What happens when you don't listen while you are listening.

I ran from the store over to the subway stop at Sixteenth and Eighth listening to the regular combination of Paul Simon and the Gypsy Kings. (Wouldn't that be a great album idea? I should write to them and to Mr. Simon.) As usual an A train was just pulling out of the station as I banged my way through the turnstile and down the stairs. No matter. I had two or three David Sedaris stories to listen to from his book "Me Talk Pretty Someday" and then I was going to start Paul Auster's book "Brooklyn Follies". I was really enjoying Sedaris, his shy sounding, continually depressed, wry sense of the world and his difficulties with learning French were easy listening in the best sense of the words. I took off my backpack and unzipped my jacket, the platform was warmer then I thought it would be with the rain drizzling down outside. The Public Address system blared something, you can never tell what they are saying exactly, this one sounded like the basic "There is an Uptown A train at West 4th Street, one station away" but it seldom matters. A trains will arrive sooner or later, the fact that they announce one will be coming soon does not mean that one will actually arrive soon, it just means that they have announced that one will.

I switched my player to the FM receiver, sometimes WNYC is powerful enough that you can get it at the 23rd Street station, I thought I could catch a little of All Things Considered, but apparently I haven't pledged enough dollars for that to happen. I switched back to the books section and put on David whining about the French vs the US health care system and the treatment of his teeth. Several local trains roared into the station and I had to keep stopping the playback in order not to miss anything. I missed two really filthy poems about dogs and had to rewind to hear them again.

You don't really rewind anything on a MP3, you just push the button and watch how many minutes or seconds you are going back. There are no moving parts, there is just sound. The PA boomed again this time announcing that the Uptown A was about to enter the Fourteenth Street Station which is where I was, I was just at the Northern most end of it. I shut off the player and waited. By now the platform had filled with people, people with their own players, people with books, with newspapers, with magazines, with official looking paperwork which must be either something related to a job or school. I don't know why anybody would read a newspaper in the late afternoon. Usually everything that was reported in the morning paper has changed by six in the evening.

The train finally wheezed into the station filled to capacity so, of course, everyone on the platform became convinced that there would be a seat for them. The group at my door waited for a half a beat for anyone to exit the car and then began to press it's way onto the car. I was pressed between a very fat black man and a washed out blond holding a novel. The man somehow squeezed his way past the pole and into one of the seats by the far door. I followed and got a place to stand in the car's doorway. The doors dinged and closed and we were on our way home.

Remembering that I had forgotten to write down the mile to the station, I got out my Palm and dutifully wrote R/St 13:oo 1.1 m, which means Running on the Streets, the time elasped and the distance. I started a game of Scrabble against the Palm playing as Xx. I play on the expert level with no do overs allowed. If the Scrabble gods don't recognize a word you lose your turn. Today it turned down Claves which I thought was a word, but apparently is not. The train's PA came on at 34th Street reminding us to watch our belongings and if we see a suspicious package on a train or a platform to tell a police officer or MTA official. No one seems to listen to any of these messages anymore, for the first couple of months they gave me and everyone else the creeps.

The doors opened at 42nd Street and a ton of people got on, they into the middle of the car pressing the washed out blond against the pole she was hanging onto and making her hold the novel she was reading above her head for a moment or two like she was trying to keep it from getting wet. She looked very unhappy with her companion riders.

I started listening to the Auster book at Fifty-Ninth Street. Auster is such a bastard. He sucks you into a story in the first fifteen words which is, I guess, what you are supposed to do, but he does it almost too well. Here was this guy talking about going to Brooklyn to die and having a shouting match with his daughter about what kind of life he had had with her mother and it's still page one.

I'm sure they made an announcement, I just wasn't listening. I know they said something because the blond made a really sour face on her already sour face and got off with another woman at 168th Street and then just stood there on the platform as the doors closed. I started listening to Auster read his book again and at 175th Street I swung out of the doorway I was in and stood on the platform to let some of the people off. It seemed like a lot of people were getting off. A lot. There was more then the usual New York grimness on their faces and I should have notice that, but I wasn't listening, I was listening.

I got back on. The PA was saying something. I looked at the crowd on the platform. I know someday they will announce that "the terrorists holding this train have agreed to let all the passengers off the train" and I will still be sitting there as the train heads on to oblivion. I can't understand most of the announcements, so I don't listen to any of them. If someone does find a bag on a train and reports its, I will the one on the train when the bomb squad arrives.

Which is how I got to 207th Street without stopping at my stop at 181st. It's no big deal. I could actually run from 207th to home if I wanted to, but you do feel a little hijacked when the train rushes past four or five stations without stopping.

Finally, it can go no farther. It stops at the last stop. The brakes are bled with a big whoosh sound and then the new conductor gets on, makes an unintelligible annoucnment on the PA and they head back down.

I know someday when I am not listening it will be much worse than an extra fifteen minutes train ride but as long as Paul Auster keeps me entertained, I won't care.