sighted

Sighted:

Little boy around five on the subway with his father, asking questions in English his papa answers in French, all starting with “why”:

Why do we have trains?
Why do we have shoes?
Why do we have hair?

etc. This goes on for several iterations, but my favorite is, “Why do we have writing?”

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In the Clinton/Washington station, a group of police officers standing around. A police dog – a big, dreamy-eyed German Shepherd – is tugging at the strap of one of the officer’s batons. He wants to play.

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A guy on the train platform who looks like he has the elephant man syndrome (Recklinhausen neurofibromatosis?). His head and face are big and assymmetrically swollen almost like a Casper character. His skin is bicolored, in a brown v shape on his cheeks and chin and mouth, pinkish elsewhere. He keeps clearing his throat, and there’s something echoic in the gurgly rasp of his phlegm.

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Something brown and chunky splashed up against the wall under the station stairs.

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Later, I saw:

an ochre catfish swimming in a tank of beautiful carp in a tank on Mott St. (the one next to the old Double Happiness) — maybe one of the ugliest fish I had ever seen

an empty cardboard that had once held MSG (“Ajinomoto — 99+% pure”) — that’s a whole lotta MSG!

As if to serve as antidote, not long after the episode with the DVD seller, I came upon, down in the Atlantic subway station:

first a booth of two handsome Lubavitchers set up looking for Jews to bring back into the fold. They didn’t try to give me their spiel but very sweetly said hi

and immediately after, coming out of the elevator, an extravagantly dreadlocked black man with a shopping cart COMPLETELY laden with Africana — drums, fabric printed with village scenes, tasseled hats (like those I imagine on Moroccan water sellers) other musical instruments…

I loved the city again.