Trees Grow in Brooklyn

Brooklyn is to be loved, and more than Manhattan. It's strange and mysterious. Finding my way in Brooklyn brings with it the confusion of streets not parallel which cross each other often, like solemn nuns.

It's as if pick-up sticks had been thrown and their random design used as a template. When I moved to New York and scheduled a date in Brooklyn I knew I'd be lucky to show up at the right place at all.

Before living here I was in Seattle across and over and down and up which I walked so that within months I knew my way. And before that I lived in L.A. which--I contend--I know so well I knew back alleys and cul-de-sacs across its extensive length and breadth. But Manhattan took a few years and I'm still figuring out Brooklyn.

That said, I believe I am at an all time personal best for visits to Brooklyn in one week. For me that's four--three readings and one party.

Sarah Sarai is all about Brooklyn.

The beauty is the beauty. One reading happens in a shop's backyard, and next door there's a green and tended garden. Blue skies, endless variations of breeze--on-leaves and the garden. Plus poetry.

Saturday night I was at a supper party. Our hostess moved us to the backyard where her neighbor had recently set up a table. On either side trees and the unkempt greenery I think of as true Americana. The moon, wine, good people with active minds. the neighborhood modest.

Real people CAN still find places to live in Brooklyn, but I wonder for how much longer. It's freaking hard in Manhattan (I'm hanging on my the skin of nails of my teeth). Anyway, I'm rambling.

Which is not a bad thing to do in Brooklyn.

So I read and exposed myself and did it in the name of poetry.

During my party years I'd talk with a girlfriend the day after; we do the autopsy. Man, it was fun.

We'd reinvent the previous evening with all its glitter and silliness, or disappointments. Our nervous energy dissolved as we dished.

I have residual nervous energy about my poetry reading last night at Bluestockings Bookstore. I may be more girl reporter here than medical examiner, but what the hey.

Vittoria Reppetto, who has run this series (see previous post) for years and contentedly bills herself as the hardest working guinea, butch dyke on the lower east side, was her usual warm and business-like self. Vittoria is a native of the Village--Cornelia Street--which makes her vintage and landmarked. An authentic New Yorker.

The audience was young, really sweet and so attentive. I forget about that, the generosity of the audience. I'm a total stranger to many of them and yet they sit in metal folding chairs and give me their full attention. It feels like a sacred but not solemn rite and homage to poetry and art.

Adrienne Baldasandro, my co-feature, read with the intensity of outrage; on gender, sexuality, preference; on kids and young adults at-risk because of same. She was intense and gripping.

And I was me, a strong reader with good poems, always a little unsure of myself and yet confident. I love being up there, but there's more to it, which may be the mystery of the sacred rite and the fact of laundry after enlightenment.

When an audience is so attentive and generous, parts of me are inevitably exposed whether or not I'm aware. So I read and exposed myself and did it in the name of poetry.