Atalanta Pendragonne

The fare is $3. If you commute, you take the bus or train twice a day, five days a week. Every week you spend $30*. You'd have to be caught and ticketed more often than once every five weeks in order to make this math not work out in your favor. And that is never going to happen, because there aren't nearly enough enforcement agents. As it is, the ones we have cost more than they make back. It's all a racket, but you'll notice the buses still aren't free because Albany is still in control of the MTA.

* I'm making a few assumptions here, first, that you're not sharing the same card among several family members with staggered schedules; once you spend $35 in a week on the same card, subsequent trips are free. Also, this is the full fare for most buses and trains, but not for the express bus.

Fic one: Protagonist very recently, like, last week, left home to live with a friend. Protagonist wonders how his newly estranged family found him, then reflects that "the internet still exists". Technically a true statement in 1994, however, it's perhaps a bit more likely that they just used the phone book.

Fic two: Protagonist is touristing in NYC, casually stops in a bodega, buys a flip phone so he can text people. Not in 1992 he didn't - texting via phones was only just invented that year and phones were bricks!

You gotta laugh. Kindly and gently, but still - you gotta laugh!

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And, you know, feel however you feel about your mother!

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What are we now but voices
who promise each other
a life neither one can deliver
not for lack of wanting
but wanting can’t make it so.
We hang from a vine
at the cliff’s edge.
There are tigers above
and below. Let us love
one another and let go.

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Seen on the SIR

This poem references the well-known zen koan.