Jim Tumbls.

langer:

Aristotle assumed all bodies to naturally be at rest. Aristotle also never rode the New York City subway.

In Boston the subways are like some awkward, post-surgical graft on the city that never quite took. Travelers assume an entirely different posture once boarded: conversation halts, and every passenger—even when in the company of friends—assumes a state of isolation. It’s as if city life in Boston is something abruptly modal, and that to be on a subway car is to be experiencing a distinctly demarcated moment.

In New York the subway is a more intimate affair. Riders consume meals; schoolteachers read aloud to a dozen students; mothers breastfeed their children; courtships happen.

It’s hard to tell if humans condition their surrounding mechanical environment, or vice versa, or if it doesn’t work both ways. Regardless, the primary inertia of New York City, the fundamental kineticism of its first principles, are perhaps most apparent underground. Boundaries, borders, and neighborhoods seem to exist only for referential convenience, because to be in New York is to be in a place without place. Its bodies are all naturally in motion, its subway just another flow in a constant series of flux.