entering dean st I catch the stirrings of an album I hadn't listened to since sophomore year of high school. suddenly everything comes back, all proustian and all, spreading outwards like ink droplets in water, or like a glass of water spilled across a table and rapidly flowing outwards, seeping into books, papers, growing outward and outward, and

and so it's night night night and the subways are all weird, disjointed. everyone's tired, waiting for the next train. when is it coming? 17 minutes later. I'll transfer and then transfer and then transfer. it's a sunday night, and it's 2:40am. and these moments are everywhere, these quiet moments. every once in a while I'll look up and there will be two other people in my train car, on the corners of seats, leaning against subway infrastructure. and then sometimes I'll look up and I'll be alone in the car, and that's that, back to my music, back to a bowed head, back to our cylindrical apparatus rushing through the arteries of this city. nothing but noise at

exiting the subway station. there's the biggest halal cart truck I've ever seen. a deli says: "BREAKFAST 24 HOURS" and it makes me happy, this sense of constant presence. 'we're always starting our day, over here.' I ride my bike and go home and there are no cars on the street and nobody walking on the sidewalks, and I nurse this sensation in my heart and carry it home, like that anne sexton poem about the charles river, eastward on dean st. and think gently about