Returning to the ferry at the end of the day involved a certain sordid ritual; the sense of escape from the campus was heightened by the need to pass between two suburban houses guarded by aggressive dogs which looked as if they had been fed on human thyroid glands; the bus that staggered down the hill into St. George, Manhattan momentarily visible at the crest, an island stronghold. The wait in the prisonlike, windowless terminal, for the massive doors to open; futile paper-grading attempts made on a bench next to a dozing junkie; the purchase of a single guilt-laced doughnut. The pointless insistence on standing, with the rest of the sad-looking crowd, in front of the door, all together displaying a collective, childish impatience. The hope that it's a car ferry with the peaceful deck in back.
And then on the ferry, and the mingled smell of the million dying things that make up a harbor's edge, and the boat's throbbing, and then off and enveloped in the serene white noise of a ferry engine, deep hum below and high-frequency churn behind. On the rear deck of the boat there is no wind at all. Eat the doughnut; watch the gulls surf the air-wake; the sun is collapsing into somewhere far beyond Bayonne, New Jersey. We pass our orange twin ferry, busting with stockbrokers and receptionists heading back. We're the empty one, the inverse commute: one teacher and a small crowd of students and Russian cleaning ladies leaving the suburbs for the city.
Look up in the sky over the Narrows: hanging aloft in a line stretching into the blue-black, airliners stoop, landing lights ablaze. (The first evening I noticed this, I swear, they appeared to me perfect embodiments of the uncanny, angel-devils that hovered in a wonderful and malevolent sky.) Stand on the deck, marveling at such infernal creation, science+industry= magic. We pass Roosevelt Island, and I stand to go get in line again, to wait my turn to tunnel myself below the glass cliffs.
My last ride on that route was two years ago. It was in many ways the best thing about that job. I don't know if I'll ever go back.
Posted by BT at May 20, 2002 11:19 PM