shaming of the true.

         My great grandfather was killed one day, walking across the street. A taxi cab hit him dead on. And I believe they both may have been killed. This means that from when the taxi cab driver had been born, and my great grandfather had been born, and the taxi cab had been built... they had all been on this long journey towards each other from beginning to end. Every single event that had occurred from the beginning of them, to the end of them, had brought them to that collision in the middle of that street at the end of them all.
         Which brings me to my night: Tonight was the epitome of life collisions. When I realized and witnessed and experienced that every single thing that happens was supposed to happen, was inevitable, and almost predictable if you consider it so.
         I got dressed for my train which I was certain I would miss, and walked to the door when my mom finally said, "well, Edy, if you think you're going to miss it then just stay here and wait for the next one." To which I responded, "Okay." And took of my coat.
         A half hour later I got dressed once again and set out on the long trek back to Bedford. Upon leaving the apartment I decided I needed some caffeine, and walked into the bodega in search of some red bull. For some odd reason I couldn't find any, so I walked across the street to the twin donut which I would have never considered entering had you not been so curious about it the day before.
         I walked into the Twin Donut and the woman behind the counter asked me what I would like. A large hazelnut coffee, I said. They didn't have anymore. Fine, then a regular. Milk and sugar? Yes, please. And so on and so forth.
         It finally came up to two dollars and as I paid her I thought to myself, "Hmm, I wonder why it is okay to tip some people and not others. I would gladly give her a tip, but would she be offended? There should be a tip jar of some sort."
         And right as she handed my three dollars change, she walked over to another side of the counter and emptied some coins out of a plastic container with the word "tips" modestly scribbled along the side. She then proceeded to empty two more tip containers, but did not put the coins in her pocket, oh no. She put them into the cash register.
         Atop of my coffee were two napkins and I decided to spit my gum into one of them. Once I spit out my gum I debated whether I should put the gummed-napkin into my pocket, or throw it out into the trash bin in the corner of the Twin Donut.
         I walked over to the trash bin and threw out the napkin, not realizing I had passed a strikingly handsome Asian man. He was slouching in the seat, beside him a black plastic bag, and his hair was grayed, and his eyes were blue. As I threw out the napkin he began to speak to me, and when I looked at him he said "never mind." But I seemed cheerful enough, I suppose, and he shyly asked me if I'd like a bootleg movie.
         "Hmm, Yeah actually! Let's see what you've got!" I replied.
         The shocked man was delighted and took out the contents of the black plastic bag. The first movie being Iron Man, which I immediately put aside... I also decided to buy 21.
         Both movies were five dollars and I seemed to have made his day. Little did he know that he had also made mine.
         I walked to the subway thinking about how, had the bodega had the Red Bull I was looking for, or had I decided to put the napkin in my pocket... I never would have met the shy old man. Strange.

         On the subway I sat in the middle of the row and put on an album which is one of the most beautiful I've ever heard. I'll burn it for you sometime. As the subway rolled along, I watched the people around me and their conversations and wondered where they had been and where they were headed and whether or not it mattered. And when I looked up into the window across from me I saw perfectly my reflection in the glass, and I saw simultaneously a train passing by. And at that moment I wished I was a more skilled artist or photographer or writer so that I could capture what I was experiencing right then and there and expose more people to the simplistic beauty of new York transit.
         When I got to Grand Central I bought my ticket, and the lady seemed shocked when I told her I hoped she had a good day. I then went into the little magazine shop place and looked through some French magazines. Then I bought some Purell, and some gum, and for you? Some chapstick.
         Then I walked up the east tower and sat in our spot, and looked up at the ceiling. And wondered how many people had sat right there. And thought the same things. And I looked around at all the people waiting for one thing or the other and I observed how unashamed they were, how uninhibited, and how they marveled at the beauty of the building and of the people walking through it.
         I saw a man sitting in a corner who seemed to have been sitting there a long time, and I wondered what he was thinking about.
         Another man sat in the middle of the staircase, asleep with his face in his hands.
         Two men took pictures. Obviously tourists, or so it would seem. And at one point, one of them decided to lie on the stairs upside down.
         I liked them.
         Finally I decided to take off my headphones and I set out to finish the book I've been reading, "Deadeye Dick" by Kurt Vonnegut.
         I read and I read until it was about five minutes to my train, when I walked toward track 18. Walking past the train I felt what I always feel which is this inevitable pull towards the seat I'm destined to sit at. When wondering where I should sit I always feel this magnetism to one spot, and if I try to go somewhere else I am pulled back and I just know. A better writer could explain it better.
         And so I sat and continued reading. I decided I would finish the book by the time I got to Mount Kisco. Even though I had a lot left, I just knew I would.
         A couple got on the train and asked if this was the train to Southeast. I said yes. They asked if I was sure. I was.
         I liked them.
         Then they asked if I was playing a trick on them. I wasn't.
         Then a man got on the train and said to a person on the phone that something on the train smelled really good. He looked down to see the couple eating. He told the person on the phone that he had found it.
         I liked him too.
         As the train pulled away I continued reading. And when the conductor came to collect tickets, he gave the couple who hadn't been sure if they were headed to southeast two pieces of newspaper and asked them to put it under their feet if they wanted their feet up. I can't explain that I guess you had to be there but it's okay because it's not that important to the story.
         So he collected my ticket and I liked him because he was handsome and he had a moustache and he looked like a pretty organized guy and kind of like my moms crazy ex boyfriend Joe who drove a green jaguar and had fifty pairs of the same beige khaki slacks and listened to sade and told me that when putting on lotion you were not supposed to rub it in but rather let it "sink in" until the whiteness faded on its own.
         I knew the conductor would come back and speak to me.
         They have a tendency to do that.
         So I read and I read and I had so much left. And in my book a chapter ended and guess how it ended?
         "To be is to do" - Socrates
         "To do is to be" - Jean Paul Sartre
         "Do be do be do" - Frank Sinatra

