Wednesday, 09 February 2005 | Faculty bathroom

I like it when I notice how many directions this city is moving at once. Usually I see it when I'm in one of the outer boroughs, where the overground trains streak through the sky like slow, clunky meteors.

I also see it when I'm on the subway, underground, and heading in the same way as a parallel train. For a few seconds, I'm able to casually study the passengers in the adjacent car; they read, talk, sleep, or stare, but none of them behave as if they were unnaturally moving sideways, at a high speed, beneath several feet of concrete and sewer pipes. Five seconds only, and we begin to break apart, heading to separate destinations. The engineering of the subway system baffles me.

In Penn Station, the people behave like trains. They travel in a web of directions but form deliberate paths and avoid colliding with each other. If you're not desensitized to it, as I'm not, it can be rather fascinating to watch, particularly when the vintage "destinations" board reveals which track a particular train is leaving from. The people hover beneath the board, slack-jawed, with their coats and bags dripping off their arms and shoulders. When the platform is announced, they turn into track stars, and race each other to the best seats. If it were children doing this, it might not seem so unreal, but these are people wearing expensive suits, and shoes that get professionally shined. All day these people preside over board meetings and make executive decisions, only to later essentially call "Shotgun!" to a pack of strangers.

I had two seats to myself on my way out to a town on Long Island, and practically a whole car on the way back. In between, I spent time at a high school, photographing the team's star basketball player to the din of referee whistles, excited parents, rubber sneakers dragging against the waxed floor, and the uniform chants of cheerleaders (offense. defense. Let's go!). I'd forgotten about that specific kind of energy that high schools have, in which kids flirt with each other by making asses of themselves (I mean that in the friendliest way possible) and get genuinely excited about eating pizza! together after the game.

The adults whom I spoke with were incredibly nice to me. They suggested that I store my stuff in the faculty room and they even let me use the faculty bathroom. I half-expected them to ask me for credentials or ID or something. The faculty bathroom? I'm on that side of the fence these days?

They invited me to eat cake with the team (I did), which was served in honor of the last home game of the season. We sat on the corners of tables in the fluorescent cafeteria and ate blue flowers made of sugar. The whole experience was kind of disorienting.