BROOKLYN
I've never been fascinated by New York City. Ultimately, I'm a small town kid, though I don't think I've thought about that until today, some 82 days into my 51st year on this planet. I think I've been fascinated by something about getting smaller again lately. To have less. To need less. To be more alone. Then I buy my 200th trucker hat off of Instagram and I jar myself back I into the present reality.
Really I'm doing what the Instagram post on New Yorker Magazine told me to do. A quote by some writer I've yet to go dig into. Colm something or another. It was about not wresting a meaning from the story you're trying to write. To pic an image. A word. An idea. And follow it. So I am. At the bottom of his post was his name.
Colm (a last name with a B?)
Brooklyn
Brooklyn. The word immediately probably makes you think of something. It does me. 1986-87, a Datsun 510, an aftermarket stereo I installed with no help from my dad, 3 guys yelling. "NO SLEEP TILL!!!!" A simple, almost cheesy guitar riff. "BROOKLYN!!!" Then the drums. The Beastie Boys, playing over and over and over.
When I think Brooklyn, cold and damp come to mind. Brownstones framed by the rising sun with the dew of the morning dripping down their bricks. Coating the outside walls. Is this where the dew goes in cities? To the sides of buildings? It's gotta go somewhere. I don't know. I'll Google later. I'm still following the word.
I've never been to Brooklyn. Truth be told I've only spent about 12 hours in NYC. A whirlwind trip walking around Manhattan, looking at restaurant concepts. My big takeaways.
1. They did what my stores do.
2. NYC seemed really small.
I know it wasn't or isn't small per se. It's more like it was deeper. The apartment buildings 8-40 floors, human cordwood cramped inside. "I wouldn't change it for anything!" the people of NY say. I wouldn't move there for anything. Small town. Big spaces.
It's the openness of growing up where I did that I'm thinking of and by that I mean the beaches and the fields and the 8 miles of drive, to and from high school, seeing one grocery store, two gas stations and 3 restaurants. One McDonalds every 13-20 miles along the coast, feeling we'd gone big time when it arrived. Wondering how we could get a job at this pillar of commerce. $3.35 an hour. Three. Dollars. Thirty. Five. Cents. I wasn't hired. To be fair. I'm not 100% sure I applied.
I have a friend who lives in NYC. Born and raised. The pride he has for the city. For the Bronx. For Brooklyn. All of it. It's kind of inspiring in a way. I see this kind of city pride all over the nation. It's huge in New Orleans, but maybe not as much in Baton Rouge, but maybe for the state as a whole. I've never felt this for a place. Ever.
I do sometimes think I'd move back to the Mississippi Coast, as there's a lot of nostalgia there, the most connection I think I feel for any "place". I still feel like an interloper there. A part time lover of it. Force feeding a connection I never had. The same goes for our place in Canada and my home in Baton Rouge. I'm not sure what the feeling is that I'm looking for, I just know I always feel like I'm just dropping in for a bit. The feeling that you can be or reside "at" a place and never be "of" a place. The difference between moving to and being from.
On a couple occasions I considered moving to New Orleans. To be a part of whatever it is the locals there feel makes it so unique. I got cold feet every time. Maybe I could sense that It would have been just another stop, lying on the outskirts of a community, forcing myself to shoehorn myself in. I feel like I didn't even like the city much (nor do I now). I wonder what I would have done. I was playing music at the time and likely would have just gotten a job waiting tables or something, struggling to survive whilst trying to seek out some sort of magic in my spare time. I did this in TX once. 6 months in Austin. A poor interloper in a hot, up and coming city. I waited tables. I worked at an MCI call center. I played little music. I moved back to Baton Rouge.
The author's last name starts with a T and it turns out that Brooklyn is the name of his novel and not where he's from. Or at least I think. I just went back and gave it a perfunctory glance. Maybe I'll go see what Colm "T-something" is about.
Maybe I'll just find another word and follow it.
#hugsandhi5s
