Karma and Calculations

            The rain lets up for me just as its time to get out of rehearsal. I walk through Crown Heights to get to the shuttle train at Franklin Avenue. I’m dressed up from an afternoon at the theater; as a lanky white boy, I’m a sore thumb in the heavily Caribbean-and-African-American neighborhood. Many used to equate this place high crime and racial tension but a lot of the crime you read about is on Wall Street and the Upper East Side.

            I sit on the platform bench, exhausted, scanning an article in the New York Times Magazine about the Dutch Welfare system. I’ve got my brown leather messenger bag and black camera case on either side, a pure example of inconsistency in this working class/ghetto culture last-stop station. I enter the train, which waits for a few minutes before reversing its path. I attempt to continue reading despite a young mother talking loudly on her cell phone. She’s pushing her young son around, not paying any attention to him and eventually chooses to leave the train, dragging him carelessly behind her.

            I fume for a bit about her lack of attention and insensitive grip of his wrist. It’s late in the evening and the doors close. We’re halfway to the next stop when I realize—I forgot my camera bag. The bag holds a brand new $800 HD camcorder. My mind and heart begin to race and I calculate the possibilities while preparing to exit at the next stop:

            The thief passed me, part of the swarm that crowds the platform at the last shuttle stop. I’m already up and waiting to board, so he sees that there is no potential owner next to the package. His swift actions have already been calculated in the numerous thefts he both succeeded and failed at. His billowy clothes have been streamlined to accommodate many items.

He knows that a seamless snatch would be barely noticed although it’s possible that the owner has run back to grab his/her bag and realize it’s been stolen. It’s unlikely, however, that the owner would be able to rush down the stairs at a quicker rate than the descending crowd. Finally, the theif calculates, it would be nearly impossible for the owner to get in front of the crowd and in a discernable position to scan for his/her stolen item.

I rush down the stairs and out of the station, beginning my damnable frantic stride back up Franklin Avenue. Still somewhat hopeless, I consider the irony of the skinny white guy practically running up through this neighborhood to prevent the potential crime made available by his own negligence. Picking up some sense, I begin to walk through the street in order to hail down a cab.

I figure that the probability of my camera being stolen, already at a high considering the mass of denizens already passing by it, is only increasing by the minute. So, to decrease that probability, I can cut a 7 minute walk into a 3 minute cab ride by the application of a mere $5 toll in the face of an $800 loss. The cabby charges me $7 for a four-block trip. Highway robbery…

I faultlessly glide through the turnstile (my 16-minute window between rides on my unlimited Metrocard ticking off with impeccably good timing) and rush up the escalator. The speed of my double-step jumping compounds with the upward motion of the escalator, but the blur of hyper speed gives way to an open-air subway platform—with no camera bag on any of the seats.

The next train in the station has been boarded, but has not yet departed. I dart onto it, using the highest possible scanning ability to look for my bag while moving quick enough to cover both cars before the doors close. It seems nobody on this train stole my bag without the deviousness to keep it out of sight of the owner.

I descend the stairs, dejected, with one final possibility before me. This possibility depends solely on the good of the common man. Someone, man or woman, saw my bag, saw that it was not in the vicinity of any other passenger, asked anyone close-by of it’s origin and came down to the station attendant to hand it over to the authorities (I put a marginal increase of probability in this scenario considering the “If you see something, say something” vigilance ads)

I ask the station attendant if anyone brought down a black bag,

“Around this big”, my hands cradling every last hope.

“What size?”

“Like this” I hold the phantom bag on all six sides as though I probably won’t touch it again.

He points towards a set of massive steel doors. I pull its heavy weariness open and see before me a bizarre stretch of an empty concrete hallway. At my feet is my little black bag, tilted and upside-down, as though it had been dropped in the favor of an arriving train. I pick it up, check it’s contents (all intact and untouched) and thank the station attendant with both hands clasped in each other.

The train has left, and I happily wait for the next one. They say the crime rate in New York City has dropped 90% in the past 18 years, but I can’t slap statistics on whoever had the sense to do the right thing tonight. I can’t exactly look at a karmic record either, with all my good and ill deeds wavering in complicated woven pattern, both invisible and opaque.

When I get out at my final destination, it has started raining again.

Three’s a Charm

“Starting now, I won’t watch TV for a month” She says. She sports a wool brown hat with various pieces of colored lint sewn into a central pink and beige band with points popping out like bear ears. Below that is a funky jacket with shaggy green fur in horizontal strips. She carries a green and white plaid STRAND bag.

She is with a man who is equally bohemian, but two generations removed. Her grampa has an indistinct brown jacket and stark white hat, fur-lined that almost perfectly matches his gray-handle bar mustache. There are splotches of white paint on the back of one hand, blue on the back of the other.

“Cassandra is coming over Sunday!”

She gasps.

“Do you want Hannah to come over too?”

