natural complications

Whipped by the wind, the whole family took a trip on foot into Red Hook. At the end of one of these early, raw days of March. The skin of the world exposed, cold wind in the ground. We huddled together and soldiered on, no real destination in mind.

Without all the people to look at, or the glittery/strange store fronts to ogle, the landscape leaps to the front of the frame. Natural beauty is an odd texture in New York: The sky, for instance, is the same one you look at in Jersey, or North Carolina, or Texas even – but it’s not. In New York, there are things in the sky – and sometimes only those things – that either don’t exist in those other places, or exist in a more arresting, disturbing contrast, because there are not a lot of trees (the loveliest poles) or hills or other “natural” things to complicate the view.

One’s idea of what’s natural is stretched here: Before you know it, you think of the blocks-long brick warehouses, the grainy sidewalks, the gutted buildings and brownstones as belonging They are the backdrop, as trees or bushes or lawns or mountains or lakes would be elsewhere.

Red Hook is especially strange. (As I walked down the broad sidewalk across from Red Hook Park, an SUV with dark windows slowed to the curb, pulled over. “Excuse me?” said the driver to me. “What neighborhood is this?”) The slight desolation of the warehouses, worn cobblestones and empty side streets makes the clouds at the end of a blustery weird-weather day much larger. They’re so pink. And so close. And the trees, with their cousins the telephone poles, fence posts and street signs, mark the horizon like shadows, black against the explosion of a sunset over New Jersey, where nature means something totally different, if I remember correctly.

the sound of the end

Though our windows are still closed, sealed even by some with plastic and other attempts, you can still hear what Brooklyn sounds like at the end of winter.

Some nights, it’s a hollow roar billowing over the tracks, the elevated highway…from something huge and made of steel with wheels and a mad engine, formed around its own emptiness. After, a shiver a chains breaking on smooth, broken pavement, and the night’s own emptiness – now sharper, and much more obvious.

Or: Out during a walk in the dying light, the pole of a street sign lacking its sign sets up a wild ringing in the heavy wind, as the screw that once held the absent warning of street cleaning rattles and clangs its strange accompanying percussion.

Or: A dog – an imposing one from the sound of it, probably brown or black-coated and definitely black toe-nailed – lofting warnings from the 3rd story window of a brownstone into the chilled air: To all who pass below, unknowing of their trespass: I smell you! I hear you! I hear you!

Brighton Beach afternoon

Even the sky was Russian.

At the end of the line, people from another world shuffle and saunter the streets of Brighton Beach, buying mysterious delights on the corners and in the brightly lit delis and tea shops. Everyone has a potato or meat-filled pastry to offer. Pink lips, rhinestones in the most unlikely locations, fur, fur and more fur. One furrier’s shop window even included a little stuffed dog wearing, of course, fur.

Out on the boardwalk, the water is the same color as the early evening sky, and as far away. The sand is flat and flat, the end of the world crossed with millions of tiny gull prints. A lone figure on the beach works a parasail, as if even he were somewhere else. The water must be cold. Old couples slowly make their way up and back, indistinguishable from each other. Do you take this man? Do you take this woman? A young ruffian whips by, hands-free, on a mountain bike, dangerously close to the boardwalkers, and nobody, including me, flinches.

Sated on strong Russian beer (no. 9), sea bombs and meat donuts, our pockets full of strange candies and tea, we tramp back up the boards to the train while Coney Island rears its cold dark bones in the distance and the sea gulls circle and call their eternal goodbyes.

on the outside

An irony of life in New York: You spend a lot of time outside here.

City life seems like it would be lived indoors, especially in the dead of winter. And yet. I find myself outside, but not the outside I grew up with.

Outside, I have to go to a park to find grass.

Outside, in a wintry mix, it is not long before I wish I were inside.

Outside, it’s people, all the time, everywhere. Even on a deserted street: There’s one figure walking to or from me. If no one’s around, they will be soon enough.

Outside, a fair amount of those people act like they are inside.

Outside, I am going to witness something, every time. A argument on the street corner about who called whom a clown. A man holding a woman who is crying outside a restaurant. A person who’s been living in a station wagon on Smith St. now for 2 months rearranging his strange collection of raggedy belongings. You cannot look away. And if you do, there’s more.

Outside, most people (including me) are going somewhere. It is always always movement and intention.

Outside, it might be a while before you get back inside, so it’s good to be prepared. People carry large and assorted bags for what I assume is this reason.

Outside, good days and bad days are made, both in about equal numbers. And what happens to you out here you carry with you all day long, inside and out. So be prepared.

sky bags

Mid-week, I leave the cocoon of the office at about 3:00 pm to go outside and sit in the big gray courtyard of the law school in downtown Brooklyn where I work. A few people come and go – one runs out of the school. Another walks a low-rider cruiser into the courtyard, chains it up near the entrance, then ambles back out, drinking coffee from a paper cup.

Suddenly a black plastic bag, high on a city draft, shoots into my view of the blown-out February sky. It floats for a moment, high over the entrance to Fulton Street Mall, twisting and tumbling on the wind, then plunges straight down to the top of the DENTIST building and sticks to something on its flat roof, is home.

So this is how it happens.

They wave and zip at us from their perches, flapping defiantly in the city wind. You never see them land or catch there...they've always just seemed to always be there. And they probably will continue along those lines. What do these strange flags mark? Someone's purchase of a sandwich at Zaytoon's. Clippers and a candy bar at Rite Aid. Dog biscuits at Love Thy Pet. Our never-ending supply of stuff we carry home and use to feather our tiny nests.

As I get up to go back inside, three of the black bag’s siblings caught in the trees lining the school’s courtyard rattle and whip in the gathering wind, welcoming the newest addition to life as a trapped-forever city flag now feathering the damp, too-warm sky.