Brooklyn Is Beautiful
Brooklyn is not beautiful in a physical sense.
Brooklyn is not beautiful for its buildings, standing shoulder to shoulder with faces made of tight brick. The buildings themselves are flat and thin, their windows mimicking their rectangular shape: the easiest, most compact shape, the shape that cities use to fit everything together; the rectangular houses of Brooklyn seem impersonal and dark save the occasional door painted red or the glimpse of a well-lit dining room in the evening.
Brooklyn is beautiful not because of these glamour-less outsides of buildings, but rather because of the curiosity they create about inside spaces. The lack of decadence in structure makes what may exist on the inside alluring; there could be light in there! Or modern furniture! Or plants! What may look like a factory building could be host to an underground gallery! A studio space! A "live-work" environment for some twenty somethings tossing paint around! The dismal apartment above the Mexican grocery on Grand Street could be a love nest for poor but happy newlyweds. The plain brown stone on Court may be warm in the winters.
Brooklyn is not beautiful for its landscape: the strange windings of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway or the parks fenced in with barbed wire and locked after dusk; the industrial rust at the water's edge or the screeching of Manhattan or Bushwick Avenues; the trains clamoring overhead on Broadway or the base of the bridge-its shadows making sad lines on the water. There is a general lack of flora and fauna, a strange melancholy in the unkept potted plants (the feeling that things cannot grow here?); piles of trash and the construction sites seem to grow and develop in place of any greenery. The landscape of Brooklyn provides no comforts, no escapes; it is hard and angular and must be adapted to, as a death in the family must be adapted to, or the sound of sirens.
Brooklyn is beautiful because it forces its inhabitant to create his own comforts. The constant battle with the city's angry aesthetic makes one determined to survive, and to survive well. Brooklynites become aware and cunning and cutting edge because of this; they are all figuring out ways to make their existence less brutal. It is amazing the way all of Brooklyn's metal and brick creates humans that love the delicacy of white candle light and the quaintness of a used bookshop. It is as if those in Brooklyn have built up a thick skin on their feet to protect from sharp objects, have grown painful bunions as a result, and have had since to buy dainty, beautiful shoes for comfort.
Brooklyn is not beautiful because its people are beautiful. The people here are tough and furious, lewd and demanding. They are brown and black and white and have facial hair and dirty clothes. They are rich and they are poor and they come out onto their stoops to yell things. (Why are people in Brooklyn always on stoops? And why are they always breaking open fire hydrants? These are stereotypes that I always thought of as jokes before I lived here - but people actually do these things, naturally and at all hours of the day, usually with a cigarette or a hot dog hanging from their mouth...) The people of Brooklyn are sexy and racy and ugly and pretty, but Brooklyn is not beautiful because its people are beautiful.
Brooklyn is beautiful because it is people that have made it work. It is people (ugly and racy and horrible and dreamy people) that have built Brooklyn, have moved to Brooklyn, have defended Brooklyn, destroyed parts of Brooklyn and rebuilt them again. It is people that have made Brooklyn about clashing identities and races and ideas- wars have happened here and fights and intrusions- and it is people that have co-existed despite these things- spoken Spanish and Polish and Portuguese and fifty other languages- lived in ghettos and penthouses and slept on the street- it is people that have made Brooklyn a personality rather than a place at all.
We do not live in Brooklyn because of things, but rather in spite of them. It offers us little in terms of natural beauty and therefore little in terms of peace of mind or happiness of heart. This means that living in Brooklyn is like a constant treasure hunt, and this is why we live here. We get to find the hidden beauties, hidden sparkles amongst the rubble. We are allowed to coo over the few blossoming trees on our block during springtime. We are astounded when we stumble upon restaurants and bars with good lighting that are tucked away in some deep crevice of an old building. We believe we have struck it rich when we land an apartment with a working faucet and a view of the dreary city. We delight in finding the perfect gem of a tee shirt in the five dollar pile at the thrift store on North 6th. We are elated to find people with golden hearts. We each create our own Brooklyn as we hunt; we each make our own trail and envision some figurative X at the end.
We learn through this treasure hunt that Brooklyn is indeed beautiful, and that this may be in large part due to the fact that it is actually not.
