Delicate
Until today I had never realized just how extremely difficult it is to get a delicate object from one place to another in New York City. This morning I had finished and presented my first big project for school. It was well received. You can see some documentation here. The project involved some very fragile cat parts that I cut from a 3/16” piece of ply-wood with a laser cutter. I learned exactly how fragile last night when I was making some last minute adjustments at three in the morning. I realized the wires were occasionally shifting inside the container in a way that cut the power going to the Arduino (microcontroller). In order to move them around I had to take of the panel with the cat parts glued into it, but I couldn’t move it far because it was attached by the leads coming from the switch in the back. As I tried to move things around I slipped and my hand grazed the top of the tail part and I heard the tiniest crack. After flipping out and cursing and storming around my asleep girlfriend’s apartment for about five minutes, I realized the tail hadn’t fallen off and would stay on long enough to bring the thing to class and demonstrate it as long as I was extremely careful. In the morning I carried the project from the West Village to class at NYU without any problems. It was early and there wasn’t much action on the streets.
That afternoon was a different story.
After six hours of class, which followed two weeks of constant work and little sleep, I was ready to head back to my apartment, do a final documentation of the piece and then dismantle it. I still had to get it from NYU to my apartment in Williamsburg. Clutching a hand built wooden box with a switch to my chest to protect the cat parts, I walked through busy pedestrian traffic from Waverly up Broadway to the 14th Street L train stop. This was nerve racking enough, but things only got worse. Once I was in the station I realized my Metrocard was expired (I hadn’t ridden the subway, or even been back to my apartment in Brooklyn, in the past five days). Holding the frame in one hand, I removed my credit card, bought a Metrocard, replaced my credit card in my wallet, grabbed the Metrocard, swiped it, put it in my wallet and walked through the turnstile. The platform wasn’t too crowded. I stayed near the back and leaned against a column that had had maybe five hundred paint jobs.
The train came and there appeared to be a lot of seat but as I walked carefully into the car they filled up. I leaned against the window as we pulled away from Union Square. I had seven stops to go.
At 3rd Ave, two kids with skateboards got on behind me. They were teenagers and though not particularly loud, they were moving a lot, and holding their skateboards occasionally at chest height, where they could easily be stuck into the opening in the front of the frame, where my tiny cat parts stood. The alpha teenager was tall and wearing only faded black clothing and a black old school Yankees cap. The other one had a navy blue sweatshirt, RGB blue knit hat and green jeans on. They looked similar but the alpha was taller and more angular. The beta was a bit doughy and talked slowly. They were arguing quietly about something.
At 1st Ave, one of those subway acrobatics guys got on, one bench away. Of course, I thought to myself. I had spent $20 on wood, about $10-15 on electronics, and probably ~80 hrs making this stupid project. He turned on his boom box, said “Welcome to the shooooow” in a shy voice and cleared people out of the way. One Latino guy had headphones in and hadn’t noticed the acrobat. He tapped the Latino guy, who wore a Yankees had, tight polo and loose blue jeans, and at first it appeared that he wasn’t going to move. The acrobat insisted, a pained expression on his face, and the Latino guy moved in front of me. The acrobat started his act, swinging around poles, jumping backwards on to his hands and then launching himself into the air again. He was actually really smooth. He flipped around the bar at above the bench closest to me and missed kicking the Latino guy by about two inches. He finished when we got to Bedford and a few people gave him change and he left.
The teenagers approved.
“One time I saw these two guys to a play on the train, like Hamlet or something,” the alpha said. ”No it was Romeo and Juliet. It was one of those. It was dope though. They were like really acting.”
I switched sides after Bedford to be on the side where the doors weren’t going to open. At Lorimer a woman got on and stood across from me. A man, who looked like Busta Rhymes with the dreads, got on after her and immediately started flirting her. The only thing I heard him say was “I’m actually on my way to therapy.” He kept shifting back and forth and punching his hands together as he spit game. She was smiling, but only a little. He was dressed well. Montrose came up. I waited for the train to stop completely and got off.
Turning the corner onto Graham Ave I saw there was construction going on outside my building. There were three guys standing in front of a pile of aluminum piping looking up at the facade of my apartment building. The ground floor last summer was a smoothie stand but it went quickly out of business. Before that it had been a bridal store owned by our landlord, who lived on the second floor. She had moved her store up the street. The landlord was standing in the doorway. I walked past her, still holding the frame.
Finally I was inside. It was still having the circuit problem occasionally, but I think I can get it to work long enough to document it. The tail is still standing.
