"Attention, police. Attention, police," said an extremely calm voice over the loudspeaker at Atlantic Avenue. "Your presence is needed on the uptown 5 train holding in the station at Nevins due to suspicious activity. Attention, police."

The doors on my 2 train close and the mysterious voice is sealed out. We move to the next stop which is Nevins Street, where I assume I'll catch a glimpse of the po-po and so-called suspicious activity.

Level one suspicious: The smart-looking businessman with his hand down his pants a la Al Bundy while staring at a pretty woman on the 4 train. (Aside: she snapped his suggestive pose with her camera phone and his photo was blasted over the front page of the Post the next day. Explain that to your wife, buddy.) Level ten suspicious: Staring through the train door window while a firefighter on an otherwise abandoned West 4th Street platform stares back at me. He's in full gear complete with oxygen mask shaking his head and waving the train conductor not to open the doors.

Am I concerned about the activity at Nevins Street? I really can't afford to be. If something truly horrible were occurring, what exactly could I do about it hundreds of feet underground and somewhat trapped inside a metal can? I think this is why New Yorkers are so good at what we like to call "business as usual."

And that, Ken Wheaton said in his essay in the Subway Chronicles book, is due to conditioning. "We've simply reached and are able to maintain a transcendent state of subway existence. After all, if a New Yorker did start considering all the things that could possibly go wrong, he'd never get to work."

It's rather Zen, if you think about it. Whatever goes down, the subway commuter's brain is always in the present. A few years back, my stepdad stepped in front of a suspect who was trying to evade the lone cop chasing him down the Jay St./Borough Hall platform and pinned him on the stairs leading to the street. Once back-up arrived, we boarded the next arriving F train and never talked about it again. There is no dwelling on the "what ifs."

My train arrives at Nevins and the voice again says, "Attention, police," as if he were announcing a golf game. I look through the window to see what I can see. Absolutely nothing. There's no police, no suspicious activity, no firemen on the platform (though I would not be entirely upset about this. It must be a job requirement that all FDNY recruits rate in the "Oh my god" category of the hot department. They have a calendar. Here's one more reason not to ban photography on the subway.)

Where was I?

Right – the non-existent suspicious activity. My train moves on to Hoyt Street, and one stop closer to the office, back to business as usual.

Jacquelin Cangro

“Is that one of yours?” my friend’s daughter asks.  She’s eight.  We’re headed toward Pioneer Place in downtown Portland, OR to catch a movie. 

Her use of ‘that’ as the subject of a sentence, when ‘that’ is a man, unnerves me.  She doesn’t seem nervous at the approach of this seemingly odd fellow, but her mother closes ranks.

“What?” he shouts.  He vehemently challenges an internal voice, an unseen someone.  “Wha-at?” he repeats, angry now.  His way of saying, “Quit messing with my head.”

“Is he one of yours?” my friend’s daughter self-corrects.

“No, but he could be.”

I believe he’s harmless, noisy maybe, this side of shabby, obviously mad, but ultimately harmless.  A scruffy black beard and hair that stands straight up around his head define his appearance.  Black brows meet in the middle of his nose bridge.  His gaze is intense, dark and glaring.  He quiets as we near each other, nods politely, then moves aside to allow us to pass.  He’s close enough for me notice crumbs of meals past in his beard.

Once past us, his quarrel begins anew.

I lead two lives.  On 3East, a locked psychiatric ward in a Portland, Oregon hospital, I stabilize men and women in crisis, move them toward discharge, back into their lives, back into the community.  As a freelancer at Willamette Week and the Oregonian newspaper, I’m out and about in town.

I routinely bump into my patients.  They wander and Portland is a small city, compact, laid out on a grid.  It’s an easy walk from north to south and east to west.  What I’ve noticed is a clear distinction between patients who acknowledge me and those who do not.  The line is drawn along socio-economic divides, as well as the severity of the illness.  There are rules of engagement for such encounters.  I never greet a patient unless he makes the first move.  The initial overture must always be made by the consumer.  Being in treatment – even for depression, which afflicts one in five Americans in any given year – is a sensitive matter.

I know one of the staff at Willamette Week from a weekend he spent on 3East.  He was new in town, depressed and lonely.  He felt – for a fleeting moment – as if not living might be preferable to living, so he checked into the hospital.  He was discharged two days later, armed with a prescription for antidepressants and a referral for outpatient counseling.  He told me he felt ‘normal’ in comparison to some of the other patients on 3East.  During his time on the ward, I don’t mention my connection to WW.  That would be a breach of ethical boundaries.  When I stop by WW to drop off a book review and chat with my editor, he’s the first person I see.  He turns away from me.  Then I pass him as I leave the building.  He’s outside smoking a cigarette.  I don’t attempt to make eye contact. 

Many of my patients are involved in the sex trade, to support their drug habits, pimps, kids.  A visit to 3East is often prompted by an arrest or the need to detox down to a more affordable habit.  “Hey,” “How you doin’,” “There’s my nurse,” they call if they see me on the street.

