Ruminations on the A train

As we all know, I've lived in New York for my entire life. I've spent the past five years actually living in the city. I'm pretty used to homeless people. They're on the streets, on the subway, pretty much everywhere (except inside Columbia. Somehow they manage to keep homeless people off the CU campus. They just all hang out in front of Ollie's.) I have to say, I'm pretty jaded. I've gotten the "avert-your-eyes-and-pretend-to-not-hear-the-pleas-for-money" thing down pretty well. The recent craze of ipod headphones has helped this immensely.

Anyway, I got on the subway tonight to go home, and there were homeless people in the car. Now, we all know that there are different levels of like, homeless-ness. There are those who are relatively well-put together who seem like they're lying when they say they have no place to live, there are those who are wearing oldish clothes and are in need of a shave, but are mostly not too bad. Then there are the ones who are really sad who you can tell have been living on the streets for a long time. The people on the subway tonight were like, at the bottom of the last category. We're talking the really smelly, surrounded by multiple carts full of junk, wearing a combination of dirty indistinguishable Salvation Army clothing and newspapers homeless. The people that you see and you suddenly feel incredibly guilty for drinking your $4.00 Starbucks peppermint hot chocolate while decked out entirely in Banana Republic and listening to music on your red leather-clad PDA. So there are two of them on the subway tonight. They were sitting on a bench, and basically had the entire half of the subway car to themselves because A) they were spread out over the entire bench and B) they smelled so bad, no one wanted to sit on the bench across from them. As I thought about them (while playing on my pocket pc, pretending not to notice they exist, per the protocol) I realized that they were actually a couple. And as sad as their situation was, and as appalling and wretched their lives seemed, I couldn't help but think they were sort of lucky, because they had each other. I thought about how much they must have loved each other to get through life like that. I thought about how profoundly sad it would be if one of them died. I wondered how long they had been together, and how they had met. For some reason, when I finally got off the train, I realized that they had left me with a feeling of hope and contentment - a feeling that even when things are so dismal and terrible you can't possibly imagine there'd be anything good at all, life will surprise you and give you the proverbial silver lining.

Yeah, I live far uptown. I had a lot of time to think. And now its late and I'm rambling and probably not making much sense and sound like a spoiled, privileged brat and you guys are all wishing I hadn't started a blog in the first place.