“YEAH!” her enthusiasm is only matched by her diverting curiosity “Why does it say ‘I like’ on your hand?” He shrugs teasingly. She opens the hand in question and reads it, “I like 9…what does that mean?!”

The L train comes. They will travel one stop, going from the tip of the East Village into the heart of Williamsburg, which some call the East East Village. They will travel under a river, from a historic but immortal center of art, free thought and expression into a new world.

“Why would someone put $5000 on a Metrocard?”

She drops two Metrocards, one of them is white with lime green lettering.

“What’s that one?”

“I don’t know, I found it”

“Does it work?”

“I haven’t check yet!” Her bright green eyes are wide—almost as wide as her over-bite grin. She fumbles.

“You dropped them again!”

She giggles and guffaws at her own clumsiness. Barely two seconds pass before she drops them again and picks them up.

“Why do you keep doing that?”

“It’s like Gramma says” as she gets up “things happen in 3’s!”

He guides her off the train.

 

*                                    *                                    *                                    *

 

“Did Pop go to college?”

“ A little bit. He went to NYU for a couple semesters”

“Wasn’t for him?”

“No, probably not”

“Yeah, I can just image him tapping his pencil” She says, with a faux-grim look on her face.

They talk about college prices for a bit. He takes off his tan Woodsman hat, with it’s soft wool flops on the interior and holds it upside-down, letting the strings on the end hang down shaking at the mercy of the train. He focuses on them softly while chatting with his daughter. He speaks to her like a peer, with the friendly small talk rolling off his shoulders. She is learning things, always, and maturing.

“Prospect Pahk. Prospect Pahk” He says, imitating the conductor. “Gettin’ there slowly, slowly. About halfway across Brooklyn. Another half to go”

Look at this guy”, he says lowly, head squarely faced to the left in a distinct effort not to stare. “To the right, to the right.” A bright magenta mohawk enters the train and walks the opposite direction. “I can’t believe that woman was wearing sandals and no socks yesterday”, He says “Retaaaaaaaarded. And those guys with no belts. It’s a world-wide phenomenon.”

The train lurches a little but stops. “Just kidding” the girl gives voice to the train. His fat tan leather gloves, are the identical color of his puffy coat and hat. He’s stretching vastly out in a forest of tan. “I don’t feel like stoppin’, pickin’ any of you folks up” He voices for the train as we speed into DeKalb Ave. station “That means another subway’s close behind. These poor folks aren’t gonna get picked up”

The train stops. “Nope” They both say, and laugh. “Close the damn door” The warm mid-western accents and spirits are miles from any harsh, impatient temperament native to New York City, among others.

“Leaving Brooklyn” she says.

“That’s the Brooklyn Bridge. There’s an incredible story of how that was built”

“I know, I read it!” She says excitedly. He tells her about the Bends and I politely inform them that the chief engineer suffered a ferry accident that brought him to his death. It was his son, Washington, which fell ill from the Bends.

“See I could never remember any stuff like that.” The Dad says. “I’d be on Jeopardy like, ‘Who built the Brooklyn Bridge?’, ‘Uhhhh….John Brooklyn? Aggghhh’” He cracks up, his smooth mouth arcing high around his high-bridged nose. “’How much did you bet?’ ‘Uhhhh…30,000’ Alex Tribeck would say ‘Man, you’re the stupidest person who’s ever been on this show!’”

“Hey we’re here! Canal!”

“Yeah, it brought us right to it. Isn’t that amazing?”

Katherine

She’s on the platform at the G line with Miriam and Cody. Miriam has a scruffy little dog named Boss Tanaka and Cody=Music. They play world music, flying through Spanish howls a la Miriam and they play country-bluegrass with banjo twanging a la Cody.

Katherine emits sharp pecks of notes and scales of range from her throat. Combined with the leopard print lampshade on her head, she helps to form a complete image of fringe culture itinerary. My bohemian girlfriend from San Francisco came to New York with dreams of busking. Singing and playing music on the streets and subways was all she wanted to do during her 4-month stint here. Instead she got an internship at NYU and a job…New York can really squeeze you, sometimes.

The thing with busking, fortunately, is that sometimes people drop some money. A man with a guitar case places some change in the floppy hat on the ground. Another girl nervously lets two dollar bills fall to the ground before taking some precious photos.

A young guy leaning against his guitar case puts his book away in order to enjoy this performance unadulterated. His stringy yellow hair frays as the train approaches. With no rush, he transfers a dollar from his pocket to the hat. His book, The Power of Now, leans out his pocket. Katherine is reading the same book.

Exiting the train, the artistically inclined hipsters jumble with the young Black and Hispanic families and the transfer occurs on this small half-green platform. The train departs and the hordes charge towards the stairs, past the music. A man’s voice bellow’s “Get a job!” but it comes from an unshaven, jovial young face. A wooden block on the ground in front of Cody’s foot quietly proclaims the bands’ name: Freedom Ticklers.