8:23 A.M
I looked at the dull steel of the pole thinking of all the crotch-scratching, snot-rolling, germ-ridden hands that have gripped it before me. The train jolted forward and with a sigh, I grasped the cold metal with just my index finger and my thumb. “Tell me baby,” The Red Hot Chili Peppers asked, “what’s your story.” I pulled the headphone out of my ear and wrapped it around my iPod. I was never able to listen to music while on the train. It was too crowded, made me feel too enclosed. I always found it hard to breathe.
My free hand tugged on the floral pull tab of my book bag’s zipper and I dropped the mp3 player in. The train shifted again. I steadied myself.
I tore my eyes away from the black speckled floor, sticky with late night booze and early morning coffee and realized that the spot in front of the door was empty. I shimmied my way past the businessman with tight lips and a stilted glare and leaned against the train doors. I ignored his dirty look.
I noticed a sleeping man slumped in the orange subway seat, his body rolling with the motion of the train. His head was heavy – it lulled and sprang up and rolled again. The man next to him glowered, his grey eyes narrowed to slits. He attempted to shake the man’s head off of his shoulder but his intentions were moot; the sleeping man was far away, probably dreaming of getting more sleep (the deep bags under his eyes were almost frightening). Resigned, the angry grey eyed man leaned into the person next to him with his arms crossed tightly against his chest. I looked away with a smirk. I hated when strangers fell asleep on my shoulder, but it’s kind of funny when it happens to somebody else.
I saw someone lose their footing out of the corner of my eye. I turned at looked at the woman standing directly across from me. She looked dizzy and her knuckles were white from her tight grip on the rail. Her eyes kept fluttering, small tremors traveling up her shoulders.
That’s odd.
The teenager with Bose headphones shot a look of disgust in the direction of the dizzy woman. He shoved the thick cable knit material of his sweater into his nose. Those around him began to shift in their seats, their faces reacting to the sudden smell of sour milk and steamy sewage.
The woman’s eyes began to roll. The whites of her eyeballs quivered beneath her lids. Her knees were wobbling too. She was unhinging.
I stared at her.
The crowded train suddenly seemed very still, very empty.
I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.
It occurred to me that my hands were trembling and my legs were paralyzed. My lips were parted as if to speak, but it was as though I had never uttered a word in my life. Where was the air? My lungs grasped at nothingness, causing my breath to come in short, silent gasps —
I watched her.
Her tongue flicked out of her mouth and just as quickly got yanked back by the monster shaking inside of her. Her head seemed to be saying “no.” It shook.
Staring is impolite.
Shook back and forth and back again. The shaking of her head became jerky, frenetic.
The hand she used to grip onto the rail went limp. She slipped to the floor. Her black flat came off her foot. It was lined with a soft eyelet pattern and had a tiny bow on it. The inside sole was clean — so was the bottom of her foot. My heel always turned black when I wore black flats. I could never stop the dye from spilling over and seeping into my skin. I hated that.
Her mouth was full of white foamy spit. It reminded me of the same salty foam that trailed at the end of each wave and crashed violently into white sand. An ocean, spilling from her lips. Her head fell backwards.
The conductor said something over the loud speaker. The train doors pulled apart. Her body fell onto the feet of strangers and those blank faces ruptured, exploding with expressions of wide-eyed concern. Those towards the front of the crowd looked down. Those in the back of the crowd looked annoyed.
I just looked.
I could feel my heart beat in my elbows, could feel it pounding crazily against my spine.
Gentle, uncertain hands pulled her out onto the platform. There was gesturing, shouting. Some started running. It was all very silent. The shrill buzzing of my brain was the only sound reverberating in my ears. Her body relaxed – her eyes, though still white began to quiet. A few more tremors rocked her body and then her lids fluttered shut. “Next Stop, 34th Street.”
Everyone stood clear of the closing doors.
