Buddha Cab

It’s now been just over a year ago that I started this blog. In this project I’ve managed to record many aspects of what has been overall a really rich and interesting experience in my life. As it’s always been my dream to be a writer, this blog has provided me an outlet to do some writing and reached many more people that I ever thought it would.

The Met Life building rising above Grand Central Station.

However my last post was over three months ago, a period of time during which I’ve driven taxi very little, and I’ve become quite writer-blocked. I do check the emails sent to BuddhaCab periodically, and though I’m pretty sure I’ve lost most of whoever might have been my readership, I’ve received a couple of friendly inquiries lately about what the heck has happened to me (along with literally thousands of spam emails, sometimes several hundred in a day–ugghh). In all honesty I’m not sure how much more cab driving I’ll be doing, but I’m not ready for the final sign-off to BuddhaCab yet. So let me see if I can rise above my inertia and get a few words about what’s happening with me these days out into cyberspace.

First of all, I’ve made it through 10 months of nursing school in decent enough shape, completing the first year of my two year program. Although I mentioned on my last post that I’d failed one exam a day after spending some time blogging (and in fact that incident was a factor in my cutting back on this project), overall I’ve passed all my classes with better than a B+ average and I’m well on my way to becoming an RN. By this time next year if all goes well I’ll be graduated and have passed the licensing exam and working as a registered nurse. This summer I’m working in a local NYC hospital emergency room as a nurse extern for two twelve hour shifts a week and it’s been a terrific experience (there’s another subject I may write about at some point–the human drama I’ve observed as lives in varying degrees of crisis intersect with our healthcare system at the point of entry for many–the E.R.).

Driving by St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

As far as cab driving goes, I’ve driven four shifts since last I wrote. I drove once more at the end of April during the week after my spring semester ended. Then the seven week summer session for nursing school started and I had my hands full with two compressed courses, microbiology and psychiatric nursing. I chose not to drive during that time in large part so as to focus on keeping up with my coursework; I got behind financially but I did pretty good on those classes. At the end of June my summer classes were finished and I began 10 weeks away from school–what a relief! Frankly, going to school is not my idea of a good time. Though I’m committed to what I’m doing in becoming an RN and think the experience of being a nurse will serve me and others, it’s been a real grind getting through it. I go back in September to finish the last nine months of the program before graduating next June and then taking the state RN licensing exam shortly thereafter.

As far as the experience of cab driving, ever since I was served with a summons in April to appear at small claims court in New York City to answer being sued for $5300 by the woman who hit my cab after she went through a broken red light last September, I’ve felt quite deflated about this whole cab driving thing. I spent the better part of a day back in April getting a record of the broken traffic light from the NYC Dept of Transportation, a copy of the police report from the insurance broker, and then stood in line downtown at the City courthouse to file my response to the charges and be granted a court date in November to defend myself (had I not shown up I would’ve been on the hook for the $5300). In November I’ll have to take another day and miss school to appear in court.

Times Square

I’ve really tried not to let this blog degenerate into a gripe session about cab driving–and I know I’ve done my share of bitching anyway. Yes, the hours are long, and I don’t make that much money compared to what I used to do for a living or even compared to other drivers because I don’t drive as fast or aggressively, and yes, driving in Manhattan traffic often can be claustrophobic, stressful and nerve-wracking. I knew going into this job that bad things can happen to the taxi driver, ranging from getting tickets, to not making much or even any money after expenses, to getting into accidents, to getting robbed or attacked (for example, there was a guy who robbed about two dozen cab drivers here in the city in June before he was caught; he was getting in the taxi, pulling a realistic-looking fake gun on drivers and demanding their cash). I drove for almost three years in Honolulu, so I knew in advance the potential downside. One of my taxi driver friends there had his throat slit from ear to ear. And it’s certainly not the only job with risks and dangers involved. Being a policeman or fireman is a pretty tough gig.

I know the likelihood is that I can successfully defend myself against the suit, since the circumstances are pretty clear and backed up by a police report and a documented broken traffic light. But I have felt angry and resentful that I’m getting dragged into court because a careless driver whose actions caused what could have been a serious accident apparently thinks she can get someone else to pay her repair bills by hiring a lawyer and blaming a yellow cab driver. Since being served that summons, I couldn’t help thinking about that lawsuit the times I’ve gone back out to drive around and try to make some cash to pay some bills. In fact it’s really stuck in my craw. For the most part this cab-driving gig has been barely more than a minimum wage job for me from a material point of view, and if for whatever reason a ruling is made against me by a judge I’ll be charged with more money than I made working all of last year. A lot of low-paying jobs suck, but not too many can you show up to work and end up getting sued while you were just doing your job (actually nursing is another job where you can get sued for doing your job, but at least the pay is better and the work more gratifying, and if you’ve got your shit together and conduct yourself professionally by documenting your work you’ll most likely be OK if that happens).

Driving east on 42nd St. towards the Chrysler Building

This whole circumstance reminds me of a teaching in Buddhism called the Eight Worldly Winds. The idea is to strive through one’s practice to remain unmoved by the vicissitudes of life, whatever they may be, and specifically neither pleasure nor pain, gain nor loss, fame nor obscurity, and praise nor blame. So, if I get stuck with a big bill, fairly or not (that would be loss), if I’m living up to what I believe in I don’t let it affect my state of mind. It gets back to the one of the central aspects of Buddhist training which is that ultimately, our minds are the only thing we can really control in this world after all.

In my better moments that’s what I aspire to, though surely my efforts often fall far from the mark. For a while during the first year of taxi driving in New York City I enjoyed putting myself to the test, to see how well I could measure up to the yardstick of equanimity while enduring the lows (and enjoying the adventures) of making my way in this great metropolis as a yellow cab driver. I recognize that my taxi experiences have been a unique opportunity for me to put the principles of Buddhist training into practice.

The fountain in Bryant Park in midtown.

However there has definitely been a shift in my feeling about continuing to drive a taxi here since being served with the summons. If I really try I can be a good Buddhist and have compassion for the woman who’s suing me, understanding that she’s been suffering, perhaps feeling desperation from not knowing how she’ll pay for the damages to her car. But at this point I feel more motivated to seek other forms of employment when I can to get myself through these next ten months before I can work as an RN. I’ve been able to avoid driving taxi since July 1st, thanks to the money I’m earning from my externship, some freelance graphics work I’ve done for a medical office my ex-girlfriend works at, and by substitute teaching a couple of yoga classes. However because the days I work at the hospital change from week to week this summer, I haven’t been able to arrange another part-time job on a regular schedule. At this point I’m not entirely sure if and when I’ll be going back out to do some more cab driving this summer and beyond.

Fifteen Seconds of Fame

In the last entry I wrote about the video Shravan Vidyarthi made for the Taxi Design Expo. Turns out PBS picked it up and included it in one of their “Reel New York” segments. I found out a couple of weeks ago when two different friends of mine said they’d seen me on TV. How about that.

