Brooklyn Birds

Birds. There are a lot of birds here and every morning there's a relentless cacophony of bird talk. Today they seem to be resting, but other mornings the sound is incredible.

Our plan today is not set. We discussed going to Coney Island or maybe we'll return to Manhattan. Or maybe we'll do nothing and just sit around here like lumps on a log. It's good to have my friends here.

More later.

We ate breakfast at a local diner and then we spent the morning at Coney Island walking the decrepit boardwalk and along the edge of the surf. The air was cool in the hollow where the surf touches the sand and fifty yards in the hot dry sand from the water, opressive heat bore down on us. We talked to some attractive NYPD officers to get a reference to L & B Spumoni's where we ate (a highly recommended) lunch.

After a subway ride to the apartment and a brief rest, Tristan and Jim left and I fell sound asleep watching golf for a late afternoon nap. This usually is a curse to staying awake until 2:00 AM that I dread.

After I woke, I hijacked some Internet time, wrote some e-mails, and craved some sweets. I ordered a framed print from Yale Framing and the time that I knew would arrive did. I'm sitting here bored and lonely. It's too early to sleep. The hustle of the City doesn't appeal to me as much as being able to lay in New Hampshire in some relatives couch napping, talking, or watching some television. Or maybe wandering around my yard, watching my chickens, or playing with my cats.

I could work tonight by researching the Yale Framing marketing problems, or trying to sell the levelling devices, or doing some volunteer stuff for AYSO. But that requires me to walk to the Internet cafe because I no longer detect my friendly neighborhood unsecure wireless router.

Tomorrow, I plan to continue scraping the porch housing and maybe contact Yale Framing. I should e-mail them with my impression of their online ordering system, for example. Then the remainder of my day is unsure. I thought of taking photos at Coney Island at sunrise or maybe going to Battery Park at the tip of Manhattan to take sunrise photos and witness the flood of people crowding the Manhattan sidewalks during their scurry to work.

On Tuesday, I meet my friend Derek in the early afternoon at Central Park to play soccer and visit. Maybe I'll return to New Hampshire earlier this week than I planned. Maybe Jeff will call me with a job offer and I'll be soon busier than ever.

Maybe I will simply wallow in this long forgotten melancholy so integral in my younger days. The refrain from the golden oldie song rings softly in my ears: 'Their ain't no cure for the summertime blues.'

As I predicted, I don't feel sleepy due to my late-afternoon nap. I watched a soccer game on TV followed by Cold Case and I spent some time playing one of the video games in my phone.

My schedule here is a hunting schedule where I wake at or before sunrise and I am usually dead tired by 9:00 pm at night. Therefore, the New York City nightlife is passing me by. Things seem too dangerous at night and I'm not very interested anyway. Sight-seeing this weekend made this clear to me because what little knowledge that I acquired so far is all daylight knowledge.

This morning Tristan said he heard a rambunctious block party out on the street last night. I slept right through it, but now that I can't sleep, I'm more aware than usual, but still not interested. There isn't any party, but I hear people occasionally talking, laughing, and cars driving by.

Funny also that my lifestyle while I live here is much more mainstream than my lifestyle in New Hampshire. In New Hampshire I rarely watch the news and my grasp of current events is sketchy at best. I follow my own interests and leave things at that.

But in Brooklyn I read the paper daily, I watch the TV news on a regular basis, and I'm even watch more TV. Not having an Internet connection in the apartment plays a big part in this, but then again, part of the appeal of Brooklyn is the endless opportunity.

So I still have to figure out what to do tomorrow. I'm thinking that I should wake up at sunrise and take photos, but where? I could go to Coney Island to see if the fishermen are there. I could go to lower Manhattan. Maybe Central Park would be interesting?

Ah...the familiar internal Finnish debate. My family seems prone to this debating trait and we always seem to have an unsolvable problem in mind to keep things balanced, I guess. I ramble now so I'll close.