Brooklyn is not beautiful for its buildings, standing shoulder to shoulder with faces made of tight brick. The buildings themselves are flat and thin, their windows mimicking their rectangular shape: the easiest, most compact shape, the shape that cities use to fit everything together; the rectangular houses of Brooklyn seem impersonal and dark save the occasional door painted red or the glimpse of a well-lit dining room in the evening.
Brooklyn is beautiful not because of these glamour-less outsides of buildings, but rather because of the curiosity they create about inside spaces. The lack of decadence in structure makes what may exist on the inside alluring; there could be light in there! Or modern furniture! Or plants! What may look like a factory building could be host to an underground gallery! A studio space! A "live-work" environment for some twenty somethings tossing paint around! The dismal apartment above the Mexican grocery on Grand Street could be a love nest for poor but happy newlyweds. The plain brown stone on Court may be warm in the winters.
Brooklyn is not beautiful for its landscape: the strange windings of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway or the parks fenced in with barbed wire and locked after dusk; the industrial rust at the water's edge or the screeching of Manhattan or Bushwick Avenues; the trains clamoring overhead on Broadway or the base of the bridge-its shadows making sad lines on the water. There is a general lack of flora and fauna, a strange melancholy in the unkept potted plants (the feeling that things cannot grow here?); piles of trash and the construction sites seem to grow and develop in place of any greenery. The landscape of Brooklyn provides no comforts, no escapes; it is hard and angular and must be adapted to, as a death in the family must be adapted to, or the sound of sirens.
Brooklyn is beautiful because it forces its inhabitant to create his own comforts. The constant battle with the city's angry aesthetic makes one determined to survive, and to survive well. Brooklynites become aware and cunning and cutting edge because of this; they are all figuring out ways to make their existence less brutal. It is amazing the way all of Brooklyn's metal and brick creates humans that love the delicacy of white candle light and the quaintness of a used bookshop. It is as if those in Brooklyn have built up a thick skin on their feet to protect from sharp objects, have grown painful bunions as a result, and have had since to buy dainty, beautiful shoes for comfort.
Brooklyn is not beautiful because its people are beautiful. The people here are tough and furious, lewd and demanding. They are brown and black and white and have facial hair and dirty clothes. They are rich and they are poor and they come out onto their stoops to yell things. (Why are people in Brooklyn always on stoops? And why are they always breaking open fire hydrants? These are stereotypes that I always thought of as jokes before I lived here - but people actually do these things, naturally and at all hours of the day, usually with a cigarette or a hot dog hanging from their mouth...) The people of Brooklyn are sexy and racy and ugly and pretty, but Brooklyn is not beautiful because its people are beautiful.
Brooklyn is beautiful because it is people that have made it work. It is people (ugly and racy and horrible and dreamy people) that have built Brooklyn, have moved to Brooklyn, have defended Brooklyn, destroyed parts of Brooklyn and rebuilt them again. It is people that have made Brooklyn about clashing identities and races and ideas- wars have happened here and fights and intrusions- and it is people that have co-existed despite these things- spoken Spanish and Polish and Portuguese and fifty other languages- lived in ghettos and penthouses and slept on the street- it is people that have made Brooklyn a personality rather than a place at all.
We do not live in Brooklyn because of things, but rather in spite of them. It offers us little in terms of natural beauty and therefore little in terms of peace of mind or happiness of heart. This means that living in Brooklyn is like a constant treasure hunt, and this is why we live here. We get to find the hidden beauties, hidden sparkles amongst the rubble. We are allowed to coo over the few blossoming trees on our block during springtime. We are astounded when we stumble upon restaurants and bars with good lighting that are tucked away in some deep crevice of an old building. We believe we have struck it rich when we land an apartment with a working faucet and a view of the dreary city. We delight in finding the perfect gem of a tee shirt in the five dollar pile at the thrift store on North 6th. We are elated to find people with golden hearts. We each create our own Brooklyn as we hunt; we each make our own trail and envision some figurative X at the end.
We learn through this treasure hunt that Brooklyn is indeed beautiful, and that this may be in large part due to the fact that it is actually not.
