The 500 Blows

I have spent  a lot of time underground. In fact, I calculated today that in the year 2008 alone, I spent an estimated 500 hours on a New York City subway train, or waiting for one in a station. In 2009 I spent less time on the subway, as this was the year I moved to Paris. Yet, even so, there were many nights and days spent beneath the earth, both in America and in France. And I can't account for the hours. I sometimes feel as though they were stolen from me, or worse, deleted from existence.

My earliest train memory is of the Long Island Railroad. It  was here where I spent some time as a child traveling with family on day trips to Manhattan from my uncle's home in Queens, and years later, from Rockville Centre. I remember most clearly the transfer station, Jamaica, where we would wait, my mother and uncle and I, for a connecting train. It was also here, as an adult living in Brooklyn, where my husband and I often waited patiently to transfer to the train that would, from here, screech its way into the small town where family lived.  The total travel time of 90 minutes began at the Atlantic Avenue station in Brooklyn and ended in Rockville Centre, Long Island. At least it was above ground.  Besides, these were fond memories. Especially the journeys of childhood. Then, the trains seemed to travel faster, and you had the sense of actually going somewhere. Somewhere exciting. Maybe you were going to see the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, or to take a carriage ride in Central Park. Maybe there was snow on the ground outside, and in that split second of descent, just as the train is plunged into the darkness of underground tunnels, your window fills with white light, and this stays with you forever.

But then, you grow older. And if you should happen to work for a living and live in the city, you will probably spend a greater portion of time than you desire on a train. I certainly have. I know that I was most often going from home to this or that terrible job. I was sometimes meeting friends, or going to the market. I know that the journeys were necessary ones;  I just wish they hadn't kept me in the dark for so long. But, if I try, maybe I can salvage some of the pictures from the black mass of time.

I have a still, deep, blue tinted recollection of a glimpse of the Brooklyn Bridge at dusk, a single moment I didn't realize at the time was imprinting itself upon me. I remember one summer evening sitting across from my husband, happily exhausted from a day at the beach. I wore my blue dress, which was damp at the hem, and the saltwater still burned on my calves. I also recall vividly that September afternoon when I was told my father died, and the excruciating 20 minute subway ride home. As an opposite train passed, I glanced out of the window and briefly met the forlorn gaze of a stranger, who is a stranger still. Then there are less significant memories. A forgotten bottle on the floor of the car, rolling involuntarily between the black boots of passengers. A tired advertisement for a credit card company. The red crease in the crook of my arm made by the bag I carried. A feeling of having left something behind. This must be what we call Time.

As time elapsed, those hours by train accumulated into a sense of heaviness and fatigue, much like a series of blows to the head. I grew weary. So heavy and weary, that when the last train left the station on the third of July, and I dropped my metro card into the trash as my husband pulled me along toward JFK airport, I felt the weight of 500 hours drop away. And then I slept. I slept going over the Atlantic Ocean without opening the window. I slept in an airport chair under the midnight sun of Iceland. The moment we arrived in our Paris quarters, I collapsed onto the bed and slept some more. For many months, I slept for a few hours in the middle of the day. People crept by, suspecting I was sick. No, I told them. I have just been on too many trains.

On this New Year's Eve, looking back in time is as important as going forward. I am happy where I am, and try not to worry too much about the future. I have learned, mostly the hard way, to value time. Perhaps this is just a part of ageing, or maybe it's the result of too much underground thought. I can't remember much about my subway travel or what I may have been contemplating during all those waiting hours. I imagine I  thought about someone I saw or something said, what I would eat for dinner, how I would make it and where I would buy the ingredients, where I had been and where I needed to go next. I'm sure I thought I had plenty of time to do it all.

Like I said, I can't account for the hours. I just know they are gone.

Brown Velvet

My husband, an artist, took this photo to use as a reference for a painting he's working on. It will be something of a study after Rembrandt, with the focus on a single source of light. The brown velvet of the dress I'm wearing is almost lost in the shadows. But I know it's there.
It is the brown velvet dress that I have worn three times in my life. The first time, it was to my mother's wedding on Long Island. It was her second marriage, and they have since divorced-but it was a magical evening. I remember that my late grandmother was there, and we laughed when the heel came off my shoe. I remember the cold wind whipping around my bare shoulders as we descended the church stairs; the same stairs I would walk down several years later to the music that punctuated my own wedding.
Before that day, I wore the dress to my engagement party, which marks the second wearing. On that occasion I recall meeting my grandfather-in-law for the first time, and that my father was there. Friends drove in from Athens, and I had youthful curls. Mainly, I remember laughter and music on the ride home. There has always been laughter and music.

The third time I wore the dress came three years later, when I wore it to sit for this photograph. It was taken late at night, at our home in Brooklyn. I was irritated at having to sit still. My husband took it so that I wouldn't have to sit for an entire painting session, but of course, that wasn't good enough. I used to be an art model, and I often held hour long poses without a break. But time created a road map of purple on my thighs, and I grew tired. Now I can't even hold a pose for a simple photograph properly. Still, the brown velvet feels just as soft, and my husband was playing music when he took the photograph. He told me to think of something else, and I did.

I thought about time, and how strange it is that I could be wearing the same dress I wore when I laughed with my grandmother and my father. We also had our pictures taken then. My uncle and my mother were merry from red wine, and my stepfather was proud of me. I thought of how time changes everything, and the tiny purple vessels on my legs must correspond to the laughter that we've used up. My father's and my grandmother's laughter have been buried by the aspect of time we know as death; my stepfather's laughter is heard in someone else's home now; my uncle and my mother no longer share a bottle of wine and a close friendship. Time has changed all of that. In truth, the only thing that has stayed the same is the brown velvet dress. Of course it doesn't fit the same-we can't expect that. But it is the same material that soaked in the water particles that were in the air those other nights. I wrote before that love never dies, but merely changes forms. I still believe this. Yet, on a cool night, I wish time could stand still; the music and laughter would linger on forever, and flesh wouldn't become tired. I thought of this as my husband preserved time in his own way. There will remain the photographs, and the memories, and the brown velvet.