woodpecker

Another "It's spring and I'm excited" post - I saw a woodpecker doing his thing in McCarren Park this morning. Go Brooklyn wildlife!

hills

Today I repeatedly imagined I saw hills & mountains in the distance, between buildings, at the ends of streets. I'd never realized how flat New York is, or how the real point of the Wienerwald around Vienna (besides supplying firewood) is to make city-dwellers conscious of the geography beyond the city. Here there is no beyond, really - we're on a couple of islands filled to the brim with city; it's impossible to get off. Even when you do leave the city, it doesn't seem like a geographical journey, in the sense of stead progression from one place to the next. Even driving in, one suddenly arrives, lands, as though by plane. There is no stitching between the city and its surroundings, no ties, no reminders visible or otherwise that life exists beyond these islands. And it doesn't, really, at least not to any degree of importance :-)

Spring!

First warm weekend of the year, the hipsters were out full force in McCarren park - just like any campus green, just without the jocks, and plus some Polish drunks.

So, apparently I've made it through a New York Winter, which barely registered. 4 months really isn't that long a time, I suppose, so I suppose it's alright that not much has changed. I don't buy this steady gradual change thing - it's either all one fell swoop, or rut. Here it's been rut. A not unpleasant rut, but cabin fever is setting in now and I'm dreaming of warm beaches and foreign tongues, inaccessible to those without vacation. So instead I make strange intense chocolate chip cookies with too much salt.