Maine: A Haiku

rain poured down on us

so we poured beer down our throats

and cooked with wet wood

Night:

When I breathe, eat, talk, forget, remember, and sleep.

I breathe the crisp, welcoming, familiar Brooklyn air, swirling with bits of student laughter and Starbucks wafts, wind from behind bicycles and sighs from the swaying ginko trees.

I eat immediately. Vegetables and carbs, full cartons of baby tomatoes, quesadillas stuffed with sharp cheddar and red pepper and chicken-less chicken. Briegorgonzolaparmeseancreamcheese. Carrot ginger soup and chili, avocados, gazpacho and take-out sushi. A glass of pinot and a few episodes of This American Life.

I talk to whomever is on my mind: Nina, Dad, Hannah, aunts, uncles, old friends, new lovers, new friends, old lovers, from all ends and stretches of my mind, via all forms of communication.

I forget, or try to forget, the emails and the invoices and the contracts and the lists and the meetings. The banter and the formalities and the one-two-three of the day.

I remember everything else. For 6 hours at the end of it all I remember - and finally, I am beginning to be here, and make things worth remembering: plays, cafes, Scrabble in the park, concerts, commiseration over pints, and dancing.

Queens

As I sat in the cab outside the FedEx warehouse in Queens the other night I was pleasantly reminded of the movie Castaway.  Except in the movie, Tom Hanks' character stands in a Russian FedEx warehouse.  The area of Queens I was in, a flat, vast spread of warehouse upon warehouse, factory after factory.  Lauren says the area we were in is what runs New York City.  Water, electricity, etc... She had to go to the FedEx to pick up some concert tickets for a concert she wasn't even going to go to, and I waited in the cab with Aziz, the Turkish cab driver.  We sat in silence for about five minutes while I pretended I was busy playing with my phone.  He took a cat nap, and woke up suddenly, turning around abruptly to ask me if I wanted to listen to music.  I told him I hadn't lived here long enough to know any radio stations, and he told me he could tell I like the Beatles.  I do.  He flipped the dial and "Paperback Writer" played loudly from the back seat speakers.  After that, a commercial came on and Aziz turned the volume down, and turned abruptly to me once again.  He asked where I came from, why I was here, and where I live in New York.  After answering each question in turn, I asked him the same.  His family lives in Istanbul and he moved here for an American woman he fell in love with while she was studying at the University near where his parents lived.  He doesn't want kids, thinks Queens is the closest thing to heaven, and told me how the cab business works.  He simply pays rent on the car, $628 per week, and the money he makes after that, is all his.  He claims that he makes quite a bit of money, and I would imagine that if he drives around in the right areas of Manhattan, tips probably can be rather lucrative.  Maybe if publishing falls through...