US News & World Report also quoted me in their May 7th issue on traffic congestion in the nation:

” … all that driving takes a toll on a commuter’s time, money, and peace of mind. David Lewis, a British scientist who studies the brain’s response to stress, found that the tension commuters experience when stuck in traffic is comparable to that felt by first-time parachutists. Part-time New York cabdriver Sol Soloncha knows that too well. ‘I’m a Buddhist,’ he says. ‘I do yoga, I practice meditation, and weekday traffic gets so bad that even I can’t keep my composure during it.’

Unfortunately for whatever reason USNWR didn’t mention the blog, as I’d requested, and I was disappointed that they kind of skewed the quote to serve their story, not mine. Perhaps there’s a lesson about the major media in there somewhere.

Breakdown on the Kosciuszko Bridge

I drove a Sunday night shift at end of June which was memorable for it being a beautiful warm summer evening and my first time driving the 5pm to 5am shift in almost a year. I was having a pretty good night too, and actually enjoying the experience of driving taxi again; I was getting lucky with the business too and in fact was on my way to beating my personal record for earnings until my axle broke on the BQE as I was going over the Kosciuszko Bridge at 50 mile per hour with two passengers at 1:30 in the morning. The front of the car starting shaking like hell just as I was traversing the truss bridge that spans Newtown Creek connecting Brooklyn at Greenpoint and Long Island City, Queens. After getting out on the highway just over the bridge to examine the car as traffic whizzed by, I thought I might as well try to get the car off the highway since there could hardly have been a worse place for the car to be towed from. I was fortunate to be able to slowly drive the car off the highway before it locked up completely in front of a Chase Bank branch in Long Island City. My passengers gave me their condolences and flagged a cab near the entrance to the BQE while I called the garage. About 45 minutes later a Bulgarian tow truck driver arrived and hooked up the Ford Crown Victoria to bring it back to the garage in Manhattan. We chatted as we drove back and he told me he’d been a pilot in the Bulgarian air force and played Bulgarian music videos for me on the DVD player mounted above the windshield of his truck.

My cab with a busted axle waiting for a tow at 2:30 in the morning in Long Island City, Queens

Bogus Bill Bummer

The last time I drove was a day shift on the first Sunday in July, a couple of days before the 4th of July. It was a really slow day–it seemed like a lot of New Yorkers had left town for the summer holiday–and there seemed to be empty cabs everywhere scouring the streets for riders. At some point during the shift someone managed to pass me a counterfeit $10 bill, which I didn’t realize until I unwittingly tried to use it to prepay for some gas at the Hess Station on 10th Avenue and 44th St. The filling station clerk, who’s seen me there before, wouldn’t unlock the pump and used the intercom to call me back so I could pay for my gas with legal currency. I realized I was adding one more experience to my personal list of cab driving indignities that are bound to happen sooner or later as I stuffed the crumpled bill in my pocket and proceeded to gas up the car so I could turn it in. And that was the last time I drove a taxi in New York City.

It’s been a month since my last shift driving a cab here in New York. I took the last final exam for my second semester of nursing school today, and I have a week break before the seven-week summer session starts.

I will climb back in the saddle of a yellow cab tomorrow morning at 5 am and restart the Buddha Cab experience; unfortunately the blog project has lapsed, but the necessity of getting the necessary study time in to finish out the semester has taken over my life for the past month; I’ve got a lot of time and money invested in the decision to go back to school and become an RN and so, much as this blog project has been very meaningful to me, doing what I have to do to get through school is the priority. In fact I’d taken time away from studying for an exam to write that last blog entry, confident I’d pass the test, only to end up just missing a passing grade. Though I pride myself on not getting too obsessed and competitive about grade point average, not only is it important that I pass my coursework but even moreso that I learn what I need to learn to become a competent professional healer and nurse. And so I realized that I needed to devote more time to school.

I’d hoped to write this entry before now, but due to the above mentioned school stuff it didn’t happen; better late than never.

During the first week of April the city celebrated the 100th anniversary of taxicabs. There was a Taxi Design Expo at the Jacob Javits Convention Center which was folded into the big annual auto show, showcasing potential new designs for taxis and other potential innovations. As part of the presentation the Expo commissioned a filmmaker to create a short five minute film featuring the diversity of cab drivers in New York, and two months or so ago I received an email by a fellow named Shravan Vidyarthi who said he’d found me through the blog and was interested in interviewing me for the Taxi expo piece.

I’d met up with him and his camerawoman on a Friday afternoon in February at the Lahore Deli on Crosby and Houston and after chatting amiably for a bit we walked across the street to the gas station on Houston and Lafayette, where we filmed a short interview. It was the first time I’d been filmed like that and I guess I was a little bit nervous but I figured what the heck, it was something different to do after a long week of school. And although I make no claims to being a cab driving Everyman, I know what it’s like to do the job and I know how misunderstood it is by the majority of people who ride in cabs and I thought I might be able to contribute something worthwhile to the film.

At the Taxi 07 Exposition

I forgot about it and got more and more wrapped up in the ensuing semester; then around the end of March I heard from Shravan. He told me he’d used some of the footage from my interview and asked me if I wanted to be put on the guest list for the opening party of the expo on April 4. I said sure; since I live pretty close to the convention center I thought I could squeeze in a little time to check out the show, and see what I looked like in the film.

I arrived with my friend Jane around 5:30 pm during the middle of the opening speech by the commissioner of the Taxi and Limousine Commission. We wandered around looking at some futuristic cab models and then discovered the flat screen TV showing Shravan’s film in a continuous loop.

Filmmaker Shravan Vidyarthi did a nice job on the short piece for the exposition.

My five seconds of fame in film at the Taxi 07 Exposition

It was a bit surreal to see my image and hear my voice captured for the five or ten seconds I take up in the film. There I was, along with Melissa Plaut, author of the New York Hack blog and a soon-to-be published book by Villard Press; Hungry Dave, an affable young taxi driver who also conducts food tours of the five boroughs; other drivers talking about going to school while they earn a living; some guys, presumably night drivers, who lifted wieghts in a gym in Queens in the three in the morning; and more than a dozen other drivers who were briefly sharing their stories of how they participated in the life of being a yellow cab driver in New York City.

It’s kind of crazy that only a year ago I was going through the licensing process and wondering if it was even a good idea for me to be contemplating driving a cab in New York City; although I’d driven a cab in Honolulu for three years back in the early ‘90s, I could count on one hand the number of times I’d driven on the hectic streets of the Big Apple. Now here it is a year later, and my experience of Gotham has been forever altered. I haven’t made all that much money, and it’s been a difficult job in many respects. I could make the argument that I’d be better off doing some other kind of part-time job on the weekend that leaves me more time for school and doesn’t take so much time and energy and have the potential for injury or other bad things to happen (for example, just last week I was served with a summons by the lawyer of a women who ran a red light and hit my cab back in September, demanding over five thousand dollars in damages for an accident that was clearly not my fault; now I have to take the time to defend myself and sort that out, and in a worst-case scenario could get stung with a large and unfair penalty.) Cab-driving is a business where you can get screwed in a lot of different ways. Whether I choose to continue doing a job with that kind of potential downside and which requires me to get up before 4 in the morning on the days I drive has been and will continue to be an ongoing personal debate.

