Summer in Brooklyn

A Collection of Ponderings, Poetry, 

and Brief Emotional Explorations

This summer has been defined by a harsh newness, a shift, by a fragile sense of belonging. The months of June and July were spent living in New York City with my best friends. I have been working at an art and literary magazine, connecting with sides of myself that I never knew were there. Dancing, exploring, and falling in love, now that time moves beneath me, I hope to hold onto these highs. Ocean Vuong haunts me with a quote from Night Sky With Exit Wounds. He says, 

“There is enough light to drown in, 

      but never enough to enter the bones, 

                                               & stay.” 

I’d like to soak up all of this summer sunlight, absorb each memory and sensation. Adventures, doubts, and certainties – here are the spirals of thought from my Summer in Brooklyn.

You Can’t Hear the Music From the Bridge 

A taxi driver is speaking in circles about the RATS. 

“The Government!” he preaches with slanted urgency, “is waging a WAR on the RATS!”

Restless in the backseat, I nod to the music of his rambling. Nobody is getting where they need to go. 

“They hired a Rat Commissioner. A Rat Czar! Wouldn’t you say we’ve got bigger problems than the rats like ah… I don’t know… the people?”

All the cars in the city cram into one single lane. There isn’t room for anything other than noise. Things are blurred and crowded. Everyone hates everyone. Everyone is tired.

There’s some sort of congestion around the Manhattan Bridge. This taxi ride was supposed to be fifteen minutes, but it has just hit an hour, and we aren’t even halfway there.

My driver holds many strong opinions about New York City politics. They range from articulate and thoughtful to baseless and theoretical. As we sit in the traffic, he tells me about his life. He bartends, drives taxis, Ubers, and Lyfts. He dreams beyond sitting behind a wheel or standing behind a bar. He wants to be a professor. 

I consider where he goes when he is done taking strangers where they go. I wonder if all of his life will revolve around such a phenomenon: Point A to Point B, other people and their destinations.

Finally losing his breath from listing his grievances, my driver turns up the volume of the radio. A man’s phony stereo voice fills the car. 

“... standstill traffic, backed up for miles from the bridge. The Manhattan Bridge has temporarily shut down in a state of crisis. We have no details, yet, but will bring you updates as we get them. Now, back to the TOP 40 COUNTDOWN, bringing all the Hits to you!” 

I look out the window, first at my own reflection, then past it. I look different than I used to. Laced between the broken chaos, I observe quaint and quiet moments at each passing block. A group of gray-haired women, assumed lifelong friends, ‘cheers’ their glasses of wine. A Hasidic Jewish family enters a warm toned market. A young boy swings in the air by holding onto his parents' hands. 

The driver turns down the radio as our car approaches the bridge. Everyone is re-routing. The bridge is bordered with patrol and blockades. NYPD surveys the scene, scolding sirens against indigo water. An officer stands with his chest puffed out. My taxi driver rolls down the window.

“Officer, can I ask, why is the bridge shut down?”

The officer looks over, raises his brow, “Someone spotted up there, tryin to jump.”

Static and stomach-drops. What a spectacle of loneliness. The taxi driver is unfazed; I am instantly nauseous. Sirens explode in a saving grace. He turns up the radio’s volume. 

The Hasidic family leaves the market with a fresh basket of bread. The smiling women all reach for the check with wrinkled hands. A rat slips its way into a hole of protection. And on this night, this person on this bridge was brought down safely, turning away from the jump.

But someone, somewhere does jump. Sometime, somewhere, my taxi driver is a professor, or a politician, and his ideas about the rats might change everything. No one would jump or dare to climb, because everything you need would be here, on the ground, where the views are just fine. You can hear the music just fine. Everyone drives with others in mind and no one hates anyone. Maybe in that world, the one where my taxi driver is actually president, this backseat doesn’t feel so damp, cold, and estranged. And maybe there’s jazz on the radio. Yeah, maybe there’s some jazz on the radio…

The Silent Center of the Messes we Make

I don’t think he minds –

the lines, the pores, the blood, the cracks,

I don’t think he minds.

