the seat next to me, and trying harder not to sneer visibly at her. She eventually put down her New York Times and daintily started adding sums in a column with a pencil. 31+31+30+31+30=153. It was quite a point-by-point moment of addition, as if she were in class with the kid in the red cap; her pencil moved slowly down each numerical column (1+1+0+1+0...) and then she took the sum and began anew with that number in a new, equally boring column. (Fur+Dye Job+Pencil=Horrible Woman on the Train Next to Me.)

Today I dressed myself (as I tend to), rushed out the door, bumbled down the stairs, realized I had a hole in my skirt, ran back up the stairs, changed my skirt, left on my shirt, tussled with my hair (again) and ran back down the stairs to go to work.

Here I am, in the office, now feeling...naked. It is the occasional feeling that I have forgotten to put on some important piece of clothing, but no matter how many times I take stock of what I'm wearing, I seem to be entirely clothed. Disconcerting. And dreamlike.

And now I have that feeling that I often got in Venice: Something odd is about to happen, as we knew when the city's alarm would sound in the morning for the soon-to-come acqua alta. The city would soon flood and we would all be donning Wellingtons and jumping from makeshift plywood bridge to makeshift plywood bridge and laughing like foreign hyenas, trying desperately to not fall into the filthy water.

It is a day that can only end in one way, and I think you all know what that means.

You do, I know you do.

(Sneaky folk.)