But whatever happens, the experience of being a New York City cab driver has definitely been life-changing for me. The brief window into the lives that have intersected with mine and the vistas and environs of the city I’ve glimpsed while driving a yellow cab will remain with me for all of my days. And thanks to the decision to go ahead and put up this obscure little blog, I’ve had a meaningful outlet for my desire to write. Hey, I’ve got no illusions that this is a major blog or literary or journalistic work, but even so my words and the grainy images of the city taken on my cell phone cameral have reached thousands of people in some pretty far away places around the globe in ways I couldn’t have imagined. The blogging phenomenon really is a remarkable effect of living in the 21st century!

So I don’t know what the future holds in store for me as far as cab driving goes. As I said, I plan to resume driving on the weekends again as of tomorrow. My seven-week summer session for nursing school starts on May 7th, which will be a lot of work, and I’ll probably have to knock off from driving again towards the end of that. Then I’ll have two months off from school, during which I’ll be working three days a week in the emergency room of a city hospital on a rotating schedule as part of a summer externship. Given that my schedule will vary from week to week most likely the only other job I could fill in around that would be driving taxi two or three days a week, and the flexibility it affords me will be useful. Then it’s back to school at the end of August for nine months to finish out the RN program before taking the licensing exam. I’ll have to work somehow during that time, and so I may have as much as a year or more of cab driving ahead of me. We’ll see.

It’s a mistake to be living in any place but the present; who knows what will transpire in the days ahead. I could get hit by a proverbial bus while crossing the street tomorrow (or while driving a taxi), and all my well-laid plans could change in the blink of an eye. As a taxi driver I participate in an industry and as an American I live in a society that depends on relatively cheap fossil fuel at a time of escalating instability and conflict in the Middle East; the uneasy reality is, that situation could change overnight too. In fact when I ponder my future, the state of the world, and even “the future of cab driving,” I’m pretty sure that the only thing that can be predicted with any kind of accuracy is that bigtime changes will be waiting as we come around the bend, and the way things ending up working out will be significantly different than planned.

But perhaps that’s the way things have always been in a world of impermanence and constant change. In the words of one of my favorite writers, the late Kurt Vonnegut (who left the body just this month), “and so it goes.”

Who would’ve thought getting a hack license would’ve led to this?

Thanks to all the readers of Carlos Fresneda’s El Mundo article which appeared a week ago; I received many nice emails and comments from Spain. I’m moved to realize that this humble blogging project has appeared on computer screens in such far away places.

It snowed in New York two weekends ago and I didn’t drive the cab; I had a lot to do before I left for Arizona last week to visit my mom during my spring break from nursing school. We had a great visit, and we grieved and celebrated the life of the wonderful man her second husband and my stepdad Bob was.

I flew back to the city on Friday, calling my fleet owner Moshe from the Denver airport to book a taxi for Sunday. It was night as the jetliner approached LaGuardia Airport from the southern end of Manhattan and looking out the window I could see what I like to think of as the magic city arrayed in all its lights and splendor below. As the plane swept up past the East River I marveled to myself that I drive around and around this city in my taxi at the foot of all the tall buildings I could see beneath the wing of the airplane, here in this incredible spot on the planet.

I was back out working on Sunday, still a bit jet-lagged and feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the daunting amount of work that lies ahead to finish out the last five weeks of the semester.

The arch at Washington Square in Greenwich Village

The most interesting thing that happened to me Sunday was being hailed by a young art director on the Upper East Side on his way to work at Eighth Avenue and 49th St. It turned out he was employed by the marketing group I used to work for in the advertising world, before its previous parent ad agency (my former employer) had been sold for parts and gone out of business… an event which precipitated my eventual layoff and led me through a chain of events to my present situation as a taxi driving meditator and yoga teacher on the way to becoming a registered nurse. The art director knew some of my former colleagues who’d survived the transition and now three and a half years later were working in the new corporate configuration. In fact, one of them was smoking a cigarette by the curb as I dropped off my passenger, and I rolled down the cab window and said hello–chatting for a minute about the changes in my life before driving away.

Who would’ve thought in a city this big that I’d be led to a connection like that? Perhaps this was an illustration that in the random events of this world everything is truly connected… I thought about that encounter during the afternoon. The truth is, it’s a lot tougher to make a buck driving a cab than it was sitting in a comfortable chair in a graphics studio working on design layouts, and the workload and pressure of getting myself through nursing school is intense–but I wouldn’t trade what I’m doing now to return to those old days when I felt a vague sense that there must be a better way for me somehow…

Times Square on a sunny spring afternoon

So here I am, doing a bit of blogging this morning and procrastinating on studying for a big exam this afternoon; and so it goes…

Peace to all beings.

So much to reflect on and write about from the past two weeks… I’d started this entry after driving on Sunday March 4th but the intervening events of the past week, beginning with two anatomy & physiology exams in two days Monday and Tuesday, a visit to my favorite NYC Buddhist group Dharma Punx to see some friends who’d just returned from India on Tuesday, and culminating with the death of my stepfather, Bob, in Arizona on Wednesday after a long period of illness and decline… and so last week’s post was left unfinished. Now it’s Monday, and before I become immersed in another week of nursing school (which is more and more completely taking over my life as the spring semester enters its final six weeks), I offer these words and images.

The passing of human life, its brevity, and the inevitability of our taking leave of the body was an inescapable subject of contemplation for me this week. The awareness that old age, sickness and death are inevitable manifestations of our impermanence is a key focal point in Buddhist teaching — not to be a bummer and dwell on the negative, but in order to arrive at freedom through insight into this fundamental aspect of our and all being. Even the briefest glimpses of this ultimate ground of emptiness, from which all forms of being spring, can be liberating and life-changing experiences.

And so when I heard from Mom that stepdad Bob had finally left his body last week, I was moved to reflect upon and celebrate the form that his life had taken over 83 years on this planet, during which he led a varied and colorful life and loved and was loved by many who came to know him along the way.

I’d gotten into the routine of calling Mom and Bob on Sunday evenings after driving taxi on the weekends, and he was always interested in hearing about my adventures, invariably saying, “So, how’d it go today?” Bob had been raised in Floral Park in Long Island and had lived here in New York City after being discharged from the army as a young lieutenant at the end of World War II. The city was always one of his favorite places and he got a kick out of my becoming a yellow cab driver here last year. Bob’s generosity along with my mother’s also made it possible for me to enroll in nursing school last fall and whatever comes of my career caring for the old, ill and injured will have been part of his legacy to me.

It was probably not coincidental that on Saturday morning, after I’d picked up the cab at 5am and parked it on the street in order to grab just a little more rest before starting my 10 hours or so of driving, I awoke from my nap startled by a dream: I don’t even remember what I was doing in the dream, whether I was driving a cab or going to school, but all of the sudden I found myself rising up in the air like a rocket, with the world and my life as I’d known it receding below me into the distant distance in the blink of an eye. It was as if, suddenly being removed from my immersion in the world and my life, I had been lifted out of a movie set with a jet pack: the movie that is my life now, as I know it. I lay on my bed for a few minutes then, before getting up to go out and drive… mulling over this symbolic teaching dream and the interplay of emptiness and form.

