Just Like Starting Over
Well, I’m back in Brooklyn, at least for the weekend. Drove back with my dad, unpacked all my shit, and took a seat on the futon.
It’s weird, being back, for a number of reasons. First, I was crossing tenth street a bunch of times, pretending to help Steve and my dad move chairs (new additions to the apartment) from the car. There was a cop blaring his horn and a subsequent traffic jam, and then when the bottleneck broke, cars charging down my block.
I’m still really sore and slow moving, and so, standing in the middle of the street, I had a faint feeling that, oh shit, they could hit me. Because to those drivers, I was just some asshole kid standing in the street, asking to get slammed by traffic. No one was gonna slow down out of deference to my injuries, because no one had any idea that I was fresh out of heart surgery.
New York’s a nonstop, fast moving place, and I’m just talking Park Slope, Brooklyn right now. If I go into Manhattan, wandering the streets, I might as well put a bull’s eye on my chest (well, beyond the one already there). Recovery is slow, but the world isn’t, and it doesn’t know or care about whatever it is you just went through, because they’ve got places to be and maybe even relatives to visit who are undergoing heart surgery of their own, except it’s life threatening and fuck you, get out of the street, kid.
On the other hand, it almost feels like nothing ever happened (if I ignore the feeling in my chest, of course). I suffered in the hospital and in Westfield, but I never felt pain or soreness here in Brooklyn, in this apartment. This place is clean of any of those memories and associations, and if I avoid the screaming cars, I at least feel kinda normal here.
Unfortunately, that normalcy includes having to go buy groceries myself. And because I have nothing but the gift cookies I’ve been working on and the exhaust of cereal boxes I didn’t finish before I left, I really need to venture out, carefully avoiding the traffic, to get some food.
And so the monotony begins again, no matter where I am.
Notes
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