September 2007 Archives

on sunday morning the original idea was to just drop off a check at the citi branch not far from here. but then the branch did not have any deposit envelopes and it was a nice morning and i was on my little kick scooter. and so i traveled down flatbush, a bit further and then further and then further still. until i found myself on the corner of avenue u, then took a right and kicked myself all the way to the beach. it took maybe three hours or so. a spontaneous three hours if there is such a thing. it was a good way to see brooklyn as if it were a completely foreign city. and in some ways it was. parts of it were certainly not meant to be explored by foldable kick scooter. bought some water at a bodega near a woman from cameroon who screamed into the phone long enough for tears to run down her face. later bought more water at a seven eleven, somewhere between a smelly sewage filtering plant and a motel called the golden gate. brighton beach was packed with shoppers hungry for fried dough products (judging by the lines of old ladies,) and the area near brighton beach appeared to be a mix of condos, daycare centers with fun names like "happy tower," and neurologist sharing their practices with psychiatrists sharing their practices with urologists. layers upon layers of trouble. i took the train back home. it would have been too much to kick myself back up the letters of the alphabet. but i considered it for a minute or two. ocean parkway does lead all the way to the ocean after all. there is even a street sign on the boardwalk. never before have i lived this closely to the atlantic. exciting stuff. it would have probably taken me another hour or so to kick the scooter and myself home. the subway took 15 minutes. i expected the pain to be much stronger this morning. "spontaneous" means i was not at all prepared for anything, of course. my arms are an annoying red today, my neck might be as well. but i wore a helmet, so my face is as pale as it tends to be. my body hurts a little but that's probably before i made any attempts to walk more than ten steps. most of the afternoon and certainly all night was spent sleeping. i woke up this morning before 6am, when the sun was still deciding where exactly to emerge on the horizon. yes, this sounds odd, but it really looked that way, with two pink areas on the otherwise dark bluegrey horizon. they were two separate areas. pink and ready to go. two separate sunrises. the sun obviously appeared a few centimeters to the right of yesterday's sunrise point, we are very much heading towards the fall, the days will get shorter and shorter and shorter still. but today was an incredible sunrise. it was so good that i ran to find the box with my most reliable camera, the one that i must have loaded with film six months ago. the first frame was showing through the round little window on the side, i assembled the whole apparatus, and then watched and shot and shot and watched. a last bat flew by the building, some birds... a news helicopter arrived around 6:40 and hovered not far from here, filming footage of the sun rising over new york, i suspect. i watched planes landing into the sun, rising very close to the tower of jfk. around 7am the whole star emerged, it became impossible to stare at it, my 12th frame was shot, my alarm went off and the trash truck arrived. (a very smelly trash truck.) the paper did not arrive this morning. it is going to be a very dense monday. looking forward to it. we will see a tiny, tiny björk tonight. the tickets we got are just very far away from the stage. no cameras will be allowed.