Other

I was given a book and I broke its spine.

It is a gold book of haikus with a lacquered cloth cover. It says “Lotus Blossoms” in clear silver type on the outside and “To Molly, Happy 2008!” on the inside. It came from some family friends, and I cracked its back about a year ago. Not having much of a taste for poetry (and being even less interested in cryptic absurdity), I am surprised by how often I turn to it for advice or inspiration.

Tonight, these lines, by Buson, seem appropriate:

Icy winter night…
I unfreeze the writing-brush
with my two good teeth

Last week it snowed in New York City. Oh, we’d had spritzes in early December, but these fat flakes were the season’s first real snowfall. It started while I was at work. I sit by a large window, and the blinds are controlled automatically by our facilities manager, who has them timed to go up and down based on the amount of glare we have on our computer screens. When the blinds and the snow began falling at the same time, I was ordered to sprint down to the manager and request a clear view of the windows so we could watch.

The first snow I ever saw here was the day I arrived last year. I was staying with a friend who lives in Turtle Bay, a small neighborhood in Manhattan. She took me for a walk through the city at night. Some of the Christmas decorations were still up, and we went from couture feather dresses at Lord and Taylor’s to glittery gummy bear statues outside the Gap. But my favorite part was the Diamond District. We turned down a sidestreet and were surrounded by stores devoted only to diamond jewelry. I looked down and noticed that suddenly the sidewalks had a high content of mica, making them sparkle. At the same moment, it began to snow icy crystals, the kind that burn when they hit your skin, but look beautiful passing by.

Between the shimmering jewels, sparkling sidewalks and flashing snowflakes, I felt truly overwhelmed. For me, being overtaken by curiosity and joy while teetering on the brink of not coping is a New York-only experience.

It’s a city that feels like it’s seen it all. There’s no crime gruesome enough, no sound loud enough, no street busy enough to really blow a New Yorker out of the water with novelty. But when it snows — when it really snows — the sidewalks get covered. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can make the first set of footprints on a few squares. And when that happens, you are a pioneer. You are thrown back to New York’s first days, when people tramped, instead of shuffling. I’m prone to romanticizing the past (who isn’t?), and I’m at my blissful worst when the snow stills the city and I can break my own path.

It’s almost as satisfying as a great winter haiku.

I was 22 when I took my first solo cab ride. I was 22 and a half when I hailed my first taxi. I was 23 when I was first certain I was being ripped off by a driver. ($25 to get from Park Slope to Bushwick? Really?)

There are no taxis where I come from. There are trucks. And 8-wheeled trailers. And four-wheeler ATVs. Growing up, the closest I came to a yellow cab was sitting in a bucket seat surrounded by peeling buttercup paint on my father’s farm-use vehicle. In a small town with no public transportation (aside from school buses), there was no need for taxis. Everyone had their own wheels. And you better believe tractors count.

After I left the county with no stoplights, I moved to Washington D.C. Then Chicago. Then New York City. As I gradually increased the size of the population around me, I also increased the frequency with which I take taxis.

I like cabs. They generally make me carsick, but I find that they’re a great place to have… moments.

One of my favorite rituals was taking a taxi from Midway airport up Lake Shore Drive and to Lincoln Park, where I lived in Chicago. My apartment was about three blocks from the water, so most of the trip was spent with glorious high rises on my left and steely Lake Michigan on my right. I usually flew back in the evening, so all the buildings were lit, and most of them were close to the road. I loved feeling the dark, moving expanse of the lake on one side and catching glimpses of fancy art and track lighting on the other.

It was on that same Lake Shore Drive that I was once taking a cab with three visiting friends. It was a frigid — and I mean bone-freezing — January day and we were off to meet other friends at the Shedd Aquarium. We’d taken the bus downtown, but due to my er, miscalculations, we overshot Shedd and couldn’t bear to stand outside waiting for a bus in the opposite direction. After an icy ten minutes, once our arms were frozen in an upright position, a cab finally stopped and we clambered in, all yodeling for the driver to turn up the heat. It couldn’t have been ten minutes later that we merged onto Lake Shore Drive and blew a tire. The driver pulled over. Philip, one of my friends, gallantly offered to help repair the tire. Rachael, Jen and I stayed in the car. Philip and the driver soon gave up and we were told to get out and find another vehicle. Chivalrous (and shiver-rous) Phil stood on the narrow strip of snow beside a streaming highway for almost 20 minutes trying to get an empty cab to stop on the side. Finally he did. Memories.

I’ve been in cabs that hit other cars. I’ve been in ones that came so close to crashing that one of my impeccably mannered New England WASP friends, who never says anything more offensive than “oh, shoot” exclaimed “Jesus Christ! Are you a maniac?!”

I was in a cab, coming home from a bar with a friend I was preeeetty sure was intrigued when I invited him back to my apartment. “Two stops,” was his only response.

A taxi was taking me to a cocktail party (I was wearing impossibly high heels, poorly suited to subway surfing) when I found out one of my best friends was engaged.

As I get older and spend more time in transport in taxis, I can’t help but feel a fondness for them. They’ve been around for some of my finest moments.