When I was younger, I used to spend an inordinate amount of time marvelling over quite a lot of stuff. One thing that never ceased to draw me in for endless reverie was a drawing I saw somewhere of a man painting a picture of a man painting a picture of a man painting a picture (I suppose I could indicate this in a manner similar to the mathematical symbol for “continuing”, by putting a bar over “of a man painting a picture”, but I won’t, because it’s more fun to keep typing it out like an automaton). Likewise, I was enthralled with the fact if an object were placed any distance from another object, and that distance were halved ad infinitum, the two objects would never touch. (I always imagined a pea and a closed door. What this choice says about me I do not know, but I’m sure it is ripe with clues about my psychological makeup.)
Of course, these examples are but a small fraction of those that kept me staring into space at any given moment and especially when I was hanging in the out-out-out-outfield during forced gym class softball games. There were many, many more. And still are. I do not like to think of myself as someone who looks at the world with sparkly eyes of child-like wonder, but I do find myself thinking about the same kind of stuff now, as a so-called adult. Indeed, since I still don’t get how electricity works and am still amazed by TV and airplanes and the subway and eyesight, you could say I spend a great deal of time with my head spinning. Fortunately, however, the spinning is only figurative. Or at least I think so.
So this morning at the gym, when I saw on TV that the C train, which has been out of commission for ten days following a fire at the Chambers Street station that destroyed a switching mechanism, was back in service (running at 100% off-peak and 70% during rush hour) despite original reports that it would take three to five years (and later amended to six to nine months), I was pretty much amazed. But then I thought that perhaps MTA inflated the original repair-time estimates so that we’d all be impressed with how quickly everything was up and running again.
I’ll believe it when I see it. But still, I’ll continue to be enchanted by the subway anyway, because, really, how the hell did they build those things at all, let alone a century ago? Here you can picture me staring off into space, my eyes turning sparkly. And If you look really closely, maybe you’ll even see my head spinning.