Thoughts on Brooklyn

There is something very organic and comforting about old Brooklyn. I can work north down my avenue and find boutique shops and Zagat rated restaurants, but there is something missing. Everything is too transitory. South, that is the direction I want. People at the diner know each other’s names. “Joey A died yesterday.” “I heard.” “His poor mother.” “She never did nothin’ to no one.” It is almost perverse, I feel, to sit at that counter and absorb their lives. This is their congregation, their lives intersecting; their stories concatenate and entwined, knit in one grand cloth that covers the blocks and guards their souls. Walking home I see the candles lit for Joey A, struggling in the wind, outside his poor mothers stoop. I want to stay here long enough so I too can feel their pain, can say things like “But what can you do?” and have it mean something. I see the condo buildings rising down Forth and hate them now. This is not their neighborhood, they will not cry and bleed here, and they will not sit at that counter and listen.

The guy-girl friendship matrix

And yes, the solution is sub-game perfect.

As always, Bellow puts it best...

waiting to be inspired

...There are instances when I finally loose myself, moments where the narration in my head ceases, my ego stripped away, myself left bare and empty, filled anew with the words replanted from the page to my soul, bypassing translation and becoming fact, becoming me, filling my veins and capillaries with something new, something that I can stomach, something yet cancerous. That is why I read, for these infrequent transcendent moments where I find my foot tapping out some chthonic and primal rhythm, my body rocking in step, hovering over the page drinking it straight to my blood. Sadly, I find very little in current prose or poetry that fills this need. Recommendations to the contrary are welcome.

...wait, the wine glasses cost the entire month's rent?