The brevity and unpredictability of life was underscored once more on Sunday morning; for some reason, even though I’d lost an hour of sleep due to daylight savings time kicking in overnight, I’d felt like driving around a bit when I picked up the car at 5:15, which is not my usual modus operandi. I found a few passengers on their way home to Harlem from a night in the clubs, and then a recording engineer who was on his way back to Brooklyn Heights from Hell’s Kitchen. After bringing him home I drove back over the Brooklyn Bridge and decided to drive past the Millennium Hotel on Fulton St. across from Ground Zero; it was around 6:30 am and first light was just beginning to appear, and I stopped to take a picture of the World Financial Center towers behind the historic site.

First light at Ground Zero.

I proceeded up Church St. and was hailed by a pretty young bartender who’d just gotten off of work; she asked me to take her to 169th St. way uptown, which was quite a nice ride, and we got on the West Side Highway from Beach St.

A few blocks onto the highway we drove past the gruesome sight of a pretzel vendor’s cart which had been smashed from behind by a van; the police were on the scene and as we drove by I could only speculate on the likelihood that the person who’d been pushing or pulling that cart along the edge of the highway on his way to his day’s work had been severely injured or killed. Just like that. One moment you’re on your way to work and the next moment it’s all over–the form of a life evaporating back into the emptiness from which it sprang.

Ok, enough with the heavy and ponderous stuff — driving the Buddha Cab isn’t always about meditations on death and dying. On Saturday I had the fun of being interviewed by a journalist for El Mundo, the second largest newspaper in Spain (according to Wikipedia). I’d received an email from Carlos Fresneda a month or two ago; he’d come across this blog on the internet a while back and expressed interest in riding around with me while I worked. It didn’t seem to me that my other passengers would be particularly comfortable with a second person riding shotgun, so to speak (you’re not supposed to do that according to TLC regulations and the only time customers probably wouldn’t mind would be during afternoon rush hours when there aren’t enough available cabs to meet the demand). However, Carlos thought it would be fine to just ride with me and ask me some questions, and offered to pay me for the time; I wasn’t sure how this would go but we agreed to meet up Saturday morning in the Village at 10:00 am.

Carlos Fresneda, U.S. correspondent for El Mundo

It turned out to be quite pleasant. Carlos was a real nice guy with a sincere interest in Buddhism; he brought along Anna, who took some photos, and Miguel, her uncle, who also works with the New York bureau of El Mundo. I answered Carlos’s questions as best I could (while keeping an eye out for traffic cops as I had the cab standing in a ticketable spot); we drove over to Chelsea Piers and found a safer place to park and Anna took a few more pics of me sitting on the hood of the cab in meditation posture (slightly irreverent perhaps, but it was fun). We ended up spending more than an hour together talking about what I do and what I’ve done, and although I don’t know who in Spain will be interested in hearing about my particular experience of cab driving in New York City, it was a very agreeable meeting. As we finished up Carlos expressed an interest in checking out a Dharma Punx session some Tuesday night when we can find the time. My El Mundo interview was definitely a highlight in my taxi driving career.

Miguel and Anna smiling from the back seat

And so the weekend of working behind the wheel of a yellow cab unfolded. The weather was brilliantly sunny and warm Saturday and Sunday; I could see the city savoring the arrival of spring through my windshield. Although we’d had a surreally warm January in New York, February had brought week after week of cold temperatures, which extended right up to last Thursday.

The 65th St. transverse in Central Park overlooking the Children’s Zoo

As Sunday afternoon progressed I was feeling increasingly tired, and traffic was getting quite heavy in more and more parts of town. By 3 o’clock my head was pounding, the femur head in my right hip was aching (an injury which unfortunately originated from overstretching some ligaments doing yoga a couple of years ago and which occasionally gets aggravated by the constant extension of my right leg reaching hour after hour as my foot dances between the gas pedal and the brake). After bringing an older woman and her granddaughter from 86th St. and West End Avenue to the Museum of Natural History, some young Brits climbed into the cab asking to go to Bloomingdales. By the time I finally navigated across the 65th St. Central Park transverse and over to Lexington Avenue, I was feeling pretty fried. As my passengers got out in front of the famous department store, I turned my off-duty light on and headed back to turn the car in. I could’ve made a few more runs, but I’d exhausted my internal reserves of energy and equanimity and couldn’t wait to get out of the Manhattan traffic and leave my cab driving life behind — at least until next weekend.

There’s only one first time for everything: young Liam enjoying his first ride in a New York City yellow cab.

Sticky Buttons

Saturday morning I rolled out onto the streets of Hell’s Kitchen at 5 am to see if my taxi fleet would have a car for me after I’d taken last weekend off to study. It was 22 degrees F and the weather had turned quite cold again after having warmed up finally for three or four days during the week. Although the sun is rising earlier now as we’re two months past the winter solstice, it’s still dark at that hour. As I rounded the corner of 37th St. I walked past a homeless man sleeping huddled against a truck, his body sheltered underneath a heavy zippered garment bag next to his shopping cart of personal possessions–a reminder that people are suffering in this city right under our noses all the time.

I greeted Foster, the dispatcher, and asked him if he had a car for me today. “You have to go over to the garage and get it,” he said, and I hitched a ride over to 44th St. with Kim, a Korean driver who was heading out to begin his shift. I arrived at the garage as the African mechanic was finishing installing a new fan belt; after waiting 10 minutes or so, he said it was okay to drive, and I backed out of the garage and onto the street.

As I printed out the stats from the meter, info that you’re required to log onto your trip sheet, I noticed that the meter buttons weren’t registering very quickly–in fact, there was about a three or four second delay, and sometimes they didn’t start the meter at all. In addition to that, the gas tank wasn’t quite full. Great, I thought; this had the signs of being one of those days, driving the car no one else wants to drive. But I needed to make some money, as I hadn’t driven last weekend, so I took the car back to 37th St. to tell Foster about the gas tank and the meter. Foster, who’s seen it all before, said, “park the car and take the meter out and bring it here.” This I did with some skepticism, and then watched as he held the meter against the heater vent in the car he was sitting in for a few minutes. “Guys have been driving this car all week,” he said. “It just needs to warm up. Try it now.” I took it back and put it in the car, and noticed that the delay time for the buttons was down to a second or two. So I drove away, parked the car on the street, and went back up to my apartment to get a little more sleep before 7 am when I usually start driving–and I took the meter with me and put it on a chair next to my bedroom radiator. That seemed to do the trick and I managed to get a day of driving out of the meter and the car.

Found myself pulled up on 110th St. next to this NY Fire Dept. ladder truck on Sunday.

My first rider Saturday turned out to be a guy on his way to Belleview Hospital; I asked him if he was a doctor or a nurse, and he said, “I’m a nursing student.” He was attending the Borough of Manhattan Community College’s night school program, holding down a full-time job during the day, and getting in his clinical hospital training on Saturdays; plus he’s married with a kid! And I thought my schedule was pretty demanding! We had a nice chat and commiserated about the things that suck about nursing school and how great it will be when school is finally over as I drove him cross town.

