N.O.C - Notes on Collagen

It’s amazing what you can overhear on the Subway.
Even if you don’t want to.
It is like taking a probiotic: Things start to kick inside you.

There you were, apathetic, specifically wanting not to be involved in this world,
being as inert and uncommitted as possible.And then – BOOM!
Conversations.

Once you hear it, you can’t just un-hear it....

NOW YOU HAVE OPINIONS.

It’s like being in a public podcast where you are forced to be in the audience.
and with that comes something dangerous:
The urge to offer something no one asked for.
How generous we are.

One morning, on the L Train, from Brooklyn to Manhattan,
I was there, minding my own business – looking at people’s faces.
when I overheard a conversation between two girls.

One of them was whining about how, at the age of 22, she was getting old.
And things in her life haven’t really worked out the way she planned.
You know, soon I’ll be 25, okay, and then...

And then...???!!!

(My mind was curious)

I have all these issues to handle: my career, personal life, dates, (...) Laundry...

No, she didn’t say “Laundry”, I’m just being judgmental.

But she was so desperate.

It was like she was in the final act of her Play -

“... the curtains were slowly descending... “

Stand clear of the closing doors.

Was going to be her final statement -
Delivered through an MTA recording.

At 22. On the L Train.
While she was having a Macha-Latte-With Pistachio Golden Milk.

(No, I’m sorry, she wasn’t, I’m just being mean again...I promise – I’ll stop.

Obviously, she had failed.
By the time we hit 1st Avenue, BOOM!
It will be the end of it.
I don’t know what to do. I feel so lost, you know what I mean?

I never know if Americans are making statements or asking questions
You know what I mean, but anyway, I didn’t know what she meant.

But her friend knew, though.
I think she was suffering from the same curious life effect?
Being old at the age of 22?
Maybe it is a new pandemic.

Her friend was all sympathetic and agreed that –
If she didn’t make it by 25, she would be a failure in life.

Fai-liu-re.
I can’t even pronounce failure.

I was recently told that I have an accent.
That’s breaking news, right?
“I am an accent.”

If that failure perspective is true,
If their desperation about things that they should have achieved in life at 22 were somehow
grounded in reality, then my Play – my “Real” one-woman show – must already be over.

Or maybe it was canceled, and I didn’t get the memo.
The curtains have long fallen, perhaps on my head.
It caused a concussion – which would explain a lot – while I’m still here,
on the L Train, trying to ....

“Stand Clear of MY Closing Doors...???
As an Immigrant in the US right now?

Maybe I should be as desperate as they were.
But at that point, my mind was, as usual, judging.
It is very hard to be sympathetic when you simply lack... sympathy.
You just can’t.

It is like I had the right to say something.
Like when they say:
If you see something, say something?
That’s the same thing.
I was there as her audience.
Maybe her Play was supposed to be interactive.

Immersive?

But I didn’t say a word. Out loud.

There I was, a 50-year-old Artist / Immigrant, making mental, ironic, OK...
rather judgmental – remarks on people’s lives.

I could have clarified that 22 is more of a prologue than an epilogue.
That yes, sometimes things don't really work out as we plan.
Life is also about the "Not-happenings."
It’s like an avant-garde performance – Where Nothing happens.

Like that moment, for instance, nothing was really happening in my life,
So it was more interesting to judge people’s lives.

I could also have mentioned that, as an American, just saying, her life seemed
to be easier than that of most people I hang out with.

She’d never know how hard it is to get a Social Security number -
a legal one at least - what it’s like to wait in agony in an immigration line at the airport,
not knowing if the next officer will or will not give you a hard time,
holding your passport like he is holding your soul.

But I didn’t say a word,
I was lost in my immigration reverie,
But, at the same time,
I was looking at those girls,
and thinking:

Oh my God, look how much collagen they have...

It's almost dripping from her cheeks.
As if some sort of Youth Fairy had actually polished her face.
And there was no make-up involved. I was very close and looking attentively.

I was so close that I wish collagen were
contagious, so I could be infected by it.
She would sneeze and BOOM! A Collagen Boost!

I thought about telling her, "Don’t dismay, now!
You've got this! In Collagen we trust!
But I decided not to get involved and let her find her own way.
One day, that collagen will be gone.
And it’s not that I am casting a spell on her.
I’m an immigrant, not a witch.
It’s just the gravity of the matter. Physics.

She will wake up one day and feel that gravity is not a faraway concept anymore,
restricted to academics and scholars, maybe she will have premonitory dreams
of apples falling from trees, that at first, she will not relate to Isaac Newton,
but instead, to a new wave of diet.
Maybe my body is craving more fruits - she might think - but in fact it will be her body saying:
If I’m going down, you are going down with me. Bitch.