two by two: taxi

robert deniro in "taxi driver" still has the monopoloy on the quintessential new yorker, the humble engineer of human transport in this teeming city of millions. he embodies the madness, the insomnia, the wonderland-esque quality of the city that is crazy by day and crazier by night. we taxi drivers are all a bit like this - all mad hatters in a city that only makes sense for us according to the snapshots we get of it during our respective shifts. we know more truth about this city than most new yorkers can get in a lifetime of living here. you could say we are the city. only difference being we drivers are all just too fucked up to ever be taken seriously.

the missed connections of pablo neruda

imagine new york: thousands of people walk past thousands of other people on a daily, hourly, minute-by-minute basis. during the day, it is a sea of people, a blur of lightly colored impressionism, one person fading into another. nights are sharper, edgier - bright lights blur into fantastical streams of light and color, shining in a way that makes people more apparent. but you still don't notice them do you? you walk right past them until one day, suddenly, holding on to a subway strap, driving down lexington in a taxi, wandering around times square, someone pops out at you. some face, amongst a sea of faces, looks at you and changes things, if only for a second. suddenly things slow down. suddenly you stop, the frenetic pace of things pauses ever so slightly, and you look...you SEE.

lovers

lovers meet and part on a daily basis, with a frightening sort of continuity. just go to any airport and witness firsthand the many comings and goings of people in our lives. airplanes fly off overhead, and i never cease wondering if anyone i know, if anyone i've loved is sitting upon the clouds, hurtling slowly out of my grasp.

sometimes, it's because they've quarrelled. other times it is simply because time has made them grow weary of one another. it can be their circumstances - he has to leave, or she sees him only on the weekend. sometimes, they are still in love, but too stubborn to admit it. one of them (or both) may be trying to selfishly save him/herself from an eventual broken heart.

that new car smell

as he pulled out of the driveway and onto the main road connecting him to the rest of the town, he suddenly smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. the car was new, a bright and shiny black suv, guzzling gas unapologetically and looking like every third car on the road, smelling that dizzying new car smell. the car was so new in fact, that it didn't have a license plate.

she and him

he liked her small movements, those tiny things only he noticed about her and which he was sure no one else knew. they were his closely guarded secrets in the moments he spent watching her. he knew that those hidden movements defined her personality.

the way she leaned her hip slightly to the left, propping open the refrigerator door with the curve of her leg and wrinkling her brow: her indecision. the way she rapidly pushed her hair up to the crown of her head, twisted, shaped, and packaged it with a rubberband, only to take it down two minutes later: her impetuosity. the way she showed anger not in her words, but in her eyes, which flashed and hardened, glittered dangerously as she spoke: a cold, controlled tempest of emotion. the way she tucked her hair behind her left ear when she was nervous and tugged at it when she was thinking: introspective.