Friday, 30 April 2004 | Different city

I like it when:

... restaurants and bars open their doors and windows impossibly wide, like they're giving birth to springtime.

... Union Square fills with people simultaneously doing different things—singing, yelling about the president, riding skateboards, breakdancing, playing guitars, sitting, eating, and watching. (I was watching, wishing there was a way to consume it, and wanting you, dear reader, to be there too, because words don't often work so well.)

... the pet store beneath my apartment lets the macaws out of their cages and out onto the sidewalk. They look and move like something I would never imagine, had they not already existed. I'm told they're smart, which, for some reason, makes me want to communicate with them. I quietly say hello, they stare at me and bouncily creep across the top of their cage as if they're sneaking away. If I put my hand near their bright blue tails, they bark out a warning—they've communicated. I like them. They make me forget that I was once mad at that pet store.

... I walk within five blocks of my apartment and am immersed in three entirely different cultures. In the first, the children stare at me as if I've got two heads. They stop whatever it is that they're doing, and they clear the sidewalk while I walk past. I can almost feel their eyes burning into me; they aren't at all covert. In the second, the kids don't see me; to them, I am an adult, or perhaps merely an object to be run around. Sometimes they run right into me, step to the side, and keep on going, their eyes focused straight ahead. In the third, there are no kids at all.

... old Puerto Rican men sit across the street from my apartment and play chess. When there's one, there's a pack of them, hovering over the board, laughing and talking, their skin brown and creased around the corners of their eyes. Sun hats and canes.

... there is so much going on that it's impossible to choose. I think it's made me more accepting of not being able to do everything all the time. Sometimes it's clear what activities I should sacrifice; other times, I'm forced to choose like a drunk with a gun.

... the trees on my street fill with tiny white flowers, whose round petals decorate the sidewalks like hole-puncher debris. The first time I noticed them, I wasn't sure if they were trash or part of nature.

... my bike becomes a transportation option, and I don't just use it to get from A to B, but to explore. Sometimes Brooklyn feels endless, as if it took over the rest of the planet with itself, and I just didn't notice because I was already inside of it.

It's a different city in the spring.