I hopped onto the subway and saw a woman with several reusable shopping bags clutched tightly around her. Her hair was thin and her face was framed with large brown glasses like a destitute Ayn Rand stunt double. The bags had cats on them. A white man with complicated hair and beard, a salmon shirt and lime shorts walked by her and this woman started screaming at the man as he took a seat. She didn’t appear to have teeth so her yelling was frantic and non-nonsensical but contained obvious vitriol. Another lean fellow walked on in pastel tank top partly covered in tattoos and sat next to the hirsute watermelon. He too was yelled at by the doppleganger of the materfamilias of objectivism. Other people entered and exited but only those two fellows were accosted. I was somewhat angered by the fact that this crone was yelling at what appeared to be gay men. But she was toothless (literally) and was almost a physical symbol of the depravity that comes from hatred. The couple later left the train after some affectionate handplay and was again targeted by a volley of glossolalia. They furrowed their brows at her as she stewed in her portable squalor. I hope she was secretly yelling “you’re well dressed and I wish I had your sense of style!” but got angered at her lack of annunciation or possibly “is that an ironic tattoo of a cat dressed as a pharaoh or possibly something deeper of a pharaoh dressed as a cat?” and she was vexed by knowing that she’d never know.

I doubt that’s the case. I wish the march of progress didn’t so often feel like a funeral procession.