Word: subway
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There is no such thing as darkness in New York City. Always, streetlamps and headlights edge their lambent glows into even the darkest corners of my apartment, making it possible to walk across every surface without tripping or stumbling. I know that two blocks away, the subway is still running, that massive trains are heaving into stations at 4 a.m. to pick up the night creatures of the city, and if I wanted I could be on one of those trains, heading into the Village or Williamsburg, to a club or a friend’s apartment. This nocturnal ease...
...sometimes the city feels different. On the subway, a mother plays peek-a-boo with her young daughter. I smile at her older son, and he smiles back. It is the first time I have met the eyes of another person on the subway for a long time. The mother looks at me protectively, and I grin back. Her expression softens, and before she goes back to playing with her little one, her lips tense into a guarded hint of a smile...
This quiet revelation stays with me the next time I ride the subway to work. I wonder what would happen if I smile at the person sitting across from me. The next night, when I slip out with my eyes to the pavement, I think that if I look up, I might see into another person deeply enough, and, completely by accident, find the part of them that might have said to that little girl, “That’s very sweet of you. You’re so kind...
...fitting into approximately the same place in the Teutonic height spectrum as I did in the American one 8 years ago, when I was 5’1”. But by far the most vivid evocation came in the form of a poster I saw in a subway station on my very first day here. It showed a bunch of bananas, each one half-covered with a differently colored condom, and, above them, a German exhortation to “Stay strong...
...which brings us back to Berlin, and the public service announcement, which was only one of very, very many sponsored by the German Federal Center for Health Education. I have yet to see a subway station without such an ad, and there are well over 300 subway stations here. They showcase all different kinds of produce—not only the obvious cucumbers and bananas, but also less likely models like lemons and potatoes—and diverse catchy slogans, like the words “Poppt sicher!” above a condom-covered ear of corn...