subway

SUBWAY

I'm in a subway with Ashley, a friend of mine from New York. It looks like the 5th Avenue station in Manhattan. There's a small flight of stairs leading down from the street level then a short hallway that leads to a longer flight of stairs after a left turn. Glass storefront windows line either side of the hallway. Ash is running ahead. At the bottom of the stairs is a turnstile and he goes through. I get to it and realize I don't have a token (there's no slot for a Metrocard), only dollars and change. I think I hear the train coming. There's an old lady coming down the stairs on my left. I debate for a minute and decide to hop the turnstile. This happens just as the lady is going through. An alarm goes off and an automated voice starts saying that I've broken the law. That's when I notice that it's coming from a black plastic circle on the ceiling, like a 2 dimensional version of the semi-spherical domes they hide cameras beind for surveillance in stores. I stand there for a minute not knowing what to do and then I walk down the platform to Ash. He's smiling and laughing. He's standing in front of a small booth with a set of double doors. Everything is made of the same black plastic as the ceiling alarm/camera. 2 security guards rush past us and grab the old lady. Ash is still smiling and looking at me. The guards are telling the lady that she's broken the law. I feel bad because I know she's innocent and then the booth opens and a tall black security guard comes out and watches the men with the old lady down the platform. The man looks at Ash for a second and looks at me for a longer time. I smile nonchalantly. He walks off down the platform and Ash starts laughing again. I try to get him to be quiet because I realize someone in the booth might hear him.

A train comes and we get on and sit down. At the end of the car is a black woman in her late 20s asking people to come look at her artwork which is spread out on the ground around her feet. She's wearing black shades and has shoulder length black locks. She looks kinda like Lauryn Hill and I remember getting the impression that she might be blind because of the glasses. Her voice is very calm and soothing. She's saying that each piece of art is free but she appreciates any patronage on our part to help support her work. The art consists of posters, notebooks, art books and book bags, each featuring it's own drawing in bright blues, yellows, browns, reds and greens. Each picture depicts a cartoonish scene of faceless, generally genderless people in different social settings. I'm curious so I walk over and start looking through the notebooks and book bags. I hold up a blue book bag with a bright beige picture on the front of several people standing in a cluster to one side in the background and a person with a more feminine shape lying down in the foreground. I picture what I might look like wearing the book bag at school. The woman asks me if I see anything that I like and smiles at me. I wake up.

comments:

Short and simple. I really like the way the art looked and I couldn't do it justice here. The only thing I can think of that it looks like is from this commercial that used to come on and if I described it you'd probably be even more confused.

current interpretations:

1) I suppose you could look at this a few different ways. Maybe I'm not exactly a boy scout for letting the old lady take the fall but hey, it's a dream people. I've never jumped a turnstile anywho.

[back]