Ghosts and Things

Today I saw a man walk through another man's ghost.

I had a terrible time with the trains this morning, because of a stalled train on the 4 line at Bowling Green, all the Lexington Avenue express trains were not moving, or were running on the Seventh Avenue line.  So I was on a 5 train at some Seventh Avenue express stop, and I looked up, and reflected in the train door windows was a the reflection of a guy on the platform behind me waiting to enter the train when the doors opened.  At just the moment that I saw this guy's reflection in the window, through that same window, I could see another guy walking on the southbound platform across the way; to my shock, as though I'd never seen it's like before, it appeared that I was watching that second guy walk through the translucent figure of the first guy.

I was rapt.  I mean, it registered almost immediately what was happening, but it automatically started me thinking - which we'll all agree is a pretty dangerous thing - and I started thinking how every one of us is almost always walking through space that was, at one timre or another, occupied by hundreds, maybe thousands or tens of thousands, of other people.  And for some reason, contemplating that - thinking about all the people who've come before, and specifying them in the person of a man or a woman or a child who at one time or another stood still long enough to occupy the space in which I've come to rest - it all left me momentarily breathless.

It's moments like these when I have the most profound sense of community, of connection.  Which, of course, begs the question, "Why don't I think about these things, get these feelings, have this sense of community in the presence of live people?"