angel on the uptown E-train

Below is a story from over 20 years ago, and it still leaves me wondering.

I was living in New York City at the time. It was a lovely summer morning, probably 1984 or 85, I was about 22 years old. I got on the subway in lower manhattan on my way to an office job uptown. This was the E train, and I got on, as usual, at Spring Street.

The next stop was West 4th Street, and when the doors opened a very pretty young woman got on the train.

I don't understand why - but for some reason - I literally thought she was an angel. I'm not kidding. I was convinced she was somehow delivering me some mystical message. Maybe I died, and she was escorting me to the great beyond. Maybe this was the subway to heaven?

I was thunderstruck, and it was extremely strange.

I can vividly recall EXACTLY what she looked like and what she was wearing. She had short blond hair and she was reading the NY-Times (she folded the paper in the proper way that only the savvy new yorker knows). She had on a simple white summer sun dress. She wore white cotton "boating" shoes, low top and clean. No socks and un- shaven legs. She was smiling as she read the paper. She stood, and never sat down. And she never looked at me.

She got off at 34th street.

Now, at the time I was living with my girlfriend (Catherine) in a little apartment in SoHo downtown. When I got home that evening I told her about this weirdly profound event, alas - she didn't understand how intense it was. She actually got kind of angry at me - and that was typical of her. She simply saw it as me ogling, and immediately felt defensive.

Anyway - Now the story jumps a few months later, on a busy street in Greenwich Village (just east of Astor Place), I was walking on the sidewalk with Catherine on a cold wintery saturday morning. We had a rather tense relationship and clearly remember we were having a little squabble, typical of us. Then - she suddenly blurted out, "What are we doing? We shouldn't be together! I'm not your type, SHE'S your type!" and she pointed to this random woman on the sidewalk...

And it was her!

And - she was wearing the SAME shoes!

It was gray and blustery and she had on a heavy coat (a big green army coat).

Alas, right then, there wasn't any of that weird angelic shock to my psyche. She was with a guy, who had long hair and a beard. And - this is a funny impression from 20 plus years ago, I remember thinking this bearded guy was kind of a manipulative creep. I got a bad vibe from him.

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cat and string

The term UFO implies a lot, and by definition, it’s unknown. How can I wrap my head around something so utterly strange, something that, no matter how you look at it, remains unknowable.

Here’s something that helps me. I use a piece of string when I play with my cat, I stand in the kitchen and wiggle it around, and my cat just goes nuts. I never really let her “catch” the string, I try and keep it just an inch in front of her. Sometimes she’ll manage to get it in her claws, but I’ll snap it away and out of reach.

Does she think the string is alive?

I can’t help but think this is exactly what’s happening to us. To me, this phenomenon is similar to that piece of string. It wiggles out in front of us, but it’s simply impossible to catch. Does my cat have a way to perceive the string as a string? Maybe, but she doesn’t seem to be that insightful, her reality is that it’s a wonderful and special living thing that magically amplifies her very being. The string-game can get so overwhelming that she gets positively unhinged with excitement.

And the experiences described by the abductees may be impossible to accurately perceive. This bizarre experience is, like the string, capable of overwhelming and unhinging.

Do we say that the UFO occupants are visiting us in the same way my cat would say the string is alive?

One thing that draws me to this subject is that, at it’s core, it’s just such a intensely wonderful and scary story. I used to love spooky campfire stories as a child. Now as an adult, I still crave that mysterious thrill, and the UFO phenomenon fulfills that need. Is there something universal about our need for a scary story? Do “they” know about that need, and frame the experience in a way that will satisfy us on some deep level.

These stories are so elusive. We want to be able to “kick the tires” of this experience. But it just doesn’t happen. As soon as we get close to a clue or answer, it has a way of skittering away, just out of our reach, like the string on my kitchen floor.

My cat needs to play the string game to truly fulfill her cat-ness. Do we need the experience of trying to confront an elusive mystery, to truly fulfill our human-ness? A pragmatic scientist would say no, but what would a primitive shaman say?

My cat and I are connected to each other when we play the string game. So then, what are we connected to?

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This essay (above) was my VERY first posting on this blog. Look below, you'll see that Mac Tonnies left the VERY first comment. We have both written essays about cats as a metaphor for humanities interaction with UFOs.

These essays were the genesis for two more postings, HERE and HERE.

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AUDIO essay with Mac and me reading similar essays:

CLICK HERE

Posted Feb 11th 2010

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