8:24 A.M
Air passed in front of me, holding hands with slow dust particles. I watched them float in front of my eyes, useless specks of dust clinging to my eyelashes and lodging themselves into the fabric of my shirt. There was a muted buzz still playing in my ear – I wish I could pull that out just like I pulled out my headphones. The walls of the train seemed much narrower, were they closing in? My head almost touched the ceiling. I pulled my shoulders forward, looking down at the floor, trying to breathe. People rushed out around me, “Let the people get through please,” others knocked into me as they swarmed in. I just needed one breath. One.
I couldn’t see out of my peripheries anymore.
I tried to move out of the way, but my knees were still locked and I didn’t have the combination my lips still parted as if about to say something isn’t there something I should say? I’m supposed to say something.
I was just a shell. An airless, useless shell. My five trembling fingers wrapped around the pole tightly. I guided my eyes up away from the ground. I exhaled.
Everyone moved around an object across from me, looking questioningly at it on the floor.
“Somebody lost a shoe!” A woman laughed, one of those hearty laughs that rise from deep in your stomach and reach up to lick the whites of your teeth.
I saw the eyelet material, the tiny bow.
Everything went black.
Originally, I wanted to expand on the hybrid piece we worked on for SA4. I spent four days trying to carry it over into essay form, attempting to express that piece in a more coherent way but it put me in a bad place. I started to resent everything and I was miserable writing about it, so I decided to move away from it entirely.
Last year, I saw a woman have a seizure on the R train. It all happened very suddenly (it may have been less than two minutes actually), and I couldn’t stop thinking about it for a long time after it happened. What bothered me most about it was my inability to do anything – instead of helping her, I felt sick and paralyzed and entranced. As a psychology major, we talk a lot about the bystander effect and I always say that if someone was in trouble I wouldn’t think twice about helping them, but then I remember that I’ve been in a similar situation and that I’ve been rendered immobile because of it. It actually haunts me.
What I tried to convey in this piece was this almost annoying inability to do anything. I really tried to emphasize the fact that all I could really do was watch as everything unfolded. Something that I found difficult (in this piece and the 574350425 other drafts I started and scrapped) was moving the story forward. I noticed that in describing the scene where the woman falls to the floor and the train doors open, the sentence lengths were very similar. It was a bit difficult to describe and propel the narrative forward. I guess this has to do a bit with pacing as well. This scene is probably something I’ll zero in on in revision.
I know that I have an issue with over-describing and under-explaining. It was a bit easier to deal with in the hybrid assignment because of the liberty we had with it, but it was something that was constantly on my mind while I wrote this piece. I tried to retain some detail while (hopefully) not weighing the entire piece down. King said that we should make specific things stand out but in other instances let the reader form their own image with just some guidance from the writer. I kept that in mind — I paid close attention to creating certain images and vivid moment, while letting other moments be filled in by the reader. I also tried to be cleaner in the writing. I guess this has to do with description too, but I bracketed a lot of fluff. I know this draft isn’t completely concise, but I tried to reign in the flowery writing for this assignment.
My favorite line, I think, is “A woman laughed, one of those hearty laughs that rise from deep in your stomach and reach up to lick the whites of your teeth.”
This is my favorite sentence mostly because it was the most fun to write. Usually, my writing is littered with weird comparisons that probably only make sense in my mind, but I think just adding one or two into the piece allows for it to stand out. I also really like the idea of a laugh licking teeth for some reason. A laugh always escapes your lips, passes your teeth on its way out, but I think the image of having a laugh linger in your mouth, wet — I don’t know. Again, this may just make sense in my mind …
Questions
1. Are there vivid images? What stood out the most to you?
2. What was the ‘message’ you got from this, if any?
Dear Katherine,
Your writing is descriptive and straightforward which makes this piece easy to read and visualize. Even though you’re writing this from your own experience and perspective, I could easily see myself in your shoes. The only suggestion I have is playing a bit more with the bystander apathy idea. The part where you’re more interested in the lady’s feet than the sight of her collapsing is disturbing, but I like that because it’s somewhat taboo to devalue a person’s well-being. Given how defensive and critical the passengers on the train seem to be in the beginning, it’s interesting how you chose to make most of them compassionate towards the lady with the seizure and how immediate their responses are. On the other hand, by pointing out that some people are just “annoyed” by the train stoppage, you seem to revert back to this theme of disinterest. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’d like to see you dig deeper into *why* you couldn’t or didn’t react and how this affected the way you perceive yourself.
