A year and a half ago, when I first moved to New York, I wrote the following passage in my journal:

"New York buzzes. Caught in the wave of activity, I feel like a small conduit for something greater. I could do anything here, and feel like it means something. The toothless, homeless woman that I met today warned me against the dangers of not wearing a winter jacket. "You could catch neumonia", she said. I could be that woman, and still feel like I was part of something more significant."

With this said, I will describe a portion of my day.

I was sitting in front of my computer screen, anxiously watching the minutes blip by on the upper right hand corner of the screen. My head felt like it was filled with that goo that surrounds the useless, undefinable meat in a can of spam. I attempted to feign some sort of productive and thoughtful expression on my face. At 12:15, I was able to justify leaving my desk for a lunch break.

The day was beautiful. The sun hit my screaming cornias, which took a moment to adjust to the natural light. I grabbed some take-out and headed to the park. The sight of the park lifted my spirits momentarily, until I remembered that the rolling green grass was not accessible to the mangy likes of someone such as myself. A wrought-iron fence surrounded it, taunting me. So, I picked the shadiest bench. My skin and eyes still hadn't adjusted to the full UV rays that were beating down on me, no thanks to the quickly depleting ozone layer.

So I tried to make myself comfortable, despite the fact that I was sqeezed between two strangers (one of them was an older man who smelled suspiciously like a combination of cat urine and Jack Daniels). I began to cut up my food with my plastic utensils, convincing myself that I was content to be surrounded by "nature".

I was lifting a bite of zuchinni towards my open mouth when I noticed the homeless woman who was sitting across from me, jotting notes in an old journal. for one paranoid moment, she seemed to be observing me. My eyes were caught by the sight of one of her large, swollen feet, which appeared to be gangrenous. Then I realized that the bite of zuchinni had not actually entered my mouth, but was hovering just in front of it. Realizing how odd this must have looked, I put the bite in my mouth and swallowed it, begrudgingly.

I wasn't able to get up and move. I just couldn't justify moving because I didn't want to look at a homeless woman while I ate my well balanced meal. So I choked down as much as I could and trudged back to the office.