In lieu of a journal entry, an essay I wrote in gras school:

One of my favorite parts of the day is waiting for the subway home. I stand all the way at the end of the platform, where there’s no roof and you can see the sky. The ceiling in the main part is a little too low, so walking down to the end can make you feel like Jonah emerging from the whale. My classes end late, so it’s always dark when I’m there.

I like to spend my time looking at the sky. On clear nights I can see the few stars that shine in the city. Other evenings I just watch the clouds blow across. Nobody else wants to stand outside in the dark, so I usually have my end of the platform to myself.

Waiting alone leads inevitably to thought. With no one speaking to me, I can hear the city’s sounds of life. Traffic rushing by in a roar so faint it could be the city breathing. Sirens howl in the distance; I can never quite tell if they’re police or ambulance. Standing there, looking up and listening, is probably the closest I come to meditation.

If I get tired of looking up, I look around me. The high walls of the station block any view of the city outside; there is nothing to see but down the train tracks and inside the station. People dribble in from the station’s entrance, buying their tickets and getting stuck in the turnstiles. They wait for the train way away from me, over in the light where it’s a little bit warmer. If they’re loud I can hear them; mostly they’re a silent movie.

Off to my right I can see down the tracks to the next station, and along the commuter train tracks that parallel the subway. There are lights at the next station down, and they shine orange like old-fashioned gaslights. Girders overhang the tracks, strange constructions that I once thought were scaffolding but they must be permanent since they’ve been there for the last two years. The whole scene resembles some kind of post-industrial fantasy, maybe the set of Bladerunner.

When it’s windy, the wind runs down the train tracks, pushing leaves and papers in front of it. They blow in circles and leaps, usually with the wind, occasionally, strangely, against. Styrofoam cups are especially athletic, hopping across the tracks and trying bravely to fly all the way onto the platform.

On stressful days, I pace. I start off fast, walking loops around the benches, going up and down stairs. But I am calmed, against my will, by the solitude and the sky and the quality of light. By the time my train comes, if I’m moving at all I am wandering, wending my way back and forth across the platform at the speed of nothing in particular.

Waiting for the train, I feel like the city possesses some great secret that it is about to reveal to me. I feel as though I am inside its heart.

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USAID is one of many donors for the project I work for. The views expressed herein are the author’s own views and do not necessarily reflect those of the author’s employer or especially those of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. And I mean it. I probably give the US government heart attacks.