Salt

Coney Island: I met a German yesterday who had come to New York a few days ago truly thinking that Coney Island was an island and wondering why he couldn't find it on the map. It occurred to me that I had never thought that and I wondered why. They say it's the last year of Coney Island, that a boogey man developer is setting out to destroy the gritty and unique beauty of the constant carnival, to replace it with high rise hotels and clean it up a bit. People talk about it in a resigned way, like they've been anticipating the death of Coney Island the way one waits for an aged and ailing relative to pass on. I took the German there to see what we'd find and we met a French guy there, the 3 of us perfectly in time out of our lack of punctuality.

The neon lights themselves seemed faded and even when we walked directly between the Zipper, the Wonder Wheel and other creaking rides, it reminded me of walking past the fair grounds late at night, hearing bells and screams and metallic voices but being in another place. It was somewhere between a time warp and oblivion, almost that it had never existed at all. Even at 10pm, families aimed water guns at targets, determined to win a stiff, stuffed bear holding a heart, or a basketball. And despite the painful lurches and slams of aging thrill rides, people lined up for their chance to face..what? their fears? their childhoods?

The air coming off the sea smelled thick with salt, thicker than I'd smelled it before in that spot and I breathed in deep. The boardwalk was dark, making it impossible to walk without tripping over the countless boards that were trying to leap up out of the wooden walk way. It was like learning to walk with a limp. I got a corn muffin and a corona and we talked about subtleties in languages and culture and where everyone was on September 11th; everyone agreed that the video looked like a very bad movie, very unbelievable yet apt for a film about NYC.

Q: I've come to love the letter Q. Everytime I see it, lit up in yellow, I feel a sense of familiarity, I've got the stops memorized and I feel safe aboard. Someone in the office, reading a bottle cap, said that the letter Q is the only letter in the English alphabet that doesn't appear in any of the names of the U.S. states. To me, the Q has its own language and when I see it slowing towards me, I understand.

Movement

Tornado in Brooklyn: I wouldn’t have known at all that it was anything but a lot of lightening if I hadn’t read the staff email sent out sometime in the afternoon last Wednesday. I woke up just before six am to a very loud pop, followed by a roar, boom and a rumble. For the next hour my room was lit up by near-constant flashes of white light and my windows rattled from the snapping thunder. Rather than disturbing, the storm was soothing to me and I stayed awake to listen to it. Car alarms went off in the street, muffled slightly by a fierce and steady downpour that carried on for about an hour. When I got up for work, I imagined a soppy and cold Brooklyn morning. Instead, it was blazing hot and all the puddles that were boiling up off the sidewalk made the humidity wrap around you like a thick, damp blanket. The metro station was chaos, not a train was running in near all Brooklyn and even in the city, many were down or backed up. A harried attendant pointed us toward the Flatbush 41 bus, a few blocks down, and dozens of us grudgingly walked there together. Already about 60 folks were at the bus stop, one of many along the length of Flatbush Avenue. A bus came down the street, didn’t even slow down for all the people on it. A few minutes later, another one did the same thing. I realized there was no way I was going to get to the city by bus either, at least not in the next few hours. Plus, the bus would only take us to the Atlantic stop, still 2 stops away from where I needed to go and surely the trains would be backed up too.

I started wondering what would happen if New York was hit by a truly terrible natural disaster, instead of a slightly stronger than average thunderstorm. Here were hundreds of people stranded in the city because of the lack of public transportation, and taxis definitely couldn’t keep up with the demand. Thinking about this, I started to walk. I had no idea how long it would take, but I was going to be late for work one way or another and I’d rather be walking than standing at a bus stop watching buses pass me by for who knows how long. The walk proved to be long and probably something that shouldn’t be done in that kind of heat or if you have to be somewhere at a certain time. Luckily, it was just a straight shot pretty much to the bridge and the walk was easy. I found that I really liked walking- I spend a lot of time on the subway and rarely think about all the stuff I’m missing above ground, so it was a good change in perspective. Well, all in all, it took me about 2 hours and the Brooklyn Bridge was certainly a beautiful sight that day. By the afternoon, everything was back to normal, save the fallen tree branches and roofless homes.

Days off: The heat from the storm wore off by Thursday, withering away to cold and rainy and pretty dismal if you ask me. On Friday I forced myself out of the house to meet a perfect stranger and I ended up very happy that I did. We hopped a train to West Harlem to the Hispanic Society of the Americas after a much-needed hot coffee and a break from the rain. The Hispanic Society is a combination of archives and museum and on a wet, freezing day way up in Harlem, was pretty empty. Mostly 17th century religious artifacts from Spain and a few things from Puebla, Mexico were on display. The true enjoyment was in our poking fun at the silliness and creepiness of all things Catholic (a turkey-shaped incense burner? eyeless saints? flying baby heads?).

After the departure of my new Bostonian friend (who left me with a Red Sox shot glass, commemorating her unplanned trip to a baseball game which resulted in her actually beginning to like baseball), I went to the Museum of American Folk Art. It was small and the art was very kitsch and mostly neat, especially the weathervane collection. Yet, I do think that whoever said that the museum mainly serves as an excuse for a gift shop is probably right. Or maybe they thought to try and create some idea of an American culture so that people don't have to actually try to seek it out themselves and instead find comfort in complex quilt patterns and wooden dolls. After the museum, I caught the tail end of an Indian music performance by a dedicated trio in a plaza outside of the Lincoln Center. Yasser arrived just as I got back down to downtown, we meandered through Littly Italy a bit but the cold and long day encouraged us to go home pretty quickly.

On Saturday, I finally visited the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, a serene expanse of green and colored shapes and buzzing wings. I smelled more than a dozen types of roses, made Yasser nervous as I teetered over the lily pad pond, hugged a great and huge weeping willow and followed all types of flying insects in their pursuits. The day was beautiful with a swept-open sky and finally a tolerable temperature and oh, the sun that I’d been missing. We left the gardens in search of halal food and found a West Indian halal buffet on Flatbush. My, sweet potatoes, yams, and fried plantains are really all I need to be satisfied. But the black-eyed peas, salty greens, and corn made me grin ear to ear. Yum.