This mammoth construction crane was managing to block all but two lanes of traffic on Third Avenue north of the Village on Saturday morning.

A couple of riders made a particular impression on me this weekend.

Brain Surgery Survivor

Sunday I picked up a guy flagging me on Bleecker St. who was going east to Second Ave. When I asked him how he was doing, he said, “Pretty good. I just got out of the hospital three days ago and today’s the first day I’m going out.” He’d had emergency brain surgery a month ago for an infection he was unaware he had. He’d gone to work like any other day and found himself noticing that his computer screen was shimmering in front of his eyes; after almost blacking out he’d walked to his doctor’s office, at which point he was taken to the emergency room of St. Vincent’s Hospital where he did pass out.

I asked him what he thought about the doctors and nurses and the care he received and he said they were outstanding. “I think the world of them, those doctors and nurses were amazing,” he said. “In fact, I fell in love with a couple of the nurses–I think I’m going to ask one of them out.” I offered my two cents worth that he should go for it, and watched him as he got out in front of a church, smiling. There was something about his attitude and outlook, and I could sense he had a renewed appreciation for being able to continue with his life. In fact he was a year younger than I am. I thought about that as I drove away.

Driving past the historic Apollo Theater on 125th St. in Harlem

Interestingly, Sunday I drove several groups of European tourists up to Harlem; one group from Spain was in search of an authentic gospel church, and had hired two taxis, mine being the second. The driver of the first cab had suggested to them that they try The Abyssinian Baptist Church on 138th St., which is where we dropped them off. A young Swedish couple got into my cab the moment the Spanish tourists had exited and told me they’d been waiting since 8 o’clock (it was almost noon) and had been unable to get into a service. I drove them back to Fifth Avenue and Central Park South, having a nice conversation about what life is like in Sweden these days, and as luck would have it, a group of English visitors to the city climbed immediately into my cab before the door had closed and asked me to take them up to Sylvia’s soul food restaurant on Lenox Avenue at 126th St. I wonder what some of the local Harlem residents think of the deluge of tourists exploring their churches and neighborhood.

Centering Prayer

Later on Sunday afternoon a woman hailed me on the Upper West Side on her way to St. Bartholomew’s Church on Park Avenue and 51st. She was leading a workshop on centering prayer, and we had a very interesting discussion about the similarities between the practice of Christian-oriented centering and contemplative prayer and Buddhist meditation. She also practiced reiki, which I’ve trained in and use to some degree, and we agreed that there was such a great need in the world today for positive, centered minds to engage with the massive problems facing humanity. She noted that, although you can’t really change someone else just by intending to, you can have a profound effect on others by doing your own inner work. It was a really fine and uplifting conversation and I felt grateful for her presence in my cab.

An arresting image on Houston St. There is no shortage of reminders of our attachment to sex and sensuality in New York City.

As Sunday afternoon wore on the weather became even more overcast than it had been earlier in the day. Snow was forecast to arrive in the city in the evening and several of my riders asked me if I’d heard a weather report and if I knew when the snow was supposed to start (a little known talent of cab drivers is weather prophesy).

I was getting tired and entering the last two hours of my shift when a guy got in on Second Avenue around maybe 85th St. on the Upper East Side. He was going to 20th St. so we had a little time to chat; it turned out he was a headhunter who specialized in advertising and I told him about my days as a graphic production artist in a couple of the big agencies, even managing a graphics studio briefly, and how I’d ended up getting laid off a couple of times and decided to go to nursing school. He thought that was interesting, and mentioned that he and family had spent a lot of time with nurses and doctors some nine years ago when his daughter had been diagnosed with retinal blastoma at the age of two. I asked him if she was okay now, and he said that she’d ended up having to have her eye removed, but had otherwise recovered and was living a normal life now at the age of eleven. I could sense the pain he and his family had endured; “you never see something like that happening to you,” he said. “But you know, I realized that as tough as it was for us, when I saw so many of the other kids with cancer at Sloan Kettering I realized we were lucky compared to them.” He wished me good luck as he got out at Gramercy Park and told me he thought I’d do well in nursing.

A doubledecker tour bus (not the taxi driver’s favorite companion on the city streets–these things are constantly getting in the way!)

I finished my shift Sunday with two more runs, working in increasingly heavy end-of-the-weekend traffic. And in fact the snow did begin a couple hours after I’d turned the car in at 5pm.

Another weekend of cab driving in New York, with my path briefly intersecting the arcs of my riders’ lives.

May all beings be happy; may all beings awaken and be free.

This entry may not be of as much interest to those fascinated by the mystique and lore engendered by the role of New York City cab driver… apologies to blog surfers who were looking for my usual taxi stories. But this weekend the roads were still slick from the snow the city received during the middle of last week, and snow was still only partially cleared from many areas on the sides of the streets and curbs. Lest my readers think I’m a wimpy city driver fearing the least little bit of frozen driving conditions, let it be known that I grew up in the country in upstate New York driving a pickup truck with a snow plow and tire chains and I’ve navigated my share of icy and drift-strewn roads. That being said, knowing as I do that, as the most part-time driver with the taxi fleet I lease from, the taxi cabs I’d have been likely to drive around the city this weekend would have questionable treads on their tires and be pretty certain to be sliding around quite a bit throughout the shifts–in combination with the fact that it’s already the middle of my second semester in nursing school and there’s quite a significant backlog of material I’m responsible for–I decided not to drive this weekend and study instead. That’s one feature of this cab-driving gig on the plus-side: the potential for scheduling flexibility when I need it (although there’s a risk that my fleet owners may not have a car for me when I do want to drive if there are more regular drivers in the rotation who want to lease taxis from them; so far they’ve been pretty cool with me as long as I let them know ahead of time.)

So instead of slipping and sliding my way to some greenbacks and more taxi stories this weekend, I’ve been slogging through my textbooks, in the hopes that I can be more prepared and competent and prevent some of the stress that visited me at the end of my first semester. I must say it’s been a challenge to practice compassion, lovingkindness, equanimity, and sympathetic joy through this experience. Going to nursing school at this point in my life is one of the more difficult things I’ve undertaken to do (even as I know that I’m very blessed and fortunate for this opportunity to learn the skills of such a fine profession), and that it’s a cakewalk compared to the struggles faced by millions, if not billions of souls on this planet every day). The goal of keeping a daily meditation and yoga practice going is usually met, though I’ve had to cut back significantly on the amount of time spent on my asana practice and sitting (ironically some of the days I do the most yoga are my taxi driving days, when I make sure to practice 30 to 45 minutes at 3:45 or 4 a.m before I go pick up the car–I consider that a necessity before riding around in a yellow bucket of bolts bouncing over New York City potholes all day with one leg constantly extended reaching for the gas pedal and the brake). I wish I could say I’ve been able to keep my mind-state uniformly positive and peaceful during this time I’ve gone back to school but that often hasn’t been the case. The truth is I’ve often let myself slip into a reactive, far-from-enlightened mode in response to the academic, institutional and economic stresses of nursing school. But what I have learned from Buddhism and some of the other spiritual wisdom traditions I’ve encountered is that all life situations present us with a new opportunity–in each new present moment–to put into practice the ideals of wisdom and compassion. I’ve had the good fortune to travel in India, and go on meditation retreats, and you know what, I’ve learned this as well–it’s actually a lot harder to keep the flame of one’s practice lit in the midst of living everyday life.

