I arrived at the corner of Broadway and 160th Street at the exact moment a large truck heading north crossed the intersection. I'm not sure why I looked up -- perhaps it was the black smoke snaking across the cloudless blue sky -- but when I did, I saw a plane heading west. "I have been on that plane," I thought, "looking down at this street," but at the time I didn't think about who might be looking back. I wondered if I knew anyone on the plane, and decided that the chances were remote; but at the same time, it occurred to me that the chances were so remote that I wouldn't be surprised if I did in fact know someone on the plane, and I remembered an article I once read (or perhaps I had just dreamed about reading) many years ago in the The Times suggesting that at a certain point, the odds of any one thing happening twice began to break down, so that it's not uncommon for say, the same person to hit the lottery twice, or to get stuck in an elevator three times, or perhaps even to get hit by lightning more than once (ruling out the idea that the person in question might have a physical quality to make him or her more conductive to electricity). In this regard, I thought about the next time I am on a plane crossing over Washington Heights, and how I will peer down at the streets below, and the strong likelihood that I will see myself staring back.
i've never been there! :( i would love to go, sometime...
Posted by: Sheisa | 04/17/2010 at 07:47 AM
Ive never been to India, Sheisa, either! (Thanks for reading...)
Posted by: Matthew Gallaway | 04/17/2010 at 09:17 AM