City Slicker Swimming

At first it took me awhile to understand what was going on. When I walked through grand central terminal, people walked across the main concourse both from and towards all directions. Sometimes on the phone, sometimes even texting on the phone, a person would cut out from where the train was emptying at a diagonal across 5 to 10 rows of people all headed in an opposite direction. And it worked! There was no stopping and starting, just a smooth transition through the crowd as if a computer was arranging the commuters in a way that at just the right time people fit through the spaces between other people and continued on to their destination across the floor uninterrupted.

Then it was a game: how efficiently can I get from the subway entrance to my train platform? Can I do it without my usual urching and almost running into people and having to change my gait and a shuffle step every few feet and look all over the place and even watch over my shoulder? How do they DO this?? This is nuts.

And then one day it was an epiphany. You don’t look all over the place and you don’t watch any individual person to make sure you aren’t going to collide with them. You don’t watch anything, in fact. You watch everything. What looks like a blank stare on my face is really a whole new way of looking at the world. Its watching everyone else’s movements but not seeing their faces, just figures in my array of vision space. And then you don’t ‘watch out’ for other people, as the saying goes, but you make slight adjustments in advance to fit through the spaces between people.

I had a new understanding of how fish swim in schools. The collective movement is actually quite beautiful….so many people who understand how it works and the way to see the crowd and how to adjust slightly to the right or left or slightly slower or faster so that no one has to change their gait or shuffle step or look all over the place. Collective, combined, systematic chaos. All without even one word, just an unspoken understanding. A different level of communication and respect. This isn’t nuts. This is New York City.

Here is a: Time Lapse Video Grand Central Terminal...this is actually the route I take every morning. The first train you see is the 7 train (where I get off in grand central), and then I go up the escalator shown, and then into the hallway, and then into the main concourse....

And PS – when you get into a taxi and the driver doesn’t pay attention to the white lines…don’t worry! He understands also, and the cars are playing the same orchestrated road symphony as the one in GCT. Pay attention to how he moves slightly right or left in order to make sure he keeps his position but misses another car or ….well, you get the idea. And you get to your destination most efficiently.