         Do you believe that? That's the magnet on my mom's fridge. And just as I finished reading that line the conductor returned. I'm going to write out our conversation like a play, because Vonnegut does that a lot in the book I was reading.

         The clock nears midnight as Idalia, a teenage girl reading a book, sits alone on metro north. The conductor, a handsome black man around fifty, approaches her and sits across from her in the seats made for six.

Conductor: I see you've got those shoes on. What are they called again?
Idalia: Moccasins. *she smiles and means it*
Conductor: And what are you reading there?
Idalia: It's a book called Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut.
Conductor: *laughs* Deadeye Dick?
Idalia: Yeah, the book says it's a sailor name. Or fisherman. Or something.
Conductor: Oh like Moby Dick.
Idalia: I suppose so.
Conductor: Are you reading that for school or for pleasure?
Idalia: Just for myself.
Conductor: That's very very good. *Begins to stand up*
Idalia: *Laughs nervously*
Conductor: How many books do you think you'll read this month?Four?
Idalia: Probably.
Conductor: That's good. That's real good. You go girl.

*End scene*

         He never offered me newspaper or asked me to put down my feet.
         But I did anyway.

         So I continued to read and read and I just knew I would finish the book before reaching Mount Kisco, but worried that I wouldn't as we always do. And as the station slowed down to stop I had two pages to go, so I began reading very fast.
         I stood up to walk to the doors and the conductor walked past and said, "Goodnight, sweetheart." And I exited the train.
         As I walked towards the stairs I walked really slowly for two reasons. One, I wanted to finish the book before getting in the car and Two, I just knew the conductor would be waiting to say goodbye once more.
         As I finished the last sentence of the book (the whole time telling myself not to look up, as the conductor would undoubtedly be waiting), I smiled to myself.
         I then closed the book and as I looked up, there was the conductor. With his head outside of the window. And he winked at me.
         And at that moment I realized once again that absolutely everything is interlinked 100% of the time, and that everything works out exactly how it should even if it doesn't seem that way.
         And then I remembered what I meant to tell you at movie night.
         What happened during that era when people believed that it was the "end of rock and roll" was that it felt like nothing new could be done. People began to lose hope in creativity and innovation because their was a slow in the progress of artistic development.
         And the same thing is happening now.
         I find myself reluctant to write songs or draw pictures or wear clothes or do absolutely anything because I have this overwhelming feeling that it's been done already a million times.
         But the reason we have that feeling is because in every time period there is that vortex kind of. Where it feels like "rock and roll is over" or "hip hop is over" but really it is just a gap between an era of old and an era of new. It isn't that our generation is helpless or that everything has already been done, it's that we have yet to discover what is to come.
         But it will.
         It always does.
         Because history repeats itself.
         
         But really the meaning of my story is that there we are all wisps of undifferentiated nothingness simultaneously pushing onward. A machine in which we all play designated roles, that we think we have control over, but that very feeling of control is what keeps the machine going. If we realized we have no control over any of it, none of us would do anything, and it would fall apart. So really it isn't that to do is to be, or to be is to do. It is do be do be do. It is everything. It is all of it.
         And I really truly do believe that Grand Central Terminal just might be my most favorite place in the whole entire world.