Train Rides and Foot Travels

When you're truly happy, there is a certain Taoist principle that applies involving not actually verbalizing your joy. It is implied. The people closest to you recognize it immediately as genuine and there is no need to ask niceties such as "How are you?"

Of late, I've been pondering moments in my recent history that literally my heart sing. These are events that have occurred where my generally garrulous tongue finds itself without words. Instances where upon having another similar experience the sheer body memory of euphoria brings you immediately back to the last time you felt this way. Here's a short list of moments that have produced a wide grin across my face that make me feel as though a happy bout of Bell's Palsy may be at work:

- Being at a bar in Chelsea and having the entire place sing "His Eyes Are on the Sparrow" from the Sister Act 2 soundtrack.
- The final encore of the Crooked Still concert at Sanders Theater involves a call-and-response rendition of "Shady Grove."
- Bringing down the house with a rollicking version of "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon at a karaoke bar full of strangers in the Lower East Side.
- Getting up in front a bevy of Brooklyn hipsters in Bushwick and reading a piece that I wrote about voyeurism in the city and how it specifically reminds me of watching Adult Swim when I had a television.
- Going to the Bowery Ballroom and hearing "Modal Combat" perform their Super Nintendo set while swilling PBR cans and attempting to quell church laughter.
- Hearing my mother retell the story of how she lost my brother's dog and dejectedly plopped down on the lawn and sulked when she couldn't find him, "Pup-eroni" in one hand and dignity just out of grasp of the other.

Then, in thinking about what scares me, I believe the most frightening event that could ever happen to me would involve an inability to communicate. There are days where the only sustenance I have is conversation, and I eat it with relish.

And the truth is some days we eat better than others. Clearly, the gentleman across from me on the train the other morning were starving for conversation. They were reciting, one for one, their Netflix queues. This is not even to say a discussion of cinema, but rather a pissing contest of who's list is longer. I have an idea, boys: whip'em out, and let's all see who's is longer. I could already tell that the bespectacled fellow's leans a little to the left, and includes far more Indie and Foreign selections.

If such dialogue ever becomes the best I can muster I sincerely hope someone takes me out back and finishes me, Old Yeller-style. PUT. ME. DOWN.

Then, there's little lyric I wrote the other morning:

toes number a total of ten,
and i'm totally reticent to count more.
if feet could talk mind a dirge would sing,
for they know, for them, what's in store.