You Can Make It Alone...

Ahhhh Brooklyn, I think I love you. I know its unrequited, sadly like so many of my affections. And our love isn't perfect, that's for sure. Sometime you annoy the hell out of me, you're big and dirty and full of so goddamn many people. But at the end of the night, I can't wait to rush home to you. The comfort of my own little neck of the woods; the faded but elegant lines of my little studio await me in Crown Heights. I know I'm slightly out of place here and yet being an outsider is what makes me comfortable, its all I know. From my childhood on, I've always known what it was like to be different, to be alone. And now it comforts me.

As I walk down these hot dusky streets, shadows and shade etched by the drooping branches of ancient trees - as street-wizened as the old men that lounge languorously on their stoops smiling and nodding hello to passersby, I'm enveloped by a keen joy that is almost as sweet and piercing as sadness. This is a place where children still dance through hoses, jump double dutch and play ball in the street. Its not Mr. Roger's neighborhood though, its not innocent - there's a vague sense of danger and gathering intensity on hot nights. But the streets feel alive, compassionate, humming with life here - not dead and vacant like yawning suburban streets - empty, wide and engulfing - with only the blue blur of TVs flickering in windows to indicate that any sort of life exists. Or worse yet, the silent hostile lines of tall pines crowding a dark sky bursting with cold stars,the lonely hush of the forest, the feeling of wilderness stretching around you, void of people, dark tangles of branches and wild animals baying at each other in moon saturated meadows. That was MY childhood, the feeling of dark jagged pines closing in, the feeling of being adrift - a small oasis of human life in a giant undulating sea of dark, stern, pressing hills.

So I'm here now. Embraced by the chaos of the urban jungle. Trying to live and love. And making a big mess of it all as usual. Somehow, I think I just might be OK, on my own, after all. Or at least for now...