postcard to toronto
dear folks back home,
i am in new york city and it is wonderful. i eat too much pizza because i forget to eat in the morning and then walk around all day and drink coffee and realize i didn’t have any lunch or dinner. you can take your pizza on the train though, and ride around with it.
i am seeing amazing people who make me feel gladly received and cared about and like they want to have fun with me. many of them i have known for years and years and years, and the others are people who i want to know for years. i miss the home people terribly but i feel so lucky for this welcome.
in the eight days i have been here i have slept in queens brooklyn brooklyn, among cats and dogs and near bagels and indian buffets and streets i have watched change for a dozen years and places i have been kissed. i am settled down for a little while now in jackson heights, where the streets are glittery and i am home at mark and elena’s long enough to water my smuggled-in houseplant and buy my own yogurt. when one is in the midst of total flux and an endless series of huge decisions, a little of your own yogurt goes a long way.
the trains here are space-age modern, not all of them, but the constantly morphing strip-map on the N train will blow your mind unless you hate it like my friend kyle. the moving sidewalks at the court square subway station make me reminiscent of a toronto that once was — do you remember the guy who read the poem at pontiac quarterly about the death of spadina station’s moving sidewalk? all poetry should be like that.
(the opposite of the space trains are those adjustable-depth platforms at 59th street. seriously, like all that is magical in new york, i hope i never stop being amazed by them.)
i am learning a lot about the BQE. it is terrible. potholes try to launch you into cement barricades; the cars drive both too fast and too slow, and it is more rogue road than interstate highway. but anticity though cars may be, driving along the east river and blinking dumbfoundedly at the view is hard to beat. “i get all this?” i keep thinking. “i get to live here?”
and i come home now to the figuring-out of queens: these street numbers make no fucking sense at all, so it is instinct, homing, remembering these christmas lights or that railway overpass, and wandering happily from unusual place to unusual place, mysteriously ending up in a food fair supermarket at 11pm talking to your west-coast-best-friend about how getting over someone who is dead has its secretly easy parts, the ones that have to do with suddenness and change and clean slate and writing your own ending, and, hopefully, your new beginning.
in new york city they talk more than they do in toronto: not just blowhardism, but people are willing to approach you. with oliver i discussed the issue of my magical hat. case in point: i have a hat right now that is very beautiful. people love it. in new york city both friends and strangers exclaim at the hat, whether across a crowded cafe or just holding the door open for some lady in a bank machine lobby. we decided that this is the difference between cities:
new york person: “I like your hat!”
toronto person: [avoids eye contact, whispers to friend after person walks past, "she has a nice hat"]
san francisco person: [thinks about the hat, then goes home and writes blog post about seeing a nice hat, where no one who wears the nice hat will ever see it]
i do still wish new york were in canada, but the strange comfort of being around people as outgoing (intrusive?) and warm (too intimate?) and chatty (annoying?) as myself is so wildly comforting and familiar that it surprises me how far away i’d gotten from that climate. i was in some ways so out of my element and i didn’t even know. i don’t blame all of canada, or even give all of new york city credit, but there’s something about being able to look people in the eye and tell them it’s a beautiful day without them getting completely vibed out that makes you feel like you’re home.
i will write again soon.
love
liz