Maybe that's it.

I sit on a stool at the long table at Starbucks, waiting for Katie to get back from using the restroom. We ducked in here out of the bitterly cold and clear day after discovering we had an hour to kill before our movie starts.

The woman across from me, middle-aged, blonde(-ish), has left her notebook open in front of her, and I read (voyeur that I am) upside-down, "Dear Lord, what am I doing wrong, why can I find no clarity in this situation." The note trails off, and I look up for some glimpse of the inner turmoil reflected there, but she is placidly scrolling through her phone, with no indication in her expression of anything other than a mild, unthinking boredom.

Sufficiently Advanced Technology is Indistinguishable

Two men stand on the corner, interrupting their dog walk (the dog waits patiently at their feet), while one of them squints down at the brick of glass in his hand, upon which the face of a woman appears. In the manner of many older people using the technology, she has the camera pointed too high (perhaps in deference to her bifocals? I'm not sure), so all that's visible on his screen is the top half of her head, from her nose up, and the wall above and behind her.

"Do you have Wi-Fi?" he shouts at the small hand-held screen, while his friend watches in amusement. She beams her visage through the ether, commanding almost immeasurable technology verging on wizardry, to ask him to go to the store to get milk.

Screaming Goats and the Wheel of Karma

At the end of the day, we lie in bed, stroking the glass screens of the supercomputers that seemingly everyone carries around in their pockets these days.

Katie loads up a short video her co-worker suggested she watch. The video shows a series of goats awakening to the horror of discovering that the misdeeds of their past lives have doomed them to life as goats.

We laugh until we are crying, then go back to the beginning and watch it again.

Drink the Undrinkable Drink

The lounge we slip into next door to the Hotel Chelsea is dark and tacky, with art brut murals adorning the walls in broad-stroked caricatures of the Spanish countryside. A faux Spanish tile roof overhangs the bottles behind the bar and the surly, prematurely balding bartenders idling there. The drinks menu insists that the establishment is renowned for its margaritas, and who are we to argue?

The drinks plunked perfunctorily before us bear only the faintest resemblance to margaritas, or indeed, anything meant to be consumed by humans, and though I finish mine with a grimace, Katie is unable to do so, leaving it behind, perhaps to be offered as libation to the dozen or so Don Quixote statues that stand blind guard over the Dulcinea Room, the badly breaded calamari, the terrible cocktails, us.

Revolving Door

All of us, wrapped in scarves and heavy coats, harried and hurried, find our collective way down into the bowels of the church where they are distributing the ashes.

The Franciscan friars, two old men in black cassocks standing before the altar with dour, pinched faces, relentlessly press ash onto the foreheads of the faithful. They don't even bother to make a cross, sufficing with a thumb-print smudge resembling a mid-sized roach.

Katie and I find an open pew and sit quietly for a moment, before clambering the stairs past stained-glass frozen fables, out into the cold morning air.

The solution

Standing, swaying on the subway home, I'm surprised by the lately rare blossom of depression, right in my solar plexus, something like pain.

As soon as I get home, as quickly as I can, I change clothes, feed the cat (who meows plaintively, demanding attention and food), and get my yoga mat down on the ground. 

I lay on my back on it and, as soon as the bell announcing the beginning of the session rings, feel the knot of anxiety and sorrow begin to unravel itself. I breathe deeply and move through the postures, grateful and growing happier with every breath, as the cat stalks around my few square feet of peace.

In New York City, we are not overly solicitous of one another's pain

She stands about three steps up from the bottom of the stairs to the subway platform, clutching the railing. The crushing flow of commuters briefly balks, then diverts its rush around her into the trains that carry them away.

Her eyes are closed, as if she is asleep, but the dream she dreams is not a pleasant one. Wrinkles furrow her brow into Shar Pei rolls, and she stays standing there, stock statue still, as another train rockets in, sucks up its cargo, and shrieks back into the darkness.