New York Minutes

I won't post everything I wrote in my trip journal, because that would be annoying, but I hope you all enjoy gobbling up some gobbledygook time-passing. I wrote this waiting for my friend to get off of work and take me, after a long day of wandering, home.

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Day 1 – 4/30/10

Arrive at JFK

AirTrain to Jamaica Station, Queens

Long Island Railroad to Flatbush Avenue, the end of the line, Brooklyn.

Was directed by food and sunglass vendors, clerks of army surplus stores, pedestrians of varying age, race, gender, possibly creed, to a street, Myrtle Ave., that I have not, as of yet, found. Am writing from a curb in Forest Green Park. Have toted both carryon and suitcase proper since departing airport. Slightly tired from walking – have been at it for an hour at least. Brooklyn is real lovely. Lovely and young, which are two chief components of beauty. Chicago feels different in a way or ways that I will have to think about because they don’t make sense just yet. I need to use a bathroom, and could stand to eat a lemon bar – but where? I am thankful for my fitness and my money.

A man comes by – a jogger – with a shih tzu (orig. written “shitzoo”) on a shimmering leash lagging behind, the dog choking, its little eyes bugged out.

I hear the end of a woman's conversation - she says, resignedly, “...and those are the hopeless days,” to her walking companion. The women are both exquisitely gorgeous, the meeting places of exoticism and domesticity. I long to suffer her hopeless days.

My tinted sunglasses, BluBlockers – will they render Brooklyn yellow in my mind and memory forever? Will someone sometime say, “I’m from Brooklyn” and I’ll reply, too quickly, “Oh, yes, that yellow place!” The lenses make the greens of the park stand out especially. Anything blue is rendered black.

But wait! The jogger is returned, chasing the unleashed dog back in my direction! The shih tzu is liberated! Its name is Milo and it will not stop now.

Correction: The park is actually named Fort Greene Park. And the jogger collected his dog. I spit on some flowers, took a picture, and walked down to Vanderbilt Street.

Sitting now in Tillie’s Café, at the corner of Vandy and DeKalb. Tillie was my great grandmother’s name. Dekalb is a city in Illinois. The world, I will later find out, is small and Jewish. Not so much Dekalb, though. I bought some organic loose leaf tangerine/ginger tea and a chocolate croissant. I will always be an asshole. Still have to use the bathroom, but afraid to abandon the only material items currently in my possession, even for a minute. Can’t trust these sallow-eyed Brooklyn devils. Tillie’s is festooned, yes, festooned, with white holiday lights, and the café’s front door is ajarred by a crate. Open front doors of cafés, bars, gastronomicas, give me a great good feeling, an untimable feeling like summer afternoons wasted under the partially cloudy firmament. Again, asshole. Tillie’s is further festooned with paintings of partially cloudy firmaments. Outside, across the street, a pigeon woman screams at passersby. I can see her and hear some of her through the open door. (There is a diagram in my journal that elucidates how such a sightline is possible. In the diagram she has crazy snake hair and stands on a pile of old newspapers, which are labeled next to a small, pointing arrow).

I’ve waited long enough and taste my tea infusion. I burn my tongue. Bitch!, I whisper.

Last night, in Chicago, Julia and I performed “Love Shack” by The B-52’s at Kareoke night to a thunderous ovation. It was special. I later sang “Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince for the 20 something black patrons there celebrating a birthday. We went, as it were, crazy. I relive this memory now, my tongue still aflame.

Are New Yorkers brusque because they’re New Yorkers, or because they’re all asshole hipsters? Is it fair to refer to a population of several million by a common epithet? Is it somehow unfair not to?

Hipsterism, which I feel ashamed to even be writing about, it’s so played out, but I will, in its most recent incarnation was at first pointed towards feminizing early 2000’s and late 90’s exaggerated American masculinity tropes; opposite steroid injected home run hitters were lady jeans clad, skin tight track jacket wearing nancy boys. Recently, however, the reactionary pendulum has swung again, and now the world is filled with super macho hipster men, no longer boys, running around all of Brooklyn. They have the same goofy calf tattoos but they’re been stretched over burly muscle. Hipters are domineering again, ideally inhabiting 6’1, pot-bellied, large triceps owning bodies, the tight track jackets replaced with lumberjack plaid and spring-coiled beards. It’s funny and a bit intimidating at the same time. Always the same the question arises: but who am I? Their sense of self is so meticulously constructed that there is never any pressing question. They exist to cast my own identity into question. What about me? By attempting to resist the beck and cll of superficial trend cliques, did I again forget to establish myself?

This tea is really gingery.

Six motorcycles race by.

Everybody seems to know each other here. Maybe that’s not surprising, or it shouldn’t be, but I didn’t expect to see people saying “Hi” to each other on the street like 1960’s Northbrook.

See this:

Mustache. Falling water bottle. Pink underwear. A belt the precise shade of green as his pants. Have I been forgotten, or are you delayed? Why Do I continue to put insipid tea to mouth? It will only make me sick. A man with a pram. Three girls in striped skirts. Jon alone at the table. A bicycle rider with a beehive hairdo. She comes into the café. She is about to fall out of her orange dress. Will wonders never cease?

I’ve switched seats: There is nothing left to say but that I wish I was back in the park, and that one day I hope to pee.

Wait, fuck; I’ve remembered the lemon bars.