OK. It isn't Brooklyn that is awful. Pedestrians looked pretty content. But I was in a rented Prius. And I don't live there. I live in a suburb of a city that is medium sized. It takes 20 minutes to get to the furthest point of the city border from where I live. So it's me that's awful. I am not used to going 1.1 miles over a period of two hours. I felt broken by the 1.1 mile mark. I wanted to find a person, one single being, who must be responsible for this road chaos and pull his arms off and piss in the holes. But there was no one person. Traffic is the sum of it's parts. It's too many cars for the road you are on, plain and simple. I was just as guilty as everyone else for the simple fact that I was also in a car, trying to use the same roadway. Yes, there was construction on a different block. Yes, there was a breakdown ahead in my lane. But those were just parts of the whole. I wish I was one of those slick, fast talking New Yorkers who knew fourty two ways to get to any single point. But I am not. I am just a schmuck from Rochester who had a GPS and a rented Prius.
Brooklyn is pretty cool. Or, I should say the tiny slice of it I saw was pretty cool. I went down there to meet someone I only knew from the internet. We did a little shop talk but mostly just shot the shit. It took me almost seven hours to get to his door from mine and I had about an hour an a half of his time. Then made a U-turn and started back home in that rented Prius.
I should have stayed for a couple days. In Brooklyn. I've been to Manhattan a lot since one day, when I was seventeen, talking with a friend, we decided, we live in New York state and had never been to New York City and that we must go. It was totally reachable with our resources and we went. We didn't know anything at all and it was wonderful. I should have explored Brooklyn the way I explored Manhattan when I was seventeen. Wandering aimlessly with a few points of interest in mind but no schedule at all. I should have smoked pot in the middle of the day. Pot that was so good I needed a nap by 3pm. I should have had a place to sleep and a map and a pocket full of cash. But I had a debit card, a rented Prius and a wife and kids waiting in Rochester. Actually waiting for me to return, not in a figurative way.
It's hard to not think in terms of missed opportunities when you've had the freedom to do anything you wanted and really don't have it any longer. It's grotesque to describe my family as a leash... but it's true. I would die for my sons. And I am not just saying that because I heard it in a movie. If there was some surreal situation where it were my life or them, I would take a bullet, jump in front of a train, cut my leg off, get as disgusting and sad as you want. I would do it. It feel it inside me, these aren't just words. But my sons are also tiny little fragile animals right now. And I am shaping them and feeding them and cleaning the feces off their bodies. It's my job. And it's my leash. Going to Brooklyn was kind of a sad reminder of that. Ten years ago, five years after my first trip to Manhattan, I was driving to and from the tri-state area several times a month. It was nothing to me. I did the U-turn many times. Thirteen hours in a car? No problem. Two days later from this trip, I am still recovering from that uncomfortable, rented Prius. I am not seventeen. I am not twenty two. I am almost thirty three and have two babies and a wife and a house in the suburbs. I guess I always planned this but never saw it coming.
My wife said something brilliant this morning I had to write down. We were talking about someone we know who gathers and covets the latest and greatest gadgets. He doesn't get one new smartphone, he get's five. And then gets high off of people marveling at his things and the way in which he presents them. And my wife blurted out "This isn't ancient Egypt. You aren't going to get buried with your Droids." And that got me thinking on a different level. I laughed, because she is right and it's hilarious to watch the daily unloading of new things in their new boxes when this guy we were talking about get's home from a day of arguing with some poor bastard behind a counter or at the other end of the phone in order to get more new stuff.
It's a sad existence and I didn't see it that way until I heard a joke about it. I kind of liked looking at the new gadgets. He pushes the newest thing right into my hands to watch me play with it and comment on an exciting new feature of a phone or tablet or whatever. Like I said, he gets high off people wanting these things. That's why he gets five phones. He also uses them as currency. He has traded the yard landscaping, his deck painted, his driveway plowed, a four thousand dollar mountain bike... all for the cost of one phone each. And he doesn't even pay for the phones. He just argues with tech services until they send him a new one. I remember when the Blackberry Storm came out. He got all the way up to seven brand new ones within two months of its roll out. And I thought that was cool until today.
Brooklyn and the past few days have been a reset in a big or small way for me. I txt'ed to my gracious Brooklyn host on my way down when I realized I had not been alone for the period of time I was in the car in two years. Two full years and I have not spent six hours straight (let alone what turned into a solo night at a motel) by myself. I am seeing through fresh eyes. I am ready for the next step.
And it is now that I realize that I have...
More pictures from Brooklyn. I took most of these when I was in that 2 hour 1.1 mile nervous breakdown. For the most part, they suck and are uninteresting. But a few are OK.
