BKL=BROOKLYN

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with approximately 2.5 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, after New York County (Manhattan). It is also the westernmost county on Long Island.


There was a moment that I felt it was all going to disappear, a time when I actually saw myself sitting on the edge of my parents lake.  Crying.  I want to remember this chapter, and its called Brooklyn.  Having moved into my own place I want to relish in this moment because I have never been so exhausted, so broke and yet so capable of anything in my life.  If you can move in Manhattan, you can do anything because moving in general is hard but moving in Manhattan is like pulling teeth with a tweezers.  Like painting a mansion with a toothbrush.  Like climbing a mountain in a wheelchair.  You jump through so many hoops I feel as if in my past life I was in the circus.  You get so high you feel like methamphetamine is childsplay and so low that the weight of it all makes you feel 2 inches tall.
But in turn do you know what it gives you? OWNERSHIP.

Up until days ago I lived in a part of Manhattan called the Lower East Side (LES).  I rented a room in a place that never felt like my own.  This little hood is one of the best in the city.  Its heavy, grungy, dirty, hip, bustling and nothing shy of attitude and an I don't give a fuck disposition.  Anything goes and no one will look twice at anything really. This hood taught me to dissolve judgement, to not be shocked by much.  The differences I saw become beautiful lessons about individuality and creating your own self.  This hood taught me to let my creative being shine.  To let my 1950's image grow and develop.  I had free will, I got to play into my inner self and have it reflect on the outside.  The only problem was that I didn't have space to turn off all the madness of New York.  This is a tricky subject to address because in order to relate to this one would have to understand what its like to live in Manhattan.

I rented a room and it was a perfect little room but it wasn't my own and the apartment wasn't mine either.  This always made me feel a little homeless even though I had a roof over my head.  The place was governed by someone else.  Their rules, their stuff and their space.   I went through my longest creative/writers block, a darkness so deep I couldn't see any light.  Most days I felt completely drained and every day I had to leave the LES (lower east side) and sit by the water just to feel normal.  I wasn't loving it anymore and perhaps my time spent there was done.  I went back into the hood that made me fall in love with NYC to begin with.  I reclaimed it, I owned it and now I needed a beautiful  environment that harvested my creative being.  Nothing is more stifling then a environment that doesn't bring sunlight after the rain, that doesn't hug you when you enter your home, I needed my own place.  The timing couldn't have been any more spot on.   I learned a lot and for that I am grateful and for someone to open their home to me that I will never forget.  

Approaching my 1 year, I got word that I needed to move and the panic resulted in countless sleepless nights and 6 gray hairs.  What the fuck am I going to do?  I cried but something inside said this is for the best and you are always taken care of.  That's the only thing I held onto for the next 2 weeks.  If I let go of that then I would be on a one way flight back to Minnesota, as I wrote prior that wasn't really an option.  Its interesting what one considers when your up in the air but its even more important to remember what isn't an option at all.  So then your not even tempted to flirt with it.  The weight of it all should of sent me on the next flight back to Minnesota, but it didn't.  I knew there was frustrating days to come and there was.

This whole time I have been thinking I could never leave Manhattan but now that I have a beautiful space in BKL (Brooklyn) I wonder how I lived, worked and played right in the center of the madness.  When I go back into Manhattan I now appreciate it.  I see how beautiful it is when I'm away from it.  I almost wasn't used to how quiet and peaceful my place was at first.  With a farmers market right around the corner and stores that would blow your mind I can finally say that for the first time I feel like I am home.