Jess Myers

My Muse
Often it's frustration. Often it's reactionary. Often it's a search for humanity after being herded like livestock through the underbelly of Manhattan's 8am rat-race, and often it's an outlet for various urges that I get and assertions that I make about the state of people generally. For instance, I postulate that people are generally swine at eight in the morning, and I would like to push the lot in front of the downtown train so that I can get to work that much faster. It would be very easy, I think, because I am no better at 8 in the morning than the rest, and so I hunker down in my coat and I glower and I brood despite whatever up-tempo brit rasta-pop I have blaring into my eardrums, and I keep my hands balled in fists in my pockets, lest they get away from me accidentally. And on particularly bad mornings, I wrestle my apartment keys into my fists so that the key ends jut out between my knuckles like claws, so that if anyone f***s with me I can jam them into his eyeballs. I am a terrible beast in the mornings. I have to believe that we're all standing there with our claws and fists and whatevers in our pockets, just in case. And yet, in the short time I have been here, I have not seen anyone push anyone in front of the train, even though it would be so easy. Even though we are all so close to the edge, literally and figuratively, even though I have to believe we're all thinking it. I have never pushed anyone under the train--largely because I can write about it instead--and people have thus far extended me the same courtesy. I wonder about that a lot. Maybe there is some inherent good in us, or maybe I'm worse than the rest and other people don't think about that sort of thing, or maybe Manhattan is a city of writers, I don't know. And maybe I'm not setting the bar very high for humanity, but the fact that there isn't a train fatality on the news every morning, coupled with the fact that the MTA hasn't set up gates on the subway platforms to protect us from ourselves...that gives me hope.