As I mentioned before, your write is easy to visualize and many images stood out. The one that stood out the most would probably be the “ocean spilling from her lips.” The message I got is that people don’t care about each other as much as we think we should.
My favorite sentence structurally is “Her body fell onto the feet of strangers and those blank faces ruptured, exploding with expressions of wide-eyed concern.” I like the descriptive verbs (“ruptured,” “exploding”) and the alliteration of the “k” sound in “exploding,” “expressions,” and “concern.”
Dear Katherine,
There’s an abundance of images and descriptions in your essay and these made it easy to slip right into the train alongside you, and get a glimpse of how the experience was taken in by all of those aboard. Making your experience as tangible as possible was something that I think your essay does very well, and the emotions of helplessness are definitely there through the images you chose. For example, there’s the section where you breakdown different parts of you as being paralyzed; you chose very specific parts of yourself and went on to describe them as though they weren’t yours at that specific moment. I thought it was just a great and subtle way of expressing the idea of an “out of body experience”
That being said, I think that your concern with “over-describing but under-explaining” isn’t a pressing issue because of the main idea you said you were trying to convey: the inability to act. I think that many of us are rarely (if ever) fully conscious of the things we do and what meaning they may carry in situations that call for our immediate action. We are only capable of witnessing in those moments, and in our panic, constantly remind ourselves that it is not on us that the world is crashing down on. I thought that this was something that surfaced once in your essay in the part where you notice the woman’s flat and compare how clean her heel was compared to how yours is when you wear flats. For some reason, that distinction you made between something that happens to you versus something that happens to the woman stood out. For me, it was the moment where you were able to almost appreciate that you weren’t the one who was having a seizure on the train, and it was a subtle way that one image also carried your theme in. (I know I give a personal example, and it’s not probable that everyone will look into every image and perceive the same idea, but I think it’s something that you could explore with.) You can have a lot of impact with just introducing description, but using your word choice to influence how that image is perceived without a proper explanation, is what I’m trying to say. I’ve found that it’s sometimes better to leave the reader to figure things out for themselves, and it gives an opening in which their own emotions are brought into question.
One of my favorite sentences from your essay is this: “Her tongue flicked out of her mouth and just as quickly got yanked back by the monster shaking inside of her.” I think that your choice in not using a comma before “and” is a great way to show the urgency in her actions. If you read it out loud, it would require you to say it in a single breath, and I thought it was an awesome way to have the reader experience a sip of the anxiety of the moment.
Hey!
I have to say that my initial reaction of your piece was that it was uncomfortable to read (in a good way). I can feel what you felt the day on the train and with all of your descriptions it feels like I was there. I also experienced something rather terrible at a Target once before and know exactly what you mean about what you want to do and what it is that you actually do during the moment.
As far as what I liked about the piece was your descriptive writing. I felt uneasy that this was happening to you and i experienced it with you. You started off already describing a disgusting feeling that we have all felt or at least thought about. It started me off with the theme of this piece and made me feel uneasy. Sentences like, “Her tongue flicked out of her mouth and just as quickly got yanked back by the monster shaking inside of her” can make it easy for someone to see what her tongue was doing at the moment of her seizure. Nicely done!
What I didn’t like too much in your piece was your use of single sentence paragraphs. I like when you use it but i felt that you may have over used them. They do create a very dramatic feel to your writing, but too much of it and it looses its effect. I counted 12 single sentence paragraphs, try and consider cutting them down for an even more dramatic piece.
Q1: Vivid images are something you don’t really need work on. Images like, “I looked at the dull steel of the pole thinking of all the crotch-scratching, snot-rolling, germ-ridden hands that have gripped it before me” and “She looked dizzy and her knuckles were white from her tight grip on the rail. Her eyes kept fluttering, small tremors traveling up her shoulders” made it really easy to picture what it’s like to hold a subway pole even if you’ve never done so in your life. It’s also easy to see what your initial view was of what was going on. It’s vivid, rich and clear what was going on throughout.
