B, a young man, walks through a subway tunnel. Green tile walls and cement floors. Run-off stains drip like sludge coffee, grounds and all, down from the street, the muted roar of which can be still be heard through grates. Dark water pools rise out of the nowhere beneath the cement, seep down handicapped-friendly inclines and spiral around drains avoided by passersby with more or less assiduousness depending on their exhaustion or hurry (each begetting the other). Shitty florescent lights, tall black pillars. Small white plastic bulbs sheath rotating cameras that surveille everything so that the transit cops with permanent headaches who spend twelve-hour shifts beneath the surface don’t have to. (In winter, Tour One, six a.m. to six p.m., never sees the sun.) Everything is so dense, nothing can stand out. You could fall forever just standing still. A place where nothing is possible.
- from the diary of Barack Obama, December 1981
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