One Bus Ride
Part One: A Hypothetical Scenario
On a bus towards the coast there are twelve passengers, coupled neatly in their window and aisle seats, bobbing like lanterns through the mountains towards the shore. On the bus there are three men coming from the city, moving towards their homes with sacks of food and flowers; these are older men from the mountains that hold the smell of their farms in their shirts and their mouths. Then there are five women, two from the coast and three from the near-coast, who cluck amongst themselves in a language that sounds like rain falling or the chopping of wood, a sound that is heard only on the side of the mountain that faces the shore. Otherwise the bus is full of foreigners, eager for the sea, toting beach satchels and wearing headphones or large sunglasses. Amongst these foreigners there are two French men, one in a striped shirt and one needing a cigarette, one woman from Pakistan who, in her prime, has fled to visit the world, and a woman from the innards of America where the cornfields and the silos are who wants a tan and a dark skinned lover because traveling allows her to feel promiscuous. There is also the bus driver, a skinny and joyous man by the name of Jones, who has a nervous twitch and a certain confidence for driving.
Half way through the journey, when the bus has nearly reached the highest shoulder of the mountain, the driver, although confident, has a nervous twitch and loses control of the steering of the bus. The whole chunk of metal and gas goes falling down the side of the mountain, tumbling down the sleeping body of the mountain, sliding over its arms and its hips and the ridges of its ribs, until the vehicle lands, upright, at the foot of the mountain and also at the foot of an enormous tree with expansive branches and hatched leaves like a palm. After the crash there is a serious calm, where nothing can be heard for miles.
There is only one death in the crash, which is the death of the American, and when the other twelve passengers and the bus driver peel themselves from the wreckage of the bus they proceed to bury her with the resolve of a dog with his bone and then they go about setting up camp. (There is no way of being found or rescued, and the passengers understand this, for the twelve of them and their driver are at the very pit of a valley between two outstanding peaks and their activity is covered by the canopy of the jungle and their smoke signals will be suppressed by the fog, so they accept their fate gracefully, with no attempt at begging either other humans or their various Gods for help.)
Within two or three weeks (the passengers are not sure exactly how much time has passed since the time passes very differently without surrounding civilization to hurry it) the passengers and the driver create a series of shelters, perched like ornaments in the enormous tree, that are made of strong bark and fronds and lit with fireflies they have captured and preserved in jars. Because each pod of the passengers speaks a different language, each begins to adopt parts of the others tongue, and soon a common sound emerges in the trees which involves the cluck of the coastal women like chopping wood, the basic boom of Spanish from the city, and the French men have brought a swish that reminds everyone of a broom on a wood floor (which sometimes makes them long for such sweeping and such floors as they have had in their lives before the crash). Once settled into their routines of finding food and communicating, the passengers begin to pair themselves off and reproduce: one French man (he has learned to find his own tobacco in the forest and roll it with the thin paper that peels from the maguey plant) with the Pakistani woman who is in her prime; a mountain man with a woman from the near-coast; the bus driver called Jones with one of the brown women from the beach, who shows him how to cut through a coconut, how to wake with the sun, and how to be still.
Part Two: Recommendations
My dear friend: you must catch the daily bus from the station that sits outside of Oaxaca City, that will take you over the mountains to the town of Pochutla. You must get on that bus with excitement for what is to come, and you must sit amongst those who are bringing goods from the city to the coast in boxes and crates and bags made of rice paper. (Their goods will smell like earth and dirt, their bundles of flowers will tickle your legs, and their language may be difficult to understand, but these minor discomforts will be forgotten as you begin to see the scenery change.) You must pay close attention, friend, to the way the land rises and falls on this journey, to the shift from browns and greys of the city to the electric greens of the jungle. You must note the flora and fauna that emerge as you ascend these mountains, for I assure you, you have never seen such a place as this. Have you ever seen sunflowers so tall as trees? Or yellow butterflies in packs of fifteen or twenty? Have you seen the way a waterfall acts when no one pays attention to it? Like freedom? Have you been so lucky as to be surrounded by an environment such as the one I am describing, dear friend?