I’d like to close this post by wishing my friends well in Dharma Punx who left for India this week to spend a month traveling and visiting the Buddhist holy sites. Wish I could be there with you guys!

May all hearts and minds awaken and be free!

I’m sitting down at my computer tonight after logging over 20 hours Saturday and Sunday upon returning to driving taxi after being away from the Buddha Cab gig the past two weekends (two weekends ago I was working as a private home care assistant for an elderly artist recovering from skin cancer surgery and last weekend I could afford the luxury of a weekend off to entertain an out-of-town guest, and as well attend a party thrown by some of my fellow nursing students… besides, the frigid weather in New York City over the past two weeks had nailed me with a cold for which I needed some recovery time). School is getting pretty demanding now as we approach the mid-semester point, but I want to share a few reflections (in between sessions with a rather dense anatomy textbook) and keep this blog project going.

So this weekend it was back to business selling rides in the Buddha Cab to keep my bills paid and groceries in my ‘fridge. After temperatures had hovered in the teens for the past week or so in the city, the weather this weekend eased up a bit to around 21 degrees when I rolled out to pick up the cab at 5 a.m., going up to a degree or two above freezing by the afternoons. Saturday and Sunday were sunny days with blue skies and little wind, and although it was still cold, I could tell people in the city this weekend were enjoying the relative warming (as well as a tiny bit of reassurance that it was still possible to have normal winter weather after December and January seemed to provide evidence for New Yorkers that global warming is more than a liberal theory).

Driving towards Manhattan on Queens Blvd. early Sunday morning, avoiding an accident on the Grand Central Parkway on the way back from JFK.

Fragments of observation and reflection from the weekend:

As I walked to pick up the car on Saturday morning I noticed a pool of blood on 42nd Street, and I was reminded how many people live in this city, how many dramas (and tragedies) take place here every day, and how violence is still a fact of life for so many people on this planet. I’ve lived in New York for 17 of the last 22 years since 1984, and when I first moved here fear of violence was a bit more of an issue than it is today. But in a city of 8 million people there’s always something going on, and somebody’s bad karma came home to roost on 42nd St. on Friday night.

When I turned on the radio to start my Saturday shift I found the night driver had tuned it to Public Radio, and I found myself listening to a radio show on the biblical Abraham, and how the lineages of Christianity, Judaism and Islam all led back to him. At one point an author of a book on this subject spoke of how a new interfaith movement is growing in this country and that it offers a seed of hope that somehow the seemingly irreversibly opposed forces of religious and sectarian hatred and strife whose epicenter is the Middle East can be bridged through a new awareness of the common roots of all three religions. Fascinating stuff to contemplate upon while driving around on an early weekend morning in the city. I noted too that Buddhism pretty much gets bypassed in these kinds of discussions; well after all, the culture we live in here in the United States is predominantly Judeo-Christian, and that culture happens to be having some major issues with Islamic culture. From my point of view, wisdom and compassion practiced on an individual and collective level is the only way to go, whatever may be coming at us around the bend of the historical road.

Looking at the engine station for the Roosevelt Island Tramway at the end of the 59th St. Bridge.

And so I sailed around the city in the old cab I often get dispatched; this weekend the steering assembly had become a bit compromised, and the steering wheel jolted in my hands with every bounce and pothole (the cold weather seems to have had an effect on New York City’s potholes—they seem a little deeper and more chassis-rattling these days). After a while I got used to the way the car was handling, and found myself getting into a groove of moving fluidly along the streets and avenues, scanning my side mirrors constantly during the cab driver’s dance of almost continuous lane changes to avoid double parked and slower moving vehicles and position myself for maximum advantage in the flow that is traffic in this great city. That feeling of being in harmony is a beautiful thing, and not that it happens all the time for me or even very often, but I was sensing it this weekend. Probably not coincidentally, I usually do better money-wise when I get into that feeling of flow too.

The Brookln Bridge seen from DUMBO (down underneath the Manhattan Bridge)

And so maybe twenty-five or thirty individuals or sets of passengers rode with me on each of my shifts… all ferried from one point to another in my cab as the arcs of their lives very briefly intersected with mine. Looking back at a few snapshots:

The RN supervisor of a nursing home in the East Village getting off an overnight shift Saturday morning, telling me how many patients she was responsible for and how acutely ill many of them were as hospitals tend to discharge sicker people earlier these days—she told me how much stress she experienced orchestrating the care of so many people and how wiped out she felt at the end of a shift (as I thought to myself “what am I getting myself into?”). Still, she said it’s a good profession and wished me well in it.

The young Indian financial analyst who was on his way to work, and, when I told him about my travels in India two years ago (see www.indiajournal2004.com) offered to put me in touch with his family when I return someday.

Enjoying an animated conversation about yoga with a guy returning to the Upper West Side from an ashtanga yoga class on Avenue B in the East Village; it turned out he was a biotech financial analyst with a medical degree and we chatted about nursing and complementary alternative medicine as well.

The Indian man who’d recently moved back to NYC after spending two difficult years in Houston, where he’d hoped to have better educational opportunities for his daughter; after being robbed twice at gunpoint and feeling unwelcome and uncomfortable in post-Hurricane Katrina Houston he’d decided to come back to New York, where he’d lived for nine years before.

The Mexican bar employee going home to Ridgewood, a neighborhood just across Brooklyn’s border in Queens, from Hell’s Kitchen on Sunday morning… he came out of the bar just as I was parking the car at 5:15 on Ninth Avenue and helped me get my shift off to a good start, bringing me to a neighborhood I had not been to before well out beyond Williamsburg. We had a nice conversation about the difficulties learning a second language (English for him, Spanish for me). He told me how his Irish friends (and Irish girlfriend) had been a great help to him; we agreed that having a Spanish girlfriend would probably improve my Spanish as well.

Talking to a young woman who’d returned from two weeks traveling in Vietnam and Cambodia about her experiences there.

Chatting with a guy who’d lived here in New York since the mid-80’s, as I brought him to a movie theater in Times Square, about how many neighborhoods in the city have been “tamed, gentrified, and sanitized” in the last ten or fifteen years, and how although the city is safer now for most, there’s an aspect of the city’s personality and character that’s been lost.

The elderly black woman going home from the Marble Collegiate Church on Sunday, who told me proudly she’d been going there since 1967 when Norman Vincent Peale was the pastor and invited me to come to service.

And lest I paint too rosy a picture of myself placidly motoring around the city this weekend, let me also note that at one point late on Sunday afternoon another cab egregiously cut me off on East 79th St. and pulled directly in front of me to gain cruising position; I was getting tired and I got pissed! I laid on the horn for several seconds, to which the driver of the cab responded by pointing his index finger at his head in a gesture which I can only assume was not apologetic. So much for maintaining my equanimity. Guess I have a lot more practicing to do in the Buddha Cab.

