you might have forgotten how much time you spent with stairs, escalators, elevators.

now there are 160 steps from the lower subway platform, up to the station, through the turnstiles, up to the street, (a few blocks walk north with a slight incline, ) into the building, and finally up the four flights to the apartment. there are still wooden escalators in the older part of a mid-town department store. there are memories that surface, like evenings when the elevator would stop at every floor on its way down and someone would quip, guess we got the local. there are subway tunnels where you can see daylight shining into the tunnels, others that require elevators between platforms and stations; they might even be on the same line.

the island is only 13 miles by 2 (at its widest), yet it feels like you traverse hundreds of miles up and down daily.