2025 feels like
a chance encounter on the Subway
2025 feels like…
Waking up in the guest room of my friends’ home with my dog buried under the covers beside me.
Warm homemade cinnamon buns we made the night before (with a doubled icing recipe!)
Reflection and intention setting with people who make me feel cozy and also infinite.
Live music.
Skyping my family as a dark square counting down in a bar under 20 disco balls.
My dog having a safe place to spend the day when my dogsitter is out of town.
Coming out of the cold into the warmth of good people who are great friends.
Work being cut short for the day and being able to attend last minute plans for a friend’s birthday dinner.
Sore arms from holding a six year old girl up while she ice skates for the first time.
Walking out of work full of pride at being good at my job and still being liked at the end of the day too.
Carrying a neighbor’s coffee table from a Buy Nothing group 4 blocks to its new home in my living room where it’s quickly been filled with notebooks and coasters.
A cold that pushes me under my newest softest blanket while snow falls outside my window.
My dog curled up besides the radiator.
A friend coming by to take my dog on a walk and move things from my sink to my drying rack.
Coaching sessions that leave me buzzing and beaming.
Going from draft to publish in 2 hours instead of 2 days… or weeks.
2025 feels like this.
I was on the train on January 2nd after my first day back at work in weeks. I had a book (a physical book! not Libby on my phone!) propped open on top of my bag on my lap. I was trying to read about a circus I had kind of lost interest in. A man across from me and a few seats over started rapping. I wanted him to stop. I’m rereading every sentence because my curiosity keeps making me listen to his words that I can’t quite understand. Why can’t he just rap a little quieter? The lady next to me drops the cap she has just unscrewed off of her water and he crouches up from his seat to pick it up and reaches it across the train to her. She waits until a pause in his rapping to thank him.
I move him to ‘not dangerous and just a little annoying’. I reread the next sentence in my book for the sixth time. I focus in or I try to and then there’s the strum of a guitar, electric, amped. A new man (I remember him being cute, but I’m a sucker for talent and a smile) is in the doorway, guitar slung across his chest. The train door has already closed behind him, and we’re in for the long haul between 59th and 125th. He notices the guy already rapping across from him and continues with the opening chords of hotel California. But he doesn’t sing.
“I can lay down to that, man, yeah, I can lay down to that.”
The guy with his guitar is good. He’s really good. People on the train start to smile and to sway and to bob their heads. And the other man keep rapping. I still can’t understand what he’s saying but I can feel it. The two of them ricochet off of each other, smiles on their faces that spread through the car. The rapper gets tired or runs out of rhymes and he pauses, nods his head to the music.
The doughy faced lady beside me pulls down her mask and starts to rap. She spits rhymes about the subway and today’s NYC and the woman who was lit on fire in the subway a few days ago. She’s good. She’s a surprise. She finishes and pulls her mask back on and the rapper across the aisle, jaw dropped, gives her a hand, and starts to rap again, this time about her. When all three of them finish, the subway car applauds. The guitarist only half heartedly walks the car for cash, acknowledging the stellar group effort before he unplugs his amp and steps out of the opening car doors at 125th. I miss him.
The woman beside me says, “a real New York moment,” and smiles. I smile back at her. My book is still open in my hands but I haven’t looked at it since 59th street. The rapping man starts to talk across the train at me about how I wouldn’t believe that the real evil in the world is the government and a bunch of other things that he wouldn’t believe I do in fact agree with him about. I nod along and thank him for sharing as he tells me about his felonies and stint in prison. Other people in the subway look for who he’s talking at and I smile with my lips closed. The woman next to me is also listening and nodding. He tells us that the Constitution is his law, not state laws so he has five guns at home and no one can tell him he can’t. And then it’s his stop and he rushes away.
The lady besides me says something I can’t remember about our special friend.
I smile at her. She turns her body more towards me on the subway bench and she starts to talk. She tells me she busked once in Columbus Circle and it was really hard so she doesn’t do it anymore. She really likes making different types of art, but she doesn’t want to use it to make money (“I mean it would be nice if it made money, but I don’t want it to have to.”) She thinks it’s really important that she puts her art out there though, it’s not just for her. That resonates in some ways so I tell her so. I mostly nod and smile. She talks about LinkNYC and how she’s submitting all of her work there and how she wants to start a nonprofit. It’s unclear exactly what for and I resist an urge to ask her to write down her name so I can find her and dive deeper.
She pauses in a way that might be an ending. I glance down at my book still open on my lap, feeling lighter.
“You’re being such a nice and open person so I’m going to tell you this.”
She tells me she was attacked on the subway in 2023, that some people beat her and stomped on her head while throwing white bitch slurs at her. That they threw water at her like someone threw fire at the woman on the subway recently, that it felt similar. I tell her it makes sense that she would have traumatic PTSD like response to that situation. She tells me she’s going to DBT therapy and that the experience we just had, making music and art together on the subway today, feels like exposure therapy, for helping her feel safe on the subway.
I thank her for opening up and sharing with me and she tells me I’m easy to talk to. I tell her part of me wants to be a therapist. Confessions fall after confessions. She asks if I’m going to school for it and I say
“No, I think I’ll just keep listening to people.”
She says, “good. You’re good at it.”
And then it’s her stop.
That’s how 2025 feels.
It feels like breathlessly telling all of my friends about the magical moment on the subway, to reassure them that this is exactly that kind of year, finally finaly finally, and much more good is to come.
I feel really different this year. Different than last year. Than 2 years ago. Than 5 years ago.
I came to write about it today. When I showed up, all of my parts were already there at the table. They turned when they heard me coming and they beamed at me, pure radiant perfect joy. They are excited to see me. I am excited too.
What happened next is a story for next time.
Because if I wait this one may never make it to you.
See you soon.
Happy New Year.
Effing beautiful! Wish I could have been there to experience it with you all.
Amazing experience captured by a beautifully written story! Makes me think you could pursue fiction writing (if you haven't already).