Looking up at Grand Central Station at night

And so another weekend of cab driving is in the books. It’s time for me to shift gears and get back into nursing school mode now (and back to that anatomy textbook).

May all beings be happy (especially the readers of this blog)

The reflection of my cab in a storefront window on Bleecker St. on a cold day in New York.

It was 19 degrees when I went out to pick up the taxi at 5 am and 21 degrees at 7 am when I started driving today. And it felt cold! Yesterday I’d come out at 5 am to pick up the car and, noting the ice on the sidewalks and the roads, decided to opt out of a day spent sliding around on the streets of New York in an older cab with questionable tires. I got a lot done studying, but today I really needed to make some cash, and although it was ass-freezing cold, thankfully most of the ice was off the streets of the city.

Entrance to the Manhattan Bridge as seen from Chrystie St. at Canal St.

It was so cold I put on an extra layer of sweatshirt when I went out at 7 to begin my taxi work after getting an extra hour’s snooze between 5:30 and 6:30 or so. There were very few people out on the streets, far less than even a slow Sunday morning, and I found myself driving around for an hour and a half before my first fare, an affable bartender who got in on Avenue A. We enjoyed a pleasant chat as I brought him to work (”we’re in the same business you know,” he said; “I get ‘em drunk and you take ‘em home”). I mentioned that I occasionally thought about getting a table waiting job instead of driving the cab (those thoughts come more often when you drive around for an hour and a half without a fare) and he said he thought being a cabdriver was cool; he admired the freedom I have to be alone with my thoughts. He got out at 6th Avenue and 30th St., and I then proceeded to put in another hour driving another hour before my second passenger. By quarter of ten I’d worked for 2 1/2 hours and made ten bucks towards the lease price and the gas. A lot of empty cabs were out on this cold morning looking for the few customers out braving the cold.

Times Square scene.

Although I wondered if perhaps today would be the first day I actually failed to cover my costs on a taxi shift, I did my best to focus my mind, listening to a recording of my weekly anatomy lecture and then shifting to a dharma talk by Ajahn Amaro. I noticed myself mentally rehearsing an imaginary scenario at the end of the day where I was angry and upset as I paid the fleet owners and announced I hadn’t made any money for myself, and I had a mini-epiphany, noticing how often I anticipate and imagine unpleasant events in my mind – and I wondered how different things would be if I spent more time playing with my imagination to pretend for happier outcomes instead. That’s probably more along the lines of creative visualization than Buddhist practice, but an attempt nonetheless to disconnect my mind’s momentum from running off with unwholesome mindstates. And I reminded myself that somehow, even when a shift starts out this crappy, I usually end up with some money in my pocket anyway.

Looking towards the Port Authority from 41st St. at 7th Avenue.

And so this was the case again today. My luck changed just before 10, and I got a series of rides that helped me catch up for the slow start this morning. I enjoy chatting with most of my riders and today was no exception. There was the attractive Lebanese woman MD from Dallas specializing in pediatric medicine who seemed to enjoy that her cab driver was in nursing school; the lady yoga teacher who takes classes and teaches at many of the studios in the city I’m familiar with (reminding me with a twinge of envy how I wish I had more time for taking yoga classes and teaching yoga these days myself); the furniture purchasing agent who’d just returned from business travels to China, Vietnam, and Malaysia–those were just a few of the several dozen passengers I ferried around the city in my yellow cab today.

Gazing up at the steel and girders of the 59th St. Bridge from York Avenue.

In between riders I continued listening to Ajahn Amaro, as he spoke of how everything is inherently empty, and it is the intrinsic nature of all things is to pass away. Nothing to hold on to, nothing to get worked up about–to say these words is easy, to realize them is everything.

And, as happens almost every shift I drive, at a couple of points during the day I felt the spike of adrenaline surging as a fellow motorist or two (and usually one of the two is another cab) suddenly swung their vehicle into the traffic lane I happened to be occupying, coming within inches of crunching into my taxi.

It seemed to warm up a bit in the afternoon, or maybe I just got used to being in the car, but by the afternoon I was driving sans jacket in my taxi where the heater never quite got going. And by the end of the afternoon I’d somehow made the acceptable minimum I needed to make to keep body and soul together for another week of school.

And so another taxi shift is in the books. Like a beat reporter, I submit this post for those who may read it; may you, my readers, be happy and live with ease.

Another weekend driving taxi is in the books… school is well underway now and, after being in classes all week (including half a day in the hospital) it was time to get behind the wheel and do the cab driving thing so I can keep it all going. It wasn’t as surreally warm this weekend as the 72 degree day we had last Saturday but it was 50-ish, rainy, and very gray in New York. A shroud of fog remained suspended over the city Sunday and it was downright Londonesque. I went through my usual routine of getting up at quarter to 4 each morning, having some coffee and doing yoga for 40 minutes or so, then walking out to get a car, parking it on the avenue and coming back to my apartment and getting another hour of sleep, and then beginning to drive around 7am until 5pm. When you drive a taxi, every day is different; here are a few observations and notes from these last two.

Going to Gaspar’s Funeral

Saturday morning the car dispatched to me had a burned out flasher light on the roof; after driving for a couple of hours I took the car to the garage to have it replaced, lest it draw unwanted attention from the police or a TLC agent. When I pulled in I noticed a couple of the drivers and Adley, one of the fleet owners, wearing dark suits. Turned out they were on their way to attend the funeral in Brooklyn of the driver from Haiti (his name was Gaspar) who’d died suddenly last week. I was impressed that the drivers were giving up a day of income to pay their respects and that Adley would also take the time to go. I’m slowly getting to know some of these guys better and feeling like I’m fortunate to have become involved with this small taxi company.

A Life Expectancy of 3 or 4 Seconds

Later on Saturday I was listening to a dharma talk by Ajahn Amaro, and he was talking about how we deal with the steady stream of annoyances, dislikes and reactive experiences that visit us throughout the day. According to Ajahn Amaro the Buddha taught that as far as what we’re really in control of in life, we can only really count on being alive at any given moment for about three or four seconds beyond any present moment; after that we’re projecting into the future what we think is going to happen. Amaro said that, if we could just distill our focus back to those immediate three or four seconds, then most likely whatever is happening within our experience (especially the “negative” aspects) would have a different quality to it, an immediacy that stood on its own ground without attaching a judgement to it.

And so I reflected on this teaching as I found myself driving around, especially playing with it during the times I observed myself becoming impatient at getting stuck in traffic or going some length of time between fares. What a powerful attainment it would be to be able to practice this all the time! What a qualitative shift in the way we can experience moment to moment awareness—and how easy it is to forget a practice like this as we attach to the next annoying distraction. I really enjoy contemplating the possibility that one could actually live this way all the time (and I wonder how many lifetimes it would take me to get good at living this way).