There is yelling on the outside of my window’s silence, 

this world can feel so messy and loud and zig-zagged with its 

turns and noise and 

Doubts.

Doubt.

I don’t think he minds –

the lines, the wait, the smells, the blistered steps

are a part of the road now,

and so are the naked morning sounds 

from half-opened, slanted

mouths, from snores and dreams and 

dirty sheets

I don’t think he minds

the alarms.

There are sirens on the outside of my window’s silence,

There is a heart caved in 

a metal box and an airplane 

overhead…

He takes my hand in his.

We wonder where they’re going.

Somewhere safe, we hope.

Somewhere behind time

Somewhere fossilized,

few and far between

Transparency Complex: The Glass Apartments

This is not your typical apartment complex. 

Everything is made of glass. Each wall is one massive window. The floor is a window. The ceiling is a window into someone else’s floor. For the sake of transparency, everything is transparent. Look up to meet the bottoms of your neighbor's furniture, the socks of your neighbor's feet, the matte underside of a carpet, the flattened paws of a cat, a few electrical wires, here and there, there and here.

I think you are beginning to understand.

As for your own apartment, “rooms” are an illusion. In a way, rooms have always been an illusion. There was that part of you, hidden in the corners of you, that always just knew what was going on. Doors too are made of glass, but they do have locks. We are not total savages! 

Yes, at all times, you can see everything residents do. Whereabouts and whatabouts are public domain. But seeing is not knowing. That is, you are never really alone. You may look down to the floor of your bedroom (on top of someone else’s bedroom) & see through their ceiling, say, a couple intertwined. Nudity is not a problem. Nothing about this is perverse. I suppose you get used to it all. Nothing is so uppity and sacred anymore, like the cavemen, or the hippies, or the French. 

Anyway, yes, seeing is not knowing. It’s practically all shadow and angle and silhouette. If everyone is a Peeping Tom, no one is a Peeping Tom, (interlude: such rationale will prove to be mistaken…) For the sake of full disclosure, let’s turn the whole world into a window and watch how we change. Self-consciousness might just shrink and shrivel up. If you jump or dance just hard enough, your floor will shatter. Glass shards will plummet into your under-neighbors home. Please don’t do that. We all trust each other here. There is a certain order to these things, social contracts, & we oblige. 

Seeing is not knowing. It’s like eavesdropping, or people-watching, all innocence, no context. You will never know the full picture of anything, so we may as well share what we can, watch your step, remain decently self-aware. People move into Transparency, and slowly, they change. First comes the paranoia. The lights are always off. Living in the dark is the only true chance of secrecy. A few weeks in, the new resident is barely home, searching for solace and anonymity out in the world. Transparency is a mere vessel to sleep in. After a month or two comes the retreat, the surrender. They make friends with their neighbors. Dinner parties merge. Conversations harmonize. Lighting concepts match, schedules overlap, someone is slow dancing in their kitchen. Everything is shared. Everything compliments everything. The elevator rides are never awkward. Faces are always familiar and nothing is plastic. 

These things can only last so long. Someone on the 44th floor disrupted someone on the 45th floor. 45 knocked on 44’s glass door, pleading politely for a little peace. One day, 45 decided he was fed up. He was tired of 44’s eyes and fluorescence and horrible tunes. He wanted to send a real message. 45 wrapped his body in gauze, and with the force of deliverance, cannonballed himself into his floor. 45 plummeted through 44’s ceiling. Such a crash bred chaos and panic. Everything crashed and shattered. The building closed down. Residents moved somewhere more hazy, translucent for now. Oh well. Nothing works.

Sweet Surrender of the Sun

Grape popsicle stings the inside of a blushing cheek. Such ice will burn someone so sweet, naive, dripping summer romance, down, no teeth, wet grass sits beneath her. And him, tongue orange, a citrus flavored popsicle melting down his hand, holding hers. They kiss, mixing suns and flavors. These days they sleep like kids, wrapped up in each other’s arms, sharing sheets and days, blending time.

