Drawing by Joseph Griffin, originally appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review
Bill Hayes’ essay, which was just posted to the Virginia Quarterly Review‘s website, is a lovely meditation his experiences taking the subway in New York City.
I cannot take a subway without marveling at the lottery logic that brings together a random sampling of humanity for one minute or two, testing us for kindness and compatibility. Is that not what civility is?
Read the whole thing here.
*Bill Hayes is a Guggenheim fellow, frequent contributor to The New York Times and the author of the books The Anatomist, Five Quarts, and Sleep Demons.
Rebuilding Troy 
Julia, thanks for this! One of my favorite books is Marc Augé’s In the Metro- a similar reflection on the serendipity and poeticism of moving through the metro, Paris in particular. Check it out!