24th and Mission

It all started when I heard a loud thump while waiting for a nighttime BART train. 

I followed my ears to the source of the sound, where I discovered a Latino in his 60s sprawled out, prone, parallel to the bottom of the stairs, with his eyes open. 

My first thought was that he was drunk but he gave off no stink of liquor and had a dignified appearance: trim and well-preserved, clean shaven, shiny brown dress shoes, a short-sleeve, open-collared linen shirt tucked into cream-colored, creased slacks.

As someone called 911 and notified the BART station employee, a group of riders stood around the man, concerned. An angelic twenty-something woman hunched over him asking questions in English ("Are you ok? Sir? Are you ok?"). Her boyfriend asked the same questions in Spanish during the pauses, all of us hanging on a reply that didn't come as he stared up at us vacantly, as if in shock, blinking every so often. Setting the small crowd at ease, the woman told us he was alright. 

Was she a nurse? Pre-med? Something soothing in her manner told us to believe her. 

Long minutes passed. To our relief, the man came around a little and offered a few words en Español. We noticed that he had a quarter-sized, blood red circle on the top of his mostly bald head. Had he sustained a concussion? He seemed less than fully present. 

As we looked on patiently, the man indicated that he wanted to sit up. Just behind him on the stairs, cheeks to heels, I reached a right hand over to his strong, worn palm, pulling him up while the woman lifted from underneath. Before we got the man all the way up, he let go of my grasp and indicated that he wanted to move himself. 

Sliding around on the tile, he propped his head up on the first stair and began a conversation in Spanish with the BART employee. Crisis averted, everyone else moved away to the train platforms on either side with still an eye on the man, just in case. As if the universe was telling me my work was done here, the train roared in a moment later, wind tunnel effect blowing my hair back.

Staring through the window as the train pulled away, I saw two paramedics poised over the man, restoring normalcy.      

Still life with BART platform

Click on image to enlarge

In the countless hours I've stood in BART stations, it has been impossible not to notice symmetries in the visual planes around me, captured in the photo for this freewrite.

Viewing that image, there is an unmistakable congruity in the series of white lights overhead, the nebulous reflections of those lights, the square hollows in the concrete walls, the yellow lines that run along the lip of either side of the platform, the flattened "X" which forms diagonally from corner to corner, the triangular wedge along left and right that thins as it trails into the distance.

The other night I focused on just one side of a BART platform. The first shot, above, has a symmetry of angles similar to the full platform shot—symmetry between the yellow line

Click on image to enlarge

which cuts through the middle with the white ceiling panel above it, the slanting white overhead lights with the tracks, the triangular wedge along the left side closing to a small, dark hole where the train makes its entrance. Everyone stares ahead at the drab, gray wall opposite them.

In the second photo, at right, a light appears at the end of the tunnel toward the middle of the image. All heads turn, the woman on the bench gets up, the riders feel a sense of relief that their wait is over.

Fifteen minutes in San Francisco

When I reached the bus stop late night a young Spandex-clad woman rambled full tilt into her phone and a really good listener's ear 

A bus rolled up I went to the middle of the last row where I could see everything

The guy in front of me to the left played rap music for all to hear through his phone



The guy in front of me on my right bopped his head along just barely to the beat

And directly across from Head Bopper was Full Tilt, still yammering away about a friend whose parents were pushing her through school but she wasn't studying enough because she didn't really want to be in school and

A stop, a cat got on, sat next to Rap Boy, fist-bumped him

Stop after that a middle-aged woman got on with a bunch of bags but

She rode just a few blocks and at one stop as the driver was about to close the back door and move along she suddenly yelled, "Wait! I have lots of stuff to carry. Wait!"

And so the driver waited she got off Head Bopper grinned at the drama, started bobbing his head again to the music

Bus pulled up to Van Ness and Market the guy directly in front of me fist-bumped Rap Boy got up to leave and loudly sucked mucus up into his throat without breaking stride

And did it one more time as he waited for the green light above the back door to come on

Head Bopper grinned again (the shit you see...)

I got off at the next stop, said to Head Bopper, "Endless entertainment on MUNI"

He smiled broadly, said yes

I came down into the long Civic Center BART tunnel two brothers were playing smooth jazz 

keyboards and sax over a drum track

I gave 'em a dollar the saxman said thank you I said, "No. Thank you"

And when I looked ahead I saw a homeless cat near the add fare machines dancing in a winding cartwheeling drunk belly dancer style to the jazzmen 

He saw me see him as I passed and smiled big and full of teeth except the one in the front which was missing

I smiled back and gave him a thumb's up

Through the turnstile,

Downstairs on the platform I ran into a soft-spoken bearded dude from my old meet-up group who wrote verse in a little black leatherbound book, if memory serves,

I said hey, don't I know you?

He said yes

Are you still going to the group?

And so on...

I broke away when the train came

The doors closed behind,

Sealing me in.  

***

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