Summer In The City

Last night I went to see a wonderful production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the East River Bandshell. Shakespeare amazes! Faeries and Elves, Lovers, Asses and Royalty in a dark wood at night.

What makes people dream of faeries? What makes people laugh at vain men turned into asses? How did Shakespeare dream up Oberon and Puck, a flower potion that makes a sleeper fall hopelessly in love with the first person they see upon waking? And as I was wondering last night-- what does all of this have to do with my life in New York City? My life on the Subway? I rode home from the play last night on a sparsely populated F train, when I see a wonderful play it is hard for me to come back to real life and it was so strange to come back to life on the subway - in that liminal, totally shared but disconnected space. I watched all the sleeping faces, the reading faces, the tired faces the hands resting on laps feet crossed at the ankles.

Sometimes the subway is  painfully banal, and especially when you consider how many hours a week you spend on it. What percentage of my life am I there now?Hiding in books, essays, journals,  stolen looks -- sleep, solitude.