A few weeks ago, the temperature of the planet reached an all time high. A dangerous record, one to make you look inward, take a large, deep breath, and think about things like scarcity. How much of “enough” is made up? Comfort, too. Fiction, too. Grandchildren, popsicles, a world without seasons. 

We cling to illusions of control, to tracking down the source, the poison. Things are in a constant battle of growth and decay. Popsicle poison. People poison. Hot grass holds the young couple against this earth. They get a sneaky sense that everything will be just fine, because it certainly won’t. Because it never has been. They kiss, mixing fight and surrender, suns and flavors, popsicle puddles, sticky tinted fingers. 

Sweet Aches

lost in mundane desires, like that good kind of loneliness, that good kind of sore. 

the sort of solitude you’d feel wandering through a Golden France, weaving 

through streetlamps and strangers' voices. the sweet ache of tired feet, from 

suede shoes, aimless steps. from leather boots and late nights, dragging, 

dragging, we’re dragging along – to a drag-show! another strobed-out club,

sitting slanted on the curb, delirious and in love. 

these days, I’ve been held up by love. 

the sweet soreness of scratched skin, hot mouths, eyes sharp with hunger and sex.

my own innocence feels distant – my distanced innocence. I soften my voice in the mornings.

see me for all that is whole. hear me, in silence, without the structure of words. I am obsessed

with the things unsaid, the hollowed out space between two faces, kissing. 

I like it raw and open, all spine, all crumbs, all sleep in the corner of his eye.

The Tide of a Dream You Won’t Remember

You always want to be left alone.

Until you are left alone. And then,

You just want to be held.

And then you are held, but the skin

stuck to skin overwhelms and removes you,

sitting on the edge of something shared. 

So you roll on over your own shoulder,

face to back to wall, until

A mysterious guilt breaks through you.

Great shard of nothing. 

There isn’t much to do now. 
You don’t want to be the one

who moves too much.

Morning meets night. We are all aging,

and we don’t even see it, until we see it,

and then it’s all we can see.

The wrinkles hollow out. 

Instead of a number, time starts to resemble

every voice you’ve ever loved, overlapped.

So much of what you’ve done 

is not fantastic, or particularly significant,

but you try. 

The moonlight sits

upon your best friend’s chest, rising

and falling. The space between you 

shrinks. The house silences itself. 

The tide of a dream you won’t remember

carries you away.

Currently:

There is a Japanese phrase, mono no aware, which translates to

“the pathos of things”

The gentle wistfulness at the transience of things; the awareness of the sadness of existence.

This way, things stay fleeting and precious…

A GOODBYE FROM THE NARRATOR NEXT DOOR

NARRATOR: AN OLD BRITISH MAN WITH A WISE, DEEP VOICE ( OF COURSE! )

Reality is made of the stories you repeat to yourself.

Such as, how getting SHAT upon by a bird is “Good Luck”

So you feel better about the tangled mess of pigeon feces in your hair.

Your apartment may smell of kitty litter and itch with bed bugs,

But all of that adds to its Vintage Charm

Your toxic traits were designed by the planets and the stars. 

And each hazy dream contains symbols with meaning.

When you burn all the brownies you promised to make,

that’s okay.

You will make your tea and read the news. US officials disclose

“non-human biological remains” found at UFO crash-sites…

You put the phone down and take another sip of tea. 

This is not the Beginning of the End.

When the mosquitoes eat you alive in the park, it is because they love you!

 Your blood in particular tastes of honey and wonder.

Oh, and you will make a living as a writer,

because you are passionate and sensitive,

and the world will respond to that…

(Condescending laughter)

You like to think that nothing in this world is objective, 

everything is moving and dancing, trying to find itself in all this ambiguity. 

No one means any true harm, right?

Right?

Right? 

Is anyone there?

Hello?