Writing is work. And I mean work in the sense that you have to make a conscious effort to sit down and actually hit the keyboard. Often I find myself composing entries in my head after I have seen, heard or felt something that I deemed worth keeping into the archives of the written world. But then those moments become a task, and more often than not I either forget about them or just do not put them down. I am sure that I've missed remembering infinite memorable things from pure laziness.
I have composed rhymes about the sounds branches make when the ice weights upon them, stories about pigeons building their nest at the subway station, thoughts about the peddler I see every evening when I go home. But they are lost in my mind, mixed within all the images and sounds that I experience every day.
A long time ago I started writing a story called "Nameless Faces". A story that described all those people we see day-in and day-out and never talk to. Those that we eventually nod to and might even throw a smile to for good show, but never get as close to as to ask them how they are doing.
I remembered it this morning because the one person that at first made me think of writing about the "known strangers" is no longer there. He was a man that I saw every morning as I was walking, briskly and determined as every New Yorker does, between the 7 and the 6 train at Grand Central Station.
He was in a wheelchair and had no legs. His face was aghast and he had no front teeth, but always greeted everyone with a smile and carried with him a map of the subway in case someone had the time to stop and ask him for directions.
I ended up saying good morning to him after I marched by for over 3 years every day, but I never stopped to talk to him. With an ever rampant imagination I had multiple lives for him, reasons for his disability and who his family was, but never once did I confirm my theories.
It's been almost a year now that he hasn't been there. The last times I saw him he was looking even thinner that he ever did. I do exercise my imagination sometimes to an extreme, but this time I won't.
I am often too tired to write down what I feel, see or hear, that which has any impact on my psyche. But tonight I put aside my laziness and write about this man in the wheelchair who had become a constant in my morning commute, so that at least he can be remembered and will continue to be present for the duration of these words.
