N (New York City Subway service)

every day I commute from williamsburg to sunset park’s own Industry City complex. spending 8 hours a day trapped in the deeply spiritually bereft work-play VR experience that is the “IC Campus” has, i believe, made me a stupider and more complacent person basically across the board. anyway. there are two ways for me to get to this place and neither choice is necessarily ideal. as we know, there is exactly one train in brooklyn that goes up and down, and this is the G train. to get to and from “creative maker” hell without going through manhattan, i could theoretically walk 10 minutes to the lorimer G, take the church-bound to smith 9th, then either descend or ascend a number of flights of stairs that is always n+1 where n = the exact number of stairs you can ascend or descend in a herd of people before you start contemplating whether the small miseries of life ultimately outweigh the pleasures of eg love/community, and then wait for the local R train, which is 3 stops away from 36th street. while this option is technically more geographically efficient, i have never once not wanted to kill myself while doing it, so instead i take the L train from the station directly under my house to union square where i transfer to the brooklyn bound N express train. it is here that it occurs to me that for a review of the N train i have spent a long time not talking about the N train, and actually what is funny is that i started writing this as a 2 star review because i was mad at the N train for not showing up today thus forcing me to take the local R from union square instead. but as i consider more deeply, i am realizing that actually i love the N train, i just resent the place it takes me, which is not her fault. people react with horror when i tell them i commute from brooklyn to manhattan just to get somewhere in brooklyn, but what they dont know is that boarding the brooklyn bound N train during rush hour is sort of like falling through the looking glass into a serene commuter’s limbo, a different kind of journey, long and languid. it is technically only 3 stops from union square to 36th street, but the space between those stops stretches on and on and on. you always get a seat. there are familiar faces every day, people i notice that i know notice me. when we pass each other in some dumb fucking courtyard or food hall or whatever, we don’t acknowledge each other, but i think they know me too. the train goes over the bridge between canal and atlantic, and every face turns to the window like a sunflower. its the last of the orange and metal cars and it is the only way to get to industry city that doesnt raise my cortisol to malevolent levels. it has the quiet contemplative quality one imagines a train to the afterlife might hold. i was mad at the N train today because she made me 30 minutes late to work, but 17 stops in the hellish fluorescence of one of the newer R trains has caused me to reflect on my appreciation for the queenly dignity of the N. i cannot give her five stars simply because of my extreme disdain for my destination, but i will give her 4 for the journey.