Q2: I didn’t get a message. I think it was more of a very nicely written journal entry of what happened in your day. I didn’t feel that you were trying to convey a message, more like you were just telling a story. I may have missed the message, sorry if i did.
I like images you created in your essay, your nervousness is fully expressed in this big train and your essay, and i particularly like your physical images in your essay followed with your own imagination, the way you handled your imagination seemed very appropriate, never too much,
Katherine,
When you say in your cover letter that the event on the train “haunts you,” that quality clearly comes across in this essay. It’s haunting on many levels: the ways time stands still or goes VERY slowly, brilliantly emphasized in the “time stamps” as subtitles for the two part of the essay; the in-depth description; the sort of dream-like, almost (in places) surreal quality of the moment. It’s deeply haunting actually, and quite suspenseful. I found myself reading ahead to find out what happens to the woman (something I rarely do). Does she live? Does she die? Interestingly, you don’t tell us. You only SHOW her being transformed into an object. Which in itself is profoundly haunting.
I see a few really interesting themes, strands of meaning here, and I’m going to name them for you, since you ask about them and in case you find it useful, as you revise, to consider what meanings you want to try to highlight. There’s the onlooker paralysis/lack of care (even annoyance)–our urban disconnect. But in your case it’s a different kind of disconnect; it’s that paralysis, the sense of helplessness that’s only increased in the company of other people’s disconnect. Of course, all this is heightened in a subway, that hotbed of intimacy (the sharing of germs you highlight and the way people actually fall asleep on other people–what could be more intimate?!) and disconnect (they way we try to avoid eye contact and keep separate when that is nearly impossible in a crowded train). So there’s the thread of intimacy vs disconnect, and the creative ways we navigate this tension every day in NYC subways. There’s a thread of human suffering here. You slow it down and make us experience it (the writing is sooo so vivid and, I think, Lovely). What does it mean to make us experience this woman’s lonely “collapse” on the subway floor? You don’t have to answer this question, and indeed, getting too literal about it would mutilate its effect. But you should be able to articulate some quite answer to that question for yourself. There’s the germiness thread. The way we are “infected” by contact. You could play with this one more if you want; it’s a rich symbol for the responses you show people to have to this woman’s seizure. There’s the symbol of the shoe. Awesome. Think about what a shoe connotes: we talk about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes; this particular shoe is delicate and girly (bows and eyelet); shoes are what ground us, connect us (in an essay about disconnect which you literally figure as floating (the particles and your head touching the ceiling). There’s so much rich stuff in here that may suggest how you might organize and emphasize certain points.
There are many lines in here that I like. I love, for instance, the way you control rhythm in this section:
“That’s odd.
The teenager with Bose headphones shot a look of disgust in the direction of the dizzy woman. He shoved the thick cable knit material of his sweater into his nose. Those around him began to shift in their seats, their faces reacting to the sudden smell of sour milk and steamy sewage.
The woman’s eyes began to roll. The whites of her eyeballs quivered beneath her lids. Her knees were wobbling too. She was unhinging.
I stared at her.”
The short sentences (and short paragraph) to longer sentences, back to short, indicate the disorientation you’re feeling as you try to grasp what’s happening (along with, of course, the woman’s disorientation as her body gives way to a seizure). It’s beautiful writing, a good example of form meeting content.
I don’t see a lot of explaining here, as you mention, yet to explain it would kill it. Right? I mean, this essay is about disorientation, among the other meanings I outline above. IT’s about now fully grasping what’s going on. About the way time slows down when we’re presented in life with unique circumstances and challenges, and about the ways we respond (often disappointing ways). It doesn’t label the responses. If it did, however, it would risk being preachy or didactic. The description and the control of the language will be what carry the meaning here.
I really enjoyed this and I look forward to seeing what you do with it in revision! A big challenge, since this first draft is so powerful. But it still warrants, as any draft does, more play.