Movie Soundtrack
Lately, I've had many opportunities to ride the subway without kids and subsequent stroller to my doctors appointments in Manhattan. I've been lucky to have a really great friend who will watch the kids for me when I have these marathon appointment schedules. This opportunity has given me a chance to see New York City from a different perspective. No longer am I fighting kids or distracting others with my rendition of "5 Little Monkeys" on the train. Instead, I get to sit and listen to my ipod and people watch. New York City really is an ongoing movie if you take the time to watch, and the playlist on my ipod has become the soundtrack.
I ride the train from Brooklyn to Columbus Circle, which is at about 59th Street. This is about a 30 minute train ride, depending on delays. (Today it took me an hour and 15 minutes to get there, 25 minutes to get home.) In that time I watch several scenarios. Today I watched a couple get on, share a bagel and coffee, then the husband got off at Wall Street with a quick kiss goodbye and the wife continued on to 34th St. Interesting substitute for the morning breakfast table. I watched another woman sit down, open her mail, read a letter which made her cry, and quickly reapply her lipstick before getting off to face the world again. I'm sure she put on a strong, bullet-proof face and probably went and fired someone who had no idea that someone else set her off this morning.
I catch several snippits of people's lives that would normally be missed and I feel like I'm spying, but while listening to a random mixture of Michael Buble, KT Tunstall, Billy Joel and The Beatles, each scenario takes on a new meaning. I really could envision all of these people as characters in some movie that I would certainly pay to see and I found myself thinking of "the rest of the story" after they were long gone.
I'm sure you could have a lot of these experiences in a lot of places, but today I was grateful to be in NYC with all its diversity and find myself lost in other peoples' lives while mine was so stressful and rushed.
I ride the train from Brooklyn to Columbus Circle, which is at about 59th Street. This is about a 30 minute train ride, depending on delays. (Today it took me an hour and 15 minutes to get there, 25 minutes to get home.) In that time I watch several scenarios. Today I watched a couple get on, share a bagel and coffee, then the husband got off at Wall Street with a quick kiss goodbye and the wife continued on to 34th St. Interesting substitute for the morning breakfast table. I watched another woman sit down, open her mail, read a letter which made her cry, and quickly reapply her lipstick before getting off to face the world again. I'm sure she put on a strong, bullet-proof face and probably went and fired someone who had no idea that someone else set her off this morning.
I catch several snippits of people's lives that would normally be missed and I feel like I'm spying, but while listening to a random mixture of Michael Buble, KT Tunstall, Billy Joel and The Beatles, each scenario takes on a new meaning. I really could envision all of these people as characters in some movie that I would certainly pay to see and I found myself thinking of "the rest of the story" after they were long gone.
I'm sure you could have a lot of these experiences in a lot of places, but today I was grateful to be in NYC with all its diversity and find myself lost in other peoples' lives while mine was so stressful and rushed.
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