You must also watch the sides of the road for pastoral dramas, for they happen fleetingly but with frequency on roads that lead through mountains such as these. You must try to catch the quarrels between goats and dogs and the territorial battles of certain hens. You must conjure a pain in your heart for the women that wait on the sides of the road for their husbands that are expected to get off of the bus you are on, but do not. You must also contrive a sense of calm when the bus jolts jarringly towards the edge of the road; the traveler should know that whatever happens happens, and don´t worry my friend, you are safe.
When you get to the rest stop at the top of the mountain, be sure to try the quesadillas from the hearty woman in the red apron. They are made well and taste perfect at such an altitude.
Descending the mountain, my friend, is another story. You will feel the fog coming and bits of rain, and you must keep a level head. At times you will not be able to see a foot in any direction, for the thickness of this fog. You should think about your mother at this point in the journey, and how she used to make you cream of wheat. This will settle your nerves.
At the bottom of the mountain the sunflowers will return, along with certain purple flowers that will make your soul sing. From here you will have just enough time to think about all of your past lovers and how they made you feel, before you get to Pochutla where you will need to address the more immediate circumstances of traveling. You will get to Pochutla where you will feel overwhelmed by the sounds and actions that are going on in the street, but you will simply need to hire a truck for a few pesos to take you to Mezunte, your final destination. You will find conversation with the women that nurse their babies alongside you in the truck, and you will start to smell salt.
My friend! You have made it! You have at this point arrived at the seashore, which so many think of as paradise. You deserve something now, after all of this traveling. A beer, my friend? Or something a bit more tropical? A mai tai, perhaps? You must rent a hammock for the evening and from there go on to meet the people of the beach: you will meet the man from Argentina with his thick sounding L´s, and the drunk local girl who falls often in the sand. And then just let yourself relax, dear one, for none of the problems of home exist here on the beach and you must be tired from all of this traveling, love. Lie down In your hammock and have a forgetful sleep.
Part Three: The Realities of Ground Travel
The man next to me snores like a hippopotamus in the mud and the whole bus smells like the live turkeys that have been sneaked into the bottom compartment by a nervous woman with a flap of skin under her chin that is not unlike those worn by her barking birds.
It is a long ride over the mountains.
On a bus towards the coast there are twelve passengers, coupled neatly in their window and aisle seats, bobbing like lanterns through the mountains towards the shore. On the bus there are three men coming from the city, moving towards their homes with sacks of food and flowers; these are older men from the mountains that hold the smell of their farms in their shirts and their mouths. Then there are five women, two from the coast and three from the near-coast, who cluck amongst themselves in a language that sounds like rain falling or the chopping of wood, a sound that is heard only on the side of the mountain that faces the shore. Otherwise the bus is full of foreigners, eager for the sea, toting beach satchels and wearing headphones or large sunglasses. Amongst these foreigners there are two French men, one in a striped shirt and one needing a cigarette, one woman from Pakistan who, in her prime, has fled to visit the world, and a woman from the innards of America where the cornfields and the silos are who wants a tan and a dark skinned lover because traveling allows her to feel promiscuous. There is also the bus driver, a skinny and joyous man by the name of Jones, who has a nervous twitch and a certain confidence for driving.
Half way through the journey, when the bus has nearly reached the highest shoulder of the mountain, the driver, although confident, has a nervous twitch and loses control of the steering of the bus. The whole chunk of metal and gas goes falling down the side of the mountain, tumbling down the sleeping body of the mountain, sliding over its arms and its hips and the ridges of its ribs, until the vehicle lands, upright, at the foot of the mountain and also at the foot of an enormous tree with expansive branches and hatched leaves like a palm. After the crash there is a serious calm, where nothing can be heard for miles.
There is only one death in the crash, which is the death of the American, and when the other twelve passengers and the bus driver peel themselves from the wreckage of the bus they proceed to bury her with the resolve of a dog with his bone and then they go about setting up camp. (There is no way of being found or rescued, and the passengers understand this, for the twelve of them and their driver are at the very pit of a valley between two outstanding peaks and their activity is covered by the canopy of the jungle and their smoke signals will be suppressed by the fog, so they accept their fate gracefully, with no attempt at begging either other humans or their various Gods for help.)
