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May. 5th, 2019 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatA peaceful rainy day...with the trees is full bloom out my window. If you were to see the scene out my living room windows, you wouldn't know I lived in a city. Or a huge 1920s era apartment complex, built of brick and mortar. What you'd see would be roof tops of houses built quaintly in a row, trees and sky framing them and the patter of rain, tweeting of birds, and dogs barking in the distance. The occasional roar of a car or jet overhead. And sky, lots of sky.
The lights are off and the daylight, such as it is, has lit the room enough to see by. Faint light, letting me know there is a sun hidden behind all those grey clouds.
In the background my gurgling kitchen sink and air conditioner with rain pattering on it, are fighting to be heard. The sink is winning.
I like mornings like this. Peaceful.
Meanwhile the internet is trying its darndest to scare the beejesus out of me again. Stop it. That's the drawback of the information age -- too much frigging information, and most of it is irrelevant or the equivalent of a little boy in a distant village screaming that the world is about to end as we know it, take cover, take cover...now, now. Either that, or it's just plain depressing. In the space of four days, I've learned of ten deaths. I know people die, all the time, but I'd rather not know about all of them. We don't talk about the people being born or escaping death quite as much as we appear to discuss the dying or the dead. It's almost as if we are all flirting with our mortality, and trying to make sense of it. Certainly would explain the vampire and zombie stories that seem to have permeated our culture along with the stories of superheroes. Not that I mind the latter, but I do without or less of the former.
I'm tired of death. It's spring, after-all. May, not fall. Everything is waking up and blooming after a wet dreary winter that couldn't decide whether to be frigid or just wet. Now, we're having a wet spring, but far less dreary.
I'm writing, reading, and vegging on television this weekend. Binge-watching old movies (well old as in I'd watched them on the movie screen and now on the tv screen). And for now, enjoying the peace and quiet. One of the best things about this apartment, deep in the heart of Southern Brooklyn, is that it is quiet.
I live just below and between Greenwood Cememtery and Prospect Park. I can walk to three subway lines, and four bus lines, not to mention the big cemetery (which is basically a lovely park with lots of old no...ancient tombstones. Some of them appear to date back to the 1700s), and the big park (second biggest next to Central Park -- it has a lake in the middle of it, along with a couple of forests, a zoo, a botanical gardens.) Also near restaurants and grocery stores. And the area is insanely diverse -- every country in the world appears to have been represented or at the very least every language. And there are lots of trees, flowers, bushes, and grass -- or more than usual. It's a nice hybrid between city and residential, neither one nor the other.
When people talk about how much they hate NYC or love it, they talk about a very small section of it. The streets below 60th leading to the Statue of Liberty, or Manhattan proper -- as the real estate agents and MTA like to call it -- in order to distinguish it from the upper west and east sides, Harlem, Washington Heights, etc.
They don't talk about Brooklyn, or Queens or the Bronx -- which are actually much larger than Manhattan and have more residents. Nor do they talk about Staten Island, which is considered it's own separate entity by everyone except the people who live there. They honestly think NYC is the areas between Rockerfeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, Empire State Building, Central Park and Times Square. They may make it up to the Met and the Museum Mile, or way down to the Statue of Liberty -- but that seems to be it's own separate entity. Or they'll walk Wall Street in Tribeca. But it's unlikely they'll venture much past those destinations. And in their heads, they will think this is the sum total of New York City.
It's not.
That's just where the tourists go.
The rest of us tend to avoid it, unless we are showing people around or have a really good reason to go there -- such as a Doctor's Appointment. Long Islanders call Manhattan (although mainly that section, since they are as bad as the tourists) -- "the City". "I'm going to the City." We all have gotten in the habit of calling Manhattan -- the City. Even when we are technically living in it -- except in a more distant, less frequented portion.
New York is one of those cities that you just keep rediscovering. You could have lived here your entire life and still never quite know it.
The lights are off and the daylight, such as it is, has lit the room enough to see by. Faint light, letting me know there is a sun hidden behind all those grey clouds.
In the background my gurgling kitchen sink and air conditioner with rain pattering on it, are fighting to be heard. The sink is winning.
I like mornings like this. Peaceful.
Meanwhile the internet is trying its darndest to scare the beejesus out of me again. Stop it. That's the drawback of the information age -- too much frigging information, and most of it is irrelevant or the equivalent of a little boy in a distant village screaming that the world is about to end as we know it, take cover, take cover...now, now. Either that, or it's just plain depressing. In the space of four days, I've learned of ten deaths. I know people die, all the time, but I'd rather not know about all of them. We don't talk about the people being born or escaping death quite as much as we appear to discuss the dying or the dead. It's almost as if we are all flirting with our mortality, and trying to make sense of it. Certainly would explain the vampire and zombie stories that seem to have permeated our culture along with the stories of superheroes. Not that I mind the latter, but I do without or less of the former.
I'm tired of death. It's spring, after-all. May, not fall. Everything is waking up and blooming after a wet dreary winter that couldn't decide whether to be frigid or just wet. Now, we're having a wet spring, but far less dreary.
I'm writing, reading, and vegging on television this weekend. Binge-watching old movies (well old as in I'd watched them on the movie screen and now on the tv screen). And for now, enjoying the peace and quiet. One of the best things about this apartment, deep in the heart of Southern Brooklyn, is that it is quiet.
I live just below and between Greenwood Cememtery and Prospect Park. I can walk to three subway lines, and four bus lines, not to mention the big cemetery (which is basically a lovely park with lots of old no...ancient tombstones. Some of them appear to date back to the 1700s), and the big park (second biggest next to Central Park -- it has a lake in the middle of it, along with a couple of forests, a zoo, a botanical gardens.) Also near restaurants and grocery stores. And the area is insanely diverse -- every country in the world appears to have been represented or at the very least every language. And there are lots of trees, flowers, bushes, and grass -- or more than usual. It's a nice hybrid between city and residential, neither one nor the other.
When people talk about how much they hate NYC or love it, they talk about a very small section of it. The streets below 60th leading to the Statue of Liberty, or Manhattan proper -- as the real estate agents and MTA like to call it -- in order to distinguish it from the upper west and east sides, Harlem, Washington Heights, etc.
They don't talk about Brooklyn, or Queens or the Bronx -- which are actually much larger than Manhattan and have more residents. Nor do they talk about Staten Island, which is considered it's own separate entity by everyone except the people who live there. They honestly think NYC is the areas between Rockerfeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, Empire State Building, Central Park and Times Square. They may make it up to the Met and the Museum Mile, or way down to the Statue of Liberty -- but that seems to be it's own separate entity. Or they'll walk Wall Street in Tribeca. But it's unlikely they'll venture much past those destinations. And in their heads, they will think this is the sum total of New York City.
It's not.
That's just where the tourists go.
The rest of us tend to avoid it, unless we are showing people around or have a really good reason to go there -- such as a Doctor's Appointment. Long Islanders call Manhattan (although mainly that section, since they are as bad as the tourists) -- "the City". "I'm going to the City." We all have gotten in the habit of calling Manhattan -- the City. Even when we are technically living in it -- except in a more distant, less frequented portion.
New York is one of those cities that you just keep rediscovering. You could have lived here your entire life and still never quite know it.
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Date: 2019-05-05 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-05 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-06 09:47 am (UTC)