I Wonder?

I wake up wondering…..wondering what awaits us on the streets of NYC this morning?

What type of music will be echoing in the hollow corridors of the tile-lined subway tunnels?

Will it be the smooth melodic voice of the rhythmic guitar player, the high pitched but practiced symphonic sound of the opera singer or will it be the well trained classical pieces of the young duo on cello and violin or the black dread-locked rhythm genius who can make over-turned empty white buckets come to life.

We have met them all within the endless maze of tunnels. What we didn't expect was how there is an uncanny politeness in their peddling and are amazed at how many NYorkers pull out their bills to show their appreciation…a thank you we suppose for how their music breaks the otherwise mundane sounds of the subway.


What kind of artists will be demonstrating their practiced craft before the crowd in hopes of selling another treasured piece?

We somehow aren't quite as impressed with the artists. Some are trying …perhaps it is better than they could sing…or play an instrument… There are some good ones…like the man in Battery Park how sprays sillouhettes of the New York city skyline with cans of spray paint, or the numerous well practiced caracture artists in Central Park, or the sand mural artist in Union Station..so wished we would have gone back later that evening to see his final creation.


Which of the homeless will be out with their "Please help me" signs characteristically printed in black felt on cardboard?

There are the older men in wheelchairs often with one leg or those with crutches shaking their cups for change….there are the mysterious young girls always sitting in the same spots in the subway with sleeping toddlers in their arms with their cardboard signs written in English but who claim to know none and the middle aged men in the downtown streets with stories of lost jobs, no home and no money but $4.00 Starbucks drinks sitting beside their tattered collection cups.


I fall asleep wondering …which one of these adults was once a kid...

Who was always tapping their desks or humming - driving everyone else crazy?

or

Who filled the sides of their pages with doodles when they were supposed to be doing their school work?

or

Who were the risk takers who needed someone to come alongside them to see them through to the end?

Instead , might we have been guilty of trying to make them into someone they weren't?

I wonder?