Within two or three weeks (the passengers are not sure exactly how much time has passed since the time passes very differently without surrounding civilization to hurry it) the passengers and the driver create a series of shelters, perched like ornaments in the enormous tree, that are made of strong bark and fronds and lit with fireflies they have captured and preserved in jars. Because each pod of the passengers speaks a different language, each begins to adopt parts of the others tongue, and soon a common sound emerges in the trees which involves the cluck of the coastal women like chopping wood, the basic boom of Spanish from the city, and the French men have brought a swish that reminds everyone of a broom on a wood floor (which sometimes makes them long for such sweeping and such floors as they have had in their lives before the crash). Once settled into their routines of finding food and communicating, the passengers begin to pair themselves off and reproduce: one French man (he has learned to find his own tobacco in the forest and roll it with the thin paper that peels from the maguey plant) with the Pakistani woman who is in her prime; a mountain man with a woman from the near-coast; the bus driver called Jones with one of the brown women from the beach, who shows him how to cut through a coconut, how to wake with the sun, and how to be still.
Part Two: Recommendations
My dear friend: you must catch the daily bus from the station that sits outside of Oaxaca City, that will take you over the mountains to the town of Pochutla. You must get on that bus with excitement for what is to come, and you must sit amongst those who are bringing goods from the city to the coast in boxes and crates and bags made of rice paper. (Their goods will smell like earth and dirt, their bundles of flowers will tickle your legs, and their language may be difficult to understand, but these minor discomforts will be forgotten as you begin to see the scenery change.) You must pay close attention, friend, to the way the land rises and falls on this journey, to the shift from browns and greys of the city to the electric greens of the jungle. You must note the flora and fauna that emerge as you ascend these mountains, for I assure you, you have never seen such a place as this. Have you ever seen sunflowers so tall as trees? Or yellow butterflies in packs of fifteen or twenty? Have you seen the way a waterfall acts when no one pays attention to it? Like freedom? Have you been so lucky as to be surrounded by an environment such as the one I am describing, dear friend?
You must also watch the sides of the road for pastoral dramas, for they happen fleetingly but with frequency on roads that lead through mountains such as these. You must try to catch the quarrels between goats and dogs and the territorial battles of certain hens. You must conjure a pain in your heart for the women that wait on the sides of the road for their husbands that are expected to get off of the bus you are on, but do not. You must also contrive a sense of calm when the bus jolts jarringly towards the edge of the road; the traveler should know that whatever happens happens, and don´t worry my friend, you are safe.
When you get to the rest stop at the top of the mountain, be sure to try the quesadillas from the hearty woman in the red apron. They are made well and taste perfect at such an altitude.
Descending the mountain, my friend, is another story. You will feel the fog coming and bits of rain, and you must keep a level head. At times you will not be able to see a foot in any direction, for the thickness of this fog. You should think about your mother at this point in the journey, and how she used to make you cream of wheat. This will settle your nerves.
At the bottom of the mountain the sunflowers will return, along with certain purple flowers that will make your soul sing. From here you will have just enough time to think about all of your past lovers and how they made you feel, before you get to Pochutla where you will need to address the more immediate circumstances of traveling. You will get to Pochutla where you will feel overwhelmed by the sounds and actions that are going on in the street, but you will simply need to hire a truck for a few pesos to take you to Mezunte, your final destination. You will find conversation with the women that nurse their babies alongside you in the truck, and you will start to smell salt.
My friend! You have made it! You have at this point arrived at the seashore, which so many think of as paradise. You deserve something now, after all of this traveling. A beer, my friend? Or something a bit more tropical? A mai tai, perhaps? You must rent a hammock for the evening and from there go on to meet the people of the beach: you will meet the man from Argentina with his thick sounding L´s, and the drunk local girl who falls often in the sand. And then just let yourself relax, dear one, for none of the problems of home exist here on the beach and you must be tired from all of this traveling, love. Lie down In your hammock and have a forgetful sleep.
Part Three: The Realities of Ground Travel
The man next to me snores like a hippopotamus in the mud and the whole bus smells like the live turkeys that have been sneaked into the bottom compartment by a nervous woman with a flap of skin under her chin that is not unlike those worn by her barking birds.
It is a long ride over the mountains.
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