I found a folder labeled "Last Day Market" followed by "Last Day Packing" in the New York folder. It transported me back to our last thirty or so hours in New York City. Looking though the pictures stirred up the feelings I was having on that last day, how I went from blue to ready, in just a matter of hours.
We were going to start our drive out of Brooklyn, and away from the East coast on Sunday the 20th of December. We picked that day specifically because it was after a Saturday, a day I could earn some cash from the market, and still close enough to land us in Austin by Christmas Day. The morning sky was white, like plenty of days in late December.
A large storm, the first major one of the season, was due by nightfall, but it seemed to start before that.
It was almost an emotional day for us dairy shills, and, loaded down with butter and yogurt--gear we were planning on bringing to Texas--I said some goodbyes to Tom, the old school head now long sober, and Katie, a newer addition to the group that added some needed Canadian-Asian flavor (not pictured).
Marc and I started crossing the street; he was going to do some shopping, but was cursing his already full load. Barnes and Noble was the bookstore across the street. We always used to cool down in the summer and warm up in the winter in its five stories, as well as the obvious patronage of their restroom. At that moment, Saturday, the 19th of December at 5-ish, with the light failing, the slush coming down sideways, my best friend's arms full of enough dairy to choke an elephant, we finished our last smokes together while he faced the prospect of braving the chaos of the bookstore to get more things to carry--heavy things.
We hugged and said our farewells and fare-thee-wells, he braved the store and I went for the chaotic subway. This was the first time I really felt blue about leaving. I'd been pretty much numbed from feeling most anything that last year, likely the dulling of feeling that had been slowly working since we arrived three and a half years earlier, but leaving just felt like the right thing, the next thing to do in life.
Right up until then, though. Right up until I walked through the sludge to get to the stairs for the subway, I hadn't started to feel sad about leaving the only good friends we ever hung out with with any regularity.
I wasn't able to read anything in my paper, or magazine, or whatever I brought to read. I looked at the pages, looked at the words, but I couldn't read any of it. I walked home from the subway in Bed-Stuy to our apartment in a snowy daze. This was the last time I'd be walking home from the market, laden with dairy treasure. This was the last day Marc and I would get to talk about the Giants or sip our "coffee" or scarf those awesome sausage-egg-and-cheese rolls in between helping the Line That Never Ended.
When I made it home I didn't mention anything. Corrie had the apartment all organized after spending the bulk of the Saturday packing the truck. The only thing left was to toss a few pieces of shitty furniture, the mattress, and pack the plants. We awaited the morning, lest they be killed from the overnight cold.
The winter up until then acted like it understood that winter started on December 21st. There had been a few slushy flurries, but the season had been incredibly mild, and a few days before we were to depart we were feeling good about our chances of making it a relatively easy drive with mild, if chilly, weather.
So I got home, tried to block the blue out, and Corrie and I discussed the remainder of the evening, our last in Brooklyn. We decided that after procuring the special lock for our truck, that we would head out for O'Keefe's, or Brooklyn Irish hangout. We would dine there for the evening. This was the same bar we went to to watch the returns from the 2008 election.
I re-donned my gear and headed back out into the weather, sparing Corrie the hassle. There was a hardware store a few blocks down Malcolm X that I passed everyday but never entered, and remember seeing them with the lights on when I had just walked by returning from the market.
This, I remember thinking as the distance between me and the hardware store diminished, this is what you need to remember about New York, about Brooklyn. On the walk to get that lock I made a breakthrough in my melancholia. New York is more than just a pair of good friends in Marc and Linda. Yes we loved them, but New York is more than that.
Alone. On your own. You can only rely on yourself, and you're perpetually the outsider. Everything is a trial, and while it's possible to make a life work, the fact you can is often the only reward.
All of those thoughts come flooding into my brain as I trudged past angry teens and bickering baby-mammas, the parts of my head playing with the notions of being alone in Brooklyn, about doing it ourselves, and about how now is definitely a good time to get the fuck out. It was time. I was ready. At that moment I gripped the handle of the door to the hardware store.
Walking back to the apartment I realized that, yeah, I was ready to go. When I got back, I relayed to Corrie how my last day at the market had progressed, with me feeling blue for the first time, allowing myself to feel sad for the first time, but then having to go out to get the lock brought me back to the realities of the life, back to the grand solitude in the truly great Urban.
She said she was glad that I'd finally made peace with leaving. I hadn't thought about it like that at all until right then...another symptom of my overall numbness.
I tried to take a picture of the falling snow, the large storm such a slap in the face to those of us leaving the next morning. We almost had to laugh at the cosmic joke of it all. The picture is blurry because of the constant movement.
Here I am, apparently at peace.
I do miss the seasons, though.
Sometimes, at least. I definitely miss Marc and Linda, and still haven't replaced what we had with them in the regularly-hanging-out-with-friends department.
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