A Tourist Strays in Brooklyn

After I wrote my last post, I researched bus and subway routes, and even if one only looks at Brooklyn they are terribly confusing (one-way streets, etc.), a Gordian knot that cannot be cut except by the medium of the car, and even then the car routes are probably likewise labyrinthine. There are little curling bus routes, but they are localized and do not run in one long, satisfactory stretch. Or maybe the stretches are long but look short given the vast proportions of the map.

At any rate, after a moment of despair I figured that this would be a perfect opportunity to learn not to be a wimp where public transit is concerned. So I found one simple bus route down to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and took it (a fare for two hours, is $2.00 unless one is a student or something). The buses here are not accordion-like but broad; the doors can only be swung open outward with a great deal of effort. I rode along a street full of old brick apartment buildings, classicist or very restrainedly Baroque in their flourishes, spare and simple but tinted in glass green or pale senna or the customary brick red. The fire escapes were a delicate filigree. Some of the buildings were really ramshackle, others were in fine trim. So I felt that I had seen a quite satisfactory wedge of the real New York. But of course it is a poor region. There are mostly African-Americans of all ages along the sidewalks, in runners and hoodies and so on, a bustling community in one way, but not very lively because bored and impoverished. No one was rapping away or breakdancing on the sidewalks, and I don't remember even seeing anyone swaggering about decked out festively in bling. The small shops (a notice on one of them said that food stamps were accepted there) are interspersed with little latter-20th-century religious edifices like the "Church of God" (isn't that redundant?). As for the cars, there is an immense variety, but the majority are shiny new and not matte older models, and many are also SUVs or minivans.

I stepped out at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, where admittance is free during weekdays in winter. There was a security booth at the front entrance, and a bored soul tenanted it, but the door was wide open. At first there was a children's garden which did not impress me much, as it struck me as an amalgamation of all the cutesy gardens (gnomes, grinning suns, etc.) that I have ever seen, rendered unsettling in the contrast of its artificial cheer and the weeping dead grasses, leafless trees, etc. But shortly there came the first trees, catawbas and the biggest gingko biloba I have ever seen, oaks (an avenue of them was planted to commemorate Sept. 11th, which is evidently still quite present, as are American flags at schools, buses, and the train I took yesterday), and swathes of green lawn. The plants are marked with touching accuracy, in the form of little black signs. Then there were monuments of a Victorian sensibility, a sparse neoclassical building that housed the visitor's centre and gift shop, great sea-green domes of glass in which the tropical plants flourish, a rose garden (rose-less at present, of course), and a "cherry esplanade."

After gazing at the Brooklyn Museum, a vast edifice that rivals London's National Gallery in pomp, I made my way to Prospect Park, where joggers and people walking their dogs passed me, and children shrieked at the zoo, and everyone shrieked in the ice rink at the lake. The lake itself, the biggest one in the park, is hauntingly impressive if you ignore the modern buildings, or any buildings, and just watch the grey squirrels, hear the birds twitter, and look out on the swampy expanse with the islands of barren willow and other trees, the cattails, etc., imagining that this is the way the area might have looked when the first European explorers arrived. I also enjoyed the busts of Irving (, Washington?), Beethoven and Mozart, which were proudly perched on top of pillars above the ice rink. But I often heard police car sirens in the background, which did not make me less queasy about the city. Also, whenever the bank of the lake was accessible from the path, there was a red ladder ready to rescue anyone who ventures out onto thin ice, and warning signs to prevent someone from doing that in the first place. At one point a cyclist was passing me when I looked up, and he said, surprisingly in a way that did not sound corny (though, as I type it, it is of course kitschy) or creepy at all, "Hi, you are very beautiful, for Christmas and forever." -- and he cycled on. Very random.

As I walked, then, getting lost and worried (but not too worried), I then philosophized about my trip. The idea of living in a neighborhood where rents are cheaper, regardless of how unsafe it is, has been knocked out of my head once and for all. I don't believe in fearing and shunning everyone, just because there are a couple hoodlums about, and I've concluded that there are bad, good, and indifferent people to be found everywhere -- only in the city there are more of them. But it is not respectful to parade into a neighborhood that is governed by a code that I do not understand, and not fair to myself or anyone else to parade about like a sitting duck with a target painted on its back. Going out alone is very ill-advised; I should either have friends here first or live together with somebody. Still, being too attractive doesn't worry me in the least, as I doubt that I approach the common North American standards of beauty, and I have no intention to wear the make-up, shinier hair, or tighter clothes that would be required. But it is too easy to get lost; even staying in the bus does not work if I have to change buses, and then wait for fifteen minutes, on my own, at a half or wholly empty station in the middle of nowhere. There are no maps in the bus shelters, only diagrams of the route of the specific bus line, it is hard to tell which bus stop is coming up, and altogether it is impossible to get anywhere without a map (whether on paper or in one's head). Even if I am capable of learning the rules, I am helpless until I do. My sense is that most New Yorkers, even, tend to move in small radii within their city, especially if they are poorer.

Maybe I will still move here, and procure work as a translator for German into English, for instance, but before renting an apartment I would find out all I can about the surroundings first. It's not a hoity-toity desire to be removed from the hoi polloi, but common sense. I also do not want to be around people who are prone to hoodwinking others; not because of its inconvenience to me so much as that I find the unkindness and the unworthy victimization of the weak saddening. If I had known what awaited me here, I might not have come now. But, as it is, this is immensely interesting, and challenging, and I like that pretty much everyone here is genuine. If I must conduct fencing-matches with others, it is so much more straightforward if they are straightforward (if one can read character well). Besides, it is proving to me that, as I suspected, I do have much force of character now, and that is what is crucial.

At any rate, the length of my post bears an inverse ratio to the breadth of my experience here, so I guess I'd better desist. What does bother me is that I haven't eaten or drunk anything since yesterday evening, though a chocolate bar from the plane is still waiting to be consumed. Also that I have very little American cash. Gallivanting off to JFK again is something I don't want to do after the experience of yesterday, so hopefully there will be a location in Manhattan where I can change money. More snow, by the way!