I’m headed in to my studio at an earlier hour than usual, and when I take a seat on the 7 train I notice a man standing across from me. He’s in his late forties, with close-cropped hair and a muscular build, dressed in a tight fitting golf shirt and slacks. He’s wearing a Bluetooth earpiece in his left ear, the kind people in call centers wear, with a tiny microphone on an arm. He’s holding a Tupperware container and eating what looks like pasta, shoveling bites into his mouth with a fork, one after the other. His backpack is splayed out below him, its contents (clothes, a thermos, a plastic cup, several pieces of unidentifiable equipment) spilling out in a jumbled pile on the floor. After a couple of stops the man polishes off the pasta, bends over, tucks the Tupperware container into his backpack, and grabs the thermos. He stands back up, drains its contents in one drought, bends back down, and begins rifling through his backpack again. He seems completely unaware of the other passengers entering the car, who must edge past him as the train gets more crowded. Finally, he finds what he’s been looking for: a granola bar. He unwraps it, and as he’s taking the first bite his phone rings. He reaches up, touches something on his earpiece, and says, with a thick Brooklyn accent, ‘Hey bro, what’s up? Yeah, you know, just another glorious morning in New York fuckin City.’ As the train pulls into Grand Central he bends down, swoops up his backpack and miscellanea, and drags it all out onto the platform as he continues to bark into his earpiece.