Public Displays of Exhaustion
New Yorkers, as a general population, are an exhausted people. We walk from our homes to the subway then to work and to grocery stores with bags full of milk and eggs, to dinner dates and Broadway shows and up stairs and through parks. Any moments of motionlessness we can gather often times become moments for sleep. I have seen people in New York sleep on park benches and in movie theaters (a $10 nap, that's the type of dedication they've got!) Last week a man fell asleep at the table across from me in the Rockafeller concourse still holding his cup of Starbucks as the skaters twirled by. He was awoken by a polite tap on the table from the security guard. One day a woman was snoring so loudly next to me on the subway that the whole car was staring at her in disbelief (even the woman who was reading with her lips moving, like she could talk!)

Very recently I have become one of those people. I move around in a constant state of exhaustion fighting back every urge to curl up on a park bench or a subway seat just for a few moments of rejuvination. I don't know if it is the job or the school work or the horribly bad diet I've been shoveling into my body lately, or maybe it's just that I miss the sun. Whatever the cause may be, I too have become one of those exhausted New Yorkers who just moves through the motions every day waiting for a jolt of life to find it's way into my body.

So if you happen to pass by a heap of cocoa skin under a mass of black curls displaying her public exhaustion somewhere in one of the buroughs, please don't wake me, I am obviously in need of the rest.