Behold

It's too early in the morning for jackhammers, I thought as I left the house for work. The vibration from the construction three doors down was so strong it rattled all our plates and dishes. I wondered how I would present my case to Judge Judy if any of my Russel Wright plates fell and I had to sue the neighbors for damage. This is the type of thing I think about before I've had my morning caffeine.

As I walked to Union Street station, I saw quite a few other houses on the block having their brownstone surfaces overhauled. Twenty, fifteen, even ten years ago, you couldn't give away a house in Park Slope. Crack, crime, and decay were the order of the day. Now, you almost can't buy a home for under a million, even on the fringes of the slope, which keeps acquiring new real estate boundaries almost daily.

I got to the station, just missing an R train. I pulled out this week's New York magazine. The cover story is a survey of the 50 most beautiful New Yorkers. Another vapid, irrelevant essay by the highbrow magazine version of The New York Post. (Of course, I have to read it.) The concept turned out to be noble--that beauty is not confined to one age group or race or gender or profession. Beauty is where you find it. In New York, that's certainly true; everywhere you turn you can spot a beautiful person. The article rang hollow by naming primarily people in the arts (except it was hard to dispute Take Me Out's Daniel Sunjata). Certainly, as the article pointed out, the Aristotelian ideal of order and symmetry has been shown to be universal. But in New York, beautiful can be whatever you want it to be. I was, in fact, reading this while looking at a guy standing near me who I thought was hot. Well, perhaps hot and beautiful are two different things.

The air-conditioned car felt soothing after a bout of sweating on the platform. I was engrossed in the beautiful people article, about a third of the way into my 15-minute ride, when I looked up briefly and saw a rather plain woman entering the train pushing a shopping cart crammed with things. At first glance I thought she was a cleaning lady, but her cart didn't have any cleaning products. She stood not far from me and didn't smell, but by all appearances she seemed homeless. Maybe she'd spent the night at a shelter. She stood at one end of the car, in the doorway, her face in profile from where I sat. I looked closely at the things in her cart: a Heinz vinegar bottle of some liquid I didn't want to know about, a Sunkist soda bottle full of a clear liquid, a rolled up patterned rug, something resembling a foldup chair, many plastic bags. She could have been anywhere from her mid-50s to mid-60s. She was a little dumpy, wore no makeup, and was dressed in a neutral silky blouse and a slightly darker skirt, neither of which had been cleaned in a long time. Her head was covered in a cotton cloth, pulled back and tied. Her face, not unattractive, was flush, but clean, not the mark of someone who sleeps on the street.

Like many native New Yorkers, I've cultivated over the years a high level of immunity about homeless people. So many charlatans whose stories don't ring true get in your face to tell you how society screwed them over and how victimized they are. While that may be true, the aggressive ones spoil it for everyone. New Yorkers know that disadvantaged people have access to many social services in the city. Now the MTA even has an ad campaign to discourage people from giving to panhandlers on the subways. I will give money to people, but it's based solely on a gut feeling.

This woman's face maintained a quiet dignity. She didn't look sad or haggard or crazy; she looked resigned. This is her life, whatever it is. Another day of pushing her things around. Find a nice place to sit and rest. Feed the birds. Who knows? Maybe she is crazy or senile or eccentric, but she wasn't bothering anyone.

And then I started to cry. The woman reminded me of my grandmother, or an elderly widowed neighbor I knew growing up, or any number of older people I've seen wandering the streets alone. Perhaps that was it. She looked alone. Being alone: the thing I fear more than terrorism, thongs, or killer bees.

Maybe she sensed that I was looking at her too much. Maybe she saw the tears in my eyes. She moved from the doorway past me, pushing her cart and shuffling along in pink slippers to the other end of the car and sat down. Where was she going? Guess I'll never know. My stop came and I got off the train, walking past her outside the car. I tried not to let her know I was looking at her. Unlike the beautiful people in New York, she did not expect to be looked at. And at that moment, I thought, she is one of the most beautiful New Yorkers I've ever seen.