Thoughts From a Subway to Queens

I figured the most authentic way to complete this week's reading was to dive into the words of Bishop and Lethem while taking the F train to Queens. It wasn't my intention to get lost in the reading and consequently end up in unknown territory but next thing I knew I was the unfortunate recipient of a native New Yorker's pity filled head shake as I asked how far we were from Steinway Street. And it was when I finally emerged (an hour and a half later) into the West 4th St. station, back home, that I fully appreciated Lethem's words.
He described the infinate comfort which accompanies the feeling of familiarity. For Lethem, the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station was a strange embodiment of all the good, bad, and just plain outragreous qualities that made New York his home. And it's curious how such a space that goes against every natural human instinct associated with comfort could be so powerful. For as Bishop related in her poem, Moth-Man, there is something unnatural and stifling in the world underground.
But for me it seems that the subway system stands as an important symbol of solidarity for each and every city dweller. Once down in a station or on a train we are all equally as vulnerable to the actions of the next. And that sort of vulnerability can be liberating and frightening. For Lethem (and I've come to realize for me too) a familiar station can represent a place of security, a point in which it's possible to assert some sort of identity, an identity that's so important when in contrast to the immensity of the subway system and New York itself.