Originally, I had planned on reading a new story at my event last Sunday but it didn’t work out. Mostly because what I had written of this story was only about three paragraphs long. C’est la vie!
However, I figured I owe my audience at least a glimpse of it, seeing as I hyped it up so much in last week’s post. It doesn’t have a title, isn’t doing anything and is extremely raw, but here it is; kind of like seeing genius-in-progress:
Walking along Eighth Avenue always makes you feel like a nothing. You skim over the refinished brownstones with their neatly manicured front “yards” and hope that it’s not a one-family dwelling, that six tenants share that stoop and give the illusion that their individual, over-priced apartments are the same as living in an entire brownstone by themselves. Some houses have six buzzers attached to the outer doors and that makes you smile. That gives you hope to one day be one of those tenants who can pose as homeowners on the stoop of a brownstone…
…Eighth Avenue is tree-lined, providing shade to all the posh stoops you long to occupy. Your own block—in a dusty, semi-industrial section off of Fort Hamilton Parkway—is relentlessly sunny at all times. 36th Street offers no place to hide from your unhappiness. The bright heat puts a spotlight on your block, yelling “Hey, Ramona, you’ll always be poor!”
On my way home, I rarely walk down Eighth Avenue in Park Slope, but when I do my eyes get wide and covet. Not that my neighborhood is akin to Compton, or even East New York, in it’s depression or displays of poverty–there are quite a few homeowners and beautiful structures (adorned by shrubs and trees and flowers) on my block. Still, they’re not brownstones. And isn’t that every Brooklynites dream?
I’m not sure where this is going, but there’s a story on Fort Hamilton Parkway and it’s surrounding southwest Brooklyn region, somewhere. I’m sure of it. I haven’t lived over here all these years for nothing!
xoxo,
Raquel Ivelisse