A Walk on New Year’s Eve

The Four­teen Street Sta­tion was (and is) excep­tion­al­ly large, with local and express tracks, along with pas­sen­ger plat­forms of a very wide and expan­sive depth and length. Its con­nec­tions and exten­sions are such that if you don’t know your way around, it’s easy to get lost. But since I passed through it almost dai­ly on my way to high school, I knew it as well as I knew any place in the city.

That time, when I got down to the plat­form, to my sur­prise, I was the only one there. It was as if I had entered a vast and emp­ty cave sys­tem, a labyrinth of con­crete walk­ways and iron beams hold­ing up the low ceil­ing, every­thing only part­ly lit by dim white lights plus the blink­ing red and green that con­sti­tut­ed the com­plex sig­nal sys­tem for high-speed trains. On every oth­er beam the num­ber “14” was post­ed. A wood­en bench was there, upon which no one was sit­ting. It was all com­plete­ly famil­iar. But empty.

As I stood there, the only sounds I heard were the occa­sion­al drip-drip of water com­ing from I knew not where, and some­times the soft scur­ry­ing steps of a scram­bling rat in search of sus­te­nance. In oth­er words, I was aware of the empti­ness of the place, not so much desert­ed as aban­doned. I was, at that moment, acute­ly aware that I was the only per­son there. I stood, hav­ing noth­ing to do but wait for a sub­way train to arrive.

Then, quite sud­den­ly, the world in which I was stand­ing changed. Real­i­ty shift­ed. I did not see func­tion­ing, weight-bear­ing beams, but only iron. I did not see plat­forms; I saw just con­crete. I did not see light fix­tures, only light. No rails but rib­bons of steel. That bench was mere­ly wood. The num­ber 14 was in the air, every­where, unat­tached. It was not a sta­tion. I was sim­ply some­where, nowhere, with noth­ing under my feet, the space around me no longer enclosed but alto­geth­er infi­nite. That is to say, I was see­ing no func­tion, no world as I knew it by name or what it was meant to be or do, but mere­ly mate­r­i­al sub­stance, to which I was utter­ly dis­con­nect­ed. I was drift­ing, unteth­ered, float­ing free in a uni­verse I had nev­er expe­ri­enced or known any­thing about. All sense of time van­ished, as did any aware­ness as to how much time was passing.

All this was instant­ly dis­solved by a sud­den roar as a train rushed into the sta­tion. Snapped back to the world I knew, I got into the car. A few peo­ple were there: an old woman with five stuffed shop­ping bags around her swollen feet: A man wear­ing a bent par­ty hat, asleep: A young cou­ple hold­ing hands, her head rest­ing on his shoul­der: A white beard­ed man read­ing a Bible. Ordi­nary New York.

As the train rushed on, I tried to make sense of what had hap­pened. Being (or so I believed) a ratio­nal fel­low, I told myself I had fall­en part­ly asleep and had been see­ing things with only part of my brain. Noth­ing more.

And yet, and yet……….

This hap­pened some sev­en­ty years ago. I remem­ber it with great clar­i­ty. I now think of it as the New Year’s Eve in which I slipped away, how­ev­er briefly — through time and space, going I know not where.

I nev­er got there, and it has nev­er hap­pened again.