the great leslie

This week I saw this fellow on the no. 2 train. It was the fourth time I've seen him in the last couple weeks. All over the city, too: on the no. 7 train, near Columbia University, and near my office downtown. I almost said something; he's an attractive fellow. I was working on a speech in my head, but not a peep passed my lips. He's not the only person I see around and never talk to. There's that oldster who walks his bulldog on Morningside Drive, the the dude behind the counter at Burrittoville, the couple at the nailshop downstairs. New York seems to be the place of familiar strangers.

A collection of snow globes was trashed yesterday by someone on 106th Street. There were dozens of dusty, half-evaporated globes from everywhere you can get such momentos: Las Vegas, Cancun, Ft. Lauderdale. And you have to wonder about the person who collected them, and who presumably threw them away. Another time, a woman had ripped up and cleared away years of papers. The bag she brought it all out in had been split somehow, and her bills, birthday cards, and bar napkins were all over the sidewalk.

I can't help but make up stories about these strangers. That fellow is an artist, he drinks too much, eats once a day, and studies something somewhere. The snow globes were collected years ago when someone was in her young twenties. She's been hanging on to them for sentimental reasons, but she finally parted with them to make way for the clothes her kiddo grew out of. And the woman whose paper trail was spilled out on the street ... I can't help but feeling sad about that, about all her stuff out for nosy people like me to see.