A romanticization of a Saturday morning
I sit on the barstool of the diner, sipping my too-milky iced latte in anticipation of the pancakes that are about to arrive. Across from me, I gaze at the shelves of liquor that have a seemingly crass presence, and below, a hot griddle left unattended. It’s eight AM, but I dragged my best friend out of bed to accompany me in getting these pancakes because it’s rare that I find myself in Brooklyn on a weekend morning.
The weather outside is rainy and quite cold. All I have is a tank top, cardigan, and leather jacket to keep me warm, but I’m consoled by the fact that at least I’ll look “cool”. Our journey to the diner is a brisk and noiseless one as we remain in a half-asleep morning daze, letting our bodies’ muscle memory take us where we need to be. When the pancakes arrive we politely scarf down the plate and are left staring at a pool of maple syrup reflecting the ceiling lights up at us.
I go on a walk around the block of the neighborhood when we part our separate ways. I feel like Christine in Lady Bird when she comes to New York for the first time. It’s so ridiculous to admit that I feel like this, but Brooklyn really is detached from the New York reality I know, even though the East River is the only separation between these two objectively same realities. A part of me likes to wander and let myself be unfamiliar with this side of the city. There is so much left to explore, I don't even know half of the place I call my home.
As my promenade comes to a quick end because I don’t want to venture too far, losing my direction and general itinerary (who knows where I’ll end up if I just keep going), I come to a street sign that I recognize in the book I’m currently reading. Just Kids by Patti Smith, that is. In the early parts of the memoir she mentions a “short walk to the diner, the phone booth, Jake’s art supply store, where St. James Place began.” Though I’m not sure which part of St. James Place she describes here, I found the whole state of affairs a timely coincidence. Walking through a New York narrated by her was seeing everything through a pair of binoculars magnified by the past. How much has changed on this one street between what I’m reading on page forty-three to what I’m writing now?
Eventually, I find myself on the L train. I can always tell that I’m traveling from borough to borough when I feel pressure on my ears because that’s when I know I’m deep underground. The train is fairly packed but not in a suffocating way. And everyone has enough space to remain in the spheres of their own world as we share this five-minute expedition, shuttling through the rat tunnels of our beloved city.
