BROOKLYN II (maybe rough)

I was wrong to say Brooklyn was boring. The idea of a flood is still interesting - it always is. I have seen more of Brooklyn now and I have not been shocked. Things have happened that have been exciting. They have been small things though. One of them was going to Flatbush Avenue to rent DVDs. Flatbush avenue has more apartment buildings. Some of them are nice and some have graffiti on them and don't look that nice. They have ugly steel doors and signs on the front of them that say, 'no gambling or playing dice, no loitering.' People acting rude in the grocery store and not acknowledging each other's presence by moving out of the way when someone needed to get between aisles have vacant looks in their eyes. There were no white people on Flatbush and I wasn't afraid. I was afraid of me because I was the only white person, what did they think of me? When I was in Blockbuster I felt safe, except for a dog that a couple had on a leash. The dog lurched at me with its lips stretched back, showing it's teeth and salivating mouth. I rented horror movies and rode my skateboard home. The ride was about a mile and a half. It didn't go that fast because the sidewalks are divided by large cracks and the roads are too narrow for both cars and myself.

On certain days of the week I am woken up by a very loud garbage truck. This happens hours before I need to wake up. On Thursday nights a man slowly goes through all of the recycling cans on our street, making very loud noises with the bottles and cans. I can hear conversations coming from apartments next door or downstairs very clearly. This make me nervous. What do they hear of my life?

The one time I have gone out, locally, in Brooklyn, I heard a story about a liquor from China or somewhere that had a cobra (hood extended) inside the bottle. The drink was very potent. Most of the people in this bar smoked. You are not aloud to smoke in bars in New York. Apparently, the usual bartender, who wasn't there, touts a rifle, stroking it between his drink orders.

Traveling has also been an inconvenience. On three or four nights of one particular week, it took me two hours to get home. The trains have a tendency of not showing up and you feel like you are trapped in a dungeon. If you fall asleep you might end up on the ground with things missing from your pockets or your bag. Out of inexperience I have been to parts of Brooklyn I never intended to go, although, only underground. All I wanted to do was get to my bed and lay in it, turn on my water in my bathroom, open my refrigerator, turn on my computer.

The cable guy, who came yesterday, was also disturbing. He didn't look disturbing and he was nice, and the way he talked made me feel comfortable. After him being there for ten minutes I noticed what was awkward and disturbing about him. He was very sloppy with his work. He clipped cables and sent shards of the wires flying. He tossed the old cables aside and they stayed there until after he left. The things he did and the places he went in the apartment seemed to turn up dust. He tripped over every chair, and when he made the turns through the hallways, he seemed to lose his balance and knock into the doors and walls and door frames. He called the woman who he talked to at his headquarters 'sweetheart' and he sat on my roommate's bed while he worked with something on the remote. When he left, everything worked, but I had to clean up after him. The result of this was that I have a stable internet connection. Before, I had been stealing wireless signals that seemed to blow away with the wind.

The internet has become a big deal recently. It stages major interactions between people of valuable friendship. Months go by and the internet harbors my most significant expressions. I use the internet at work for most of my eight hours. My increased time with the internet has distilled things out of my mind. I have spoken things and had ideas I feel I would not have had otherwise. These things are opinions, beliefs, ideals etc. that I don't considered correctly labeled by those words, but will probably be attached to them from a further vantage point or a later date in time. I have been recounting things very literally on the internet. It is not like I have had large complex ideas that the internet helps me 'boil down' or ascertain. There are just many small comments, pleasure, conversations, and 'lessons' that take place. I am not sure what the exact tendencies or what the existential nature of the internet is that induces this hitherto unknown honesty about things. I seem to run into conflict about things that I like or things that I, and I alone, am interested in. When there is someone interested in what I am interested in, then I usually discover, after a time, that there are different things that this person does like that I don't and our assimilation ends there. It does not make me completely unique to like a certain book on GoodReads, for instance, but it does make me an individual to like certain books and dislike others, until I have a unique character of books that is completely unlike anyone else's. This 'cloud' of the internet has seemed to accumulate since I've lived in Brooklyn; although, I am not sure it began here, and I am not sure it matters that I am here, exactly, for it to have formed.

At times my brain feels completely sure of itself. It sees where things are going to end up before they get there. Other times, it feels confused, as if it has changed drastically from what it originally was. I like certain things that I didn't like before and if someone doesn't like the same thing, I think how easily I could have been that person and lived in a different place like them and ended up liking the things they like. This is all due to the internet, which has accumulated it's large cloud in Brooklyn, and has become the opposite of boring. However, the things I like become less significant. Logically - this has nothing to do with how my brain has changed - I discover that I need to like things only on a particular level. I like a certain book by Lydia Davis because it is written with very clear sentences. Most books are written with clear and consistent sentences otherwise, but this book talked about life and the things she was experiencing in a way that I think were very appropriate for the sentences. Having read the book, I'm not sure I like to think in similar sentences since I've read this book or if that's the best way to process life. If it's the first reason, then sometimes I am annoyed I think that I am a person that likes books at all and feel confused by people who really like baseball or working in television because that seems cooler. However, what I do like about baseball and people who work in television are the interesting sentences that they sometimes say. So, I think it is just that I like language at this point and I'd like to improve at using it. The level at which I like things is in it's relationship to language. If something is sustainable in it's language - I know this reasoning is not 'sustainable' in it's singular existence in this paragraph alone - then I like it. This is all due to the part of Brooklyn that is not boring to me.

Since I have been able to choose things that are more like me, because of the internet, I end up choosing things that other people who like language in a way that I do. This may change at some point. It will probably change if I move or am in a serious relationship or get a different job or the environment changes drastically. Having chosen these things, I have created myself in a way that is different from what I was just a few month before, which was a person different from a few months before that. I write as if I have read these things that I 'like'. This effects my everyday life too, the way I talk to people, the thoughts I have that make me happy or sad or whatever. I have put myself inside of myself. I am becoming myself more completely, distilling. This is very interesting for me. I ostentatiously relate this to a city being flooded, so that I'm not getting off on just myself - could happen to everyone that lives in a place with a name.