Public

Today, I wanted three potato samosas from Grand Central.

We'll come back to that; my college's newspaper was not very good. At certain points last year I found it devastatingly dumb. However, one writer did well when they called the big new science building an 'engineering cathedral.' Why, that's exactly what it was! It had the long, central nave acknowledging higher powers and lifting up human spirits to their most glorious highs with its light and space, it had real science lab-chapels off to each side for more finely-tuned devotions, and it was a place of congregation for the unwashed masses (there's no metaphor there. engineers.). An engineering cathedral!

Grand Central is the public cathedral. That goddamned ceiling! Mass transit mecca, the holiest place. Penn Station is mechanical, the factory, and Grand Central is the soul.

I was headed downstairs to the indian guys, and saw the cop standing by the stairs. There are cops all over; I had seen them on the subway platform with dogs just that morning. I didn't give him a second look until he said to me, just casually, "Watch your step!"

There were drips of blood on the first step. I had already begun my down-stairs-momentum, so I couldn't stop stepping, but I swerved away from the center of the stair. There were crimson drips all the way down. They were perfectly round against the pale marble stair.

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One day I'm going to tease out all the ways I think about strangers calling women beautiful in public. I think it's like the stock market, only everybody loses, all the time.