Over Thai food one evening, my husband notices a young woman at a nearby table.  She looks at me, the briefest eye contact, a flicker of recognition, then nothing.  I never take it personally, that someone is embarrassed to know me in that other context.  “Is she one of yours?” my husband asks.  She’s an attorney and will die of complications of alcoholism in the not-too-distant future.  “Yes,” I nod, and continue chopsticking my Pad Thai.

I literally bump into a young man who I know from two stays on 3East.  “Hey, mom,” he yells out to his mother in another aisle of the one-stop-shopping market.  We’re both trying on shoes.  “See, she’s buying Sketchers too.”  He shows me his new runners, proud to have something in common with me, to share a moment of health, not illness.  But something’s off; his eyes are too bright, his voice too loud, speech too rapid, words tumbling over each other.  His mother approaches.  I know her.  “Is he taking his meds,” I ask.  She shakes her head.  The following week he’s back on 3East, dark and brooding, pacing the ward in his new Sketchers.  Seventeen laps equal one mile.  He doesn’t recognize me or know my name.

Last spring as I walk past a dumpster, on my way somewhere that isn’t the hospital, two heads pop up from dumpster-diving.  “Daddy, look, it’s our nurse.”  She shares what little she has, a broad smile and a generous nature.  Daddy, her boyfriend, waves.  He can’t talk unless he adjusts his tracheostomy tube.  I know them from the local methadone clinic where I occasionally dispense.

I know how it feels to be welcomed.  I’ve learned how it feels to be too visible.  Half visible.  Invisible.  

Evelyn Sharenov

The report says that:

"Congressional leaders were briefed repeatedly on the CIA's use of severe interrogation methods on Al Qaeda suspects, according to new information released by the Obama administration Thursday that appears to contradict the assertions of House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi."

 

So was Pelosi lying when she said the following?

"We were not — I repeat were not — told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used."

 Fox News, never a Pelosi fan, said:

"Republicans have already accused Pelosi and other Democrats of having selective and politically motivated amnesia when it comes to who knew what, and when, about the Bush-era interrogation programs. Those accusations were leveled in light of a Washington Post story published in 2007 that quoted two officials saying the California Democrat and three other lawmakers had received an hour-long secret briefing on the interrogation tactics, including waterboarding, and that they raised no objections at the time."

 

 Never a dull moment in Washington!

Bhumika Ghimire

Guy #1: So then I'll transfer to the D.

Guy # 2: Don't do it. That D train will fuck you over every time, man.

Homage to Overheard in New York, a favorite eavesdropping website of almost everyone I know. It has snippets of conversation submitted by readers who overheard them on the street, or in the elevator, or more often than not, in the subway. As Lawrence Block wrote, "You don't often overhear a lot of interesting things when you're driving around in your car. Overheard in Los Angeles? No, I don't think so."

Jacquelin Cangro

I find that when it comes to watching documentaries I have the general (if not misguided) tendency of avoiding documentaries focusing on wars and armed conflict. I don't think that this is necessarily because I'm uncomfortable with the subject matter, or even the quality of the films themselves, but more that  these films often focus on the political cause and effect, while inevitably coming to the conclusion that the war was either justified or that it wasn't.

However, as I walked into my local cinema the other week, I found myself buying a ticket to see Israeli documentary maker Avi Mograbi's latest film, Z32.

Mograbi's latest work is different from most war-related documentaries in that it focuses on a young man who was formally a member of the IDF and an elite unit of the Israeli army that was involved in a revenge operation resulting in the deaths of six Palestinian officers. The film is divided into two main sections: in one, the man confronts his girlfriend about his past actions and asks for forgiveness in a confessional-type setting; in the other, Mograbi offers his own musical commentary, accompanied by a small orchestra seated in his living room.

But what makes this film so riveting is not the idea of revenge or the issues behind why the killing occurred in the first place, but rather what lies in the aftermath of violence — how do you reconcile the fact that someone you love has killed, and does the adrenaline hierarchical context in which war-related violence happened matter or automatically justify forgiveness?

Mograbi expertly crafts these confessions by making the viewer painfully aware of the process of forgiveness. In experimenting with masking the man and his girlfriend in various manners, he wrestles with issues such as the responsibility to portray a  man's identity who otherwise might be brought to trial and the importance of individual identity in the context of war. After all, the soldier's face behind the mask could well be that of any other.

What Z32 accomplishes is not finding an answer to the question of whether crimes committed during war carry the same responsibility as crimes committed otherwise or even seeking forgiveness for a man whose actions were no different than the orders carried out by thousands of other soldiers. What Mograbi's film does do is appeal to the viewer to confront these moral dilemmas with him.

Z32 has been featured at various film festivals during 2009, including the San Francisco and Venice Film Festivals, and is currently in theatres worldwide.

Lara Gabrielle Blanco Heintz