Past Meets Present on a Ride to Park Slope

My Sunday morning shift began with me climbing into the cab after getting the extra sleep I felt I needed; I’d turned on the engine so the “available” light would be on while I began filling out the trip log, and just like that “tap-tap-tap” someone was rapping on the passenger window. I rolled down the window and a young guy, maybe in his early to mid-twenties, asked me if I’d take him to Brooklyn. “Sure,” I said, and so he got in the back and we headed off down Ninth Avenue making for the Manhattan Bridge.

He was an amiable guy with a Brooklyn accent and a ready smile; he was going home to Park Slope after an evening of fun in Manhattan. I mentioned that I’d lived in Park Slope for five years back in the late ’80s, and it turned out he lived right around the corner from the old brownstone rooming house I’d lived in on Berkeley Pl. all those years ago. I found myself recounting how I’d come to live out there (moving in with a young woman I’d worked with in a ghastly telemarketing job), and described the neighborhood as I remembered it back then. My passenger, whose name was Ron, had grown up in Canarsie and moved to “the Slope” three years ago on Seventh Avenue, and we compared notes on what was still there after twenty years; he seemed amused by my account as I talked about what I consider one of the best periods of my life. Somewhere in my nostalgic ramble I’d mentioned Cousin John’s, a café on Seventh Avenue that served delicious whole wheat croissants. Although I do end up returning to Park Slope once a year or so to enjoy Prospect Park and reflect and reminisce, I’d not been back to Cousin John’s since I’d left Park Slope in 1990. As I pulled up to Ron’s destination between Lincoln Place and Berkeley Place, there it was! I couldn’t resist getting out and going inside, and we ended up having the still amazing croissants out on the sidewalk in the misty air and sleepy tranquility of an early gray Sunday morning in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn. Then Ron and I shook hands and he went across the street to his apartment as I returned reflectively to the taxi, feeling an appreciation for how becoming a cabbie in New York has enabled me to enjoy such an experience.

Munching on a croissant from Cousin John’s Cafe in Park Slope, Brooklyn

And so the rest of my day unfolded; notably driving a registered nurse and nursing assistant working for the Visiting Nurse Service of New York from the East Village to 111th St., and talking about the RN’s experience working at the VA Hospital and in particular one badly wounded GI who returned from Iraq.

Later in the day I had the fun of stopping to pick up a woman on Bleecker St. and have my gear shift get stuck in “Park” for about five minutes (my customer bailed out with an apology); thankfully I finally was able to wrench the shifter back into “Drive,” after which I enjoyed the suspense of wondering whether a similar event would happen again (it almost got stuck one more time, and at the end of the afternoon I brought the taxi by the garage, where the mechanic demonstrated that the lever was working now). Never a dull moment, this taxi driving job of mine.

I arrived at 5am this morning to see if I could get a taxi and work today and found the the old dispatcher from North Carolina Foster talking to one of the drivers in a serious tone. “Did you hear? C. died yesterday. He just drove the the night before last. He’s dead.” How did he die, the driver asked, as did I. “I don’t know; he was having trouble breathing though,” Foster said.

I’m not sure if I know who C. was. I’d probably passed by him on my way to get the taxi in the morning or when I turned the car in at night. I heard that was a short, stocky Haitian man, with a bouncy way of walking, and you could tell Foster and some of the drivers liked him as they talked of him being a friendly, generous guy. “He used to give me a ride to the garage,” Foster was saying. “I just saw him the other night.”

Most likely he didn’t have health insurance and probably couldn’t afford to stop driving to rest. It was a sad moment, this morning, watching several of the drivers reflecting on a fallen comrade, and as well I’m sure reflecting on how that could be them someday—driving day after day, week after week, year after year as this tough job takes its toll, with no safety net of any kind—engaging in the struggle that is the life of the New York City cab driver.

It was my first taxi shift of the new year; school started this week and I can tell this semester will be a real challenge to get through, what with the course load I’ve got and the driving I’ll be doing in order to keep up with paying my bills Saturdays and Sundays. But I know I’m lucky that my experience as a NYC hack is a temporary thing; more and more I realize how lucky I’ve been in so many ways, and how much I’ve taken for granted in my life up to now.

Broadway near 165th St. on a sunny day in January

A Ride to Columbia-Presbyterian

It was pretty slow this morning; it was another warm, sunny beautiful un-January-like day. After yesterday’s record-tying 72 degrees today was “only” in the mid-50s (oh the strange goings-on in this 21st century). You never really know what combination of circumstances really drives the demand for cabs in this business but certainly when it’s pleasant to be walking in the sun in Manhattan in January one is more inclined to do so then jump in a taxi.

And so I drove around the city this morning, slowly chipping away at the overhead of the lease price and gas, listening to recorded dharma talks by the wise and funny monks Ajahn Brahm and Ajahn Amaro and wondering if it would ever be possible for me to jump into a car and drive all day with not the slightest attachment to whether I made any money or not, but to simply accept the existential fact of my being here behind the steering wheel driving around this great city in the 21st century, sometimes by myself and sometimes ferrying customers from place to place. Could I ever be evolved enough to experience no frustration or reaction to being beaten to customers by faster driving, more aggressive cabs, or just being plain unlucky? I guess it’s theoretically possible, and to me that’s the potential for using cab driving as a medium for Buddhist practice—but I can tell you, I’m not there yet. Not even close.

One rider in particular today left an impression on me. He was young guy who flagged me at Broadway and 96th St., and wanted to go to Broadway and 165th St. “Are you going to Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital?” I asked, to which he said he was. I asked him if he was going to work there but he said no, he and his wife had just had their third child, a son who was born prematurely and was developmentally unable to breathe by himself. I could hear the concern and weariness in his voice as he told me about his baby’s struggle for life. I told him I was in nursing school and he said that he’d noticed some of the nurses were really great to him and his wife while others seemed to be too busy to take the time out for them. I mentioned that the job of a hospital floor nurse can lead to burnout and that it was too bad when that happened. He mentioned he was a trader and we talked about my decision to leave behind ad agency graphics and seek work that was more service-oriented , and he agreed it could be hard to feel a real sense of satisfaction at the end of the day working in the corporate world.

As we pulled up in front of the hospital I told him that we’d learned in school that babies’ organs continue to develop after they’re born and that hospitals are doing a good job of making sure the lives of prematurely born babies are supported until that development can take place. I wished him good luck and he did the same for me as he got out. And then he entered the hospital, an environment I’m learning in now as a student nurse and probably will be working in a year and half from now, presumably after I’ve turned in the keys to a yellow cab for the last time.

It got a bit busier this afternoon and I managed to finish out the day uneventfully and even recover a bit from the very slow start. I felt quite comfortable in the cab today for some reason, like I was in a groove somehow. Maybe it was acceptance. Maybe even awareness of the many things I’m fortunate to enjoy, from my health to the opportunity to go to the school, for the experiences I’ve had that’ve made me who I am — I’m not sure. The Buddha taught that to have a human birth is rare and precious gift. And so I reflect now as I write this entry, before another week of school, on the lives I’ve glimpsed today. I wish peace to the departed cab driver who I never knew. I wish for health for the baby in the neonatal intensive care unit at Columbia Presbyterian. And I wonder how this whole thing, this experience of life I find myself in, that we all find ourselves in, will continue to unfold.