Paris and New York in Post Postmodernism

In Paris the boulevards beneath skeiny tree branches and high stone apartment buildings suggested exclusivity and history. Glances of emptiness from men and those of mild interest from women showed that it was their Paris. With the confidence of Napoleon they walked past him. In passing the Champ D'Elysees, the Louvre, or as he meandered along the Seine, he played the tourist, removed from people and focused on the sites. These were international symbols of French greatness. This was theirs, their history.

 New York was just the opposite, he mulled. It depended on foreigners, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. There was less to be collectively proud of in New York. You could easily become a New Yorker, but when you talked to your neighbor about the oncoming spring, there was expectation, not pride.  In Paris even the cherry blossoms were French.

The regions of the United States won't understand that for some time yet. When Americans appear as that, instead of a melting pot of races, the stew will have a distinctive taste. Although New York and Paris share seasons, equal lengths of spring and fall. Weather unites denizens. Sun all year round spoils you, can lead to complacency. In the best cultural capitals, wet winters and hot summers represent life's extremes.
-Daniel Adler

Can We Call Brooklyn Its Own City Again?

Brooklyn has recently been drawing literary agents and basketball teams to its friendly confines. The Nets won’t be called the New York Nets, they’re going to be the Brooklyn Nets. Last night I met a biker from Denver on my way home and welcomed him, telling him that this is the best city in the world (I meant Brooklyn, nothing against Manhattan). That said, is it fair to treat Brooklyn as its own city?

Oakland and San Franscisco, Baltimore and DC, Brooklyn and New York –can we put the last pair in this group? Until 1898 Brooklyn was its own city. The Economist calls it Manhattan’s Left Bank, but for the past decade Brooklyn has regained its status as a city worth living in. The development of North Brooklyn especially has added to this, as Williamsburg has taken Manhattan’s Lower East Side and East Village spillover, and reclaimed the young artists and creatives as their own.

Part of this is due to the increased safety of the city – downtown Manhattan is no longer “rough;” unless you live in deep Bushwick, you don’t have to worry about walking home late at night. So I’m advocating Brooklyn not just as a sister city, but as it's own city. Manhattanites have to really just how uncool it would be if it didn't have the creative center of the universe a mile away. After all, with almost 2.5 million people, Brooklyn would be the sixth largest city in the country on its own. That’s pretty cool.

 Excitedly,
Daniel Adler

A Brooklyn Discourse

I was born in Brooklyn. Once its own city, it was consolidated into New York in 1898.  That is not to say that its character as a city has become subsumed, leaving it as nothing more than a borough. Instead of being competitors like San Francisco and Oakland, or Baltimore and D.C., Brooklyn and Manhattan are sisters. One is the runway model, the other is the athletic one, bound for the big leagues. She's a cauldron of pluck and bubbling verve that enjoys being removed from the limelight that bathes Manhattana. And geography plays into it too. Manhattan is patently phallic. It was gridded more than 400 years ago because the Dutch settlers knew that it would fill with people, and that all of them would eventually vie for space. In Manhattan, it's not possible for a building to take up more than a square city block. It is a city of autonomies, of arid scimitars. Brooklyn, south of Manhattan, also has easy access to the River and spreads, north to Queens and the Island. But it's vulvular. All of the streets come together to form a V, slanting and coy, taking you from one neighborhood to the next, as long as you know your way. They'll accept you, even if it is with a raised brow or an evil eye. And because I was born there, not in the graceful cradle of pomp and circumstance, it comes  reflected in my character. It's why I'm adventurous, yet wary of standing out, because Brooklyn is not about standing out like Manhattan, it's about who can stand out the best while blending in. Sometimes I press on with insouciance away from the stage, preferring instead to revel in the glory of size, biding my time quietly, comfortably, in the way Brooklynites are proud. I live for authenticity, because that is a true New York characteristic, and Manhattan is ready to deceive with illusions of grandeur and bright lights. Brooklyn can't be swindled. The former is a place for work, and tourists, and millionaires. The vast ocean of Brooklyn lies removed from the hubub and centerpiece of Times Square and the financial center. Across the East River, well into the 21st century there are neighborhood enclaves of immigrants, and they point to the old bubushkas with pushcarts and the slick haired kids elongating their vowels outside of salumerias, the affordable brownstones, the Puerto Rican auto body shops; that it is here where the poor immigrants came and slaved all away to make it in the world delivered upon them. 

Cyber-Spatial Points of Reference

I am indebted to Guillermo Creus for this project. When Jameson defined postmodernism he wrote, “The political form of postmodernism, if there ever is any will have as its vocation the invention and projection of a global cognitive mapping, on a social as well as a political scale” (54). Obviously, this is the internet, whose social mapping manifestations are evident in sites like facebook and myspace, and whose political manifestations are evident through the election of the current American president. This poem delimits my spatial coordinates over the past six months in a post postmodern manner:

If you don't weed your garden, you'll have a garden full of weeds.

Being taken to the river; eppin' around equals lone star.

Partying in austin! I'm a man.

Thanks y'all for the b-day wishes.

Back from campin'; le rouge et le noir.

“Away” for the weekend, infinite jest.

Just don't know what to do with myself, bada bing bada, using skaterade: god we're ep.

New York city: my gorilla is my butler.

Papapa; crabcakes n golf on the island is exceptional.

Ay, in the very temple of Delight.

There's no better reward for a job well done than a savory lamb gyro.

Come to Dtox on 2nd and 2nd tonite for free drinks!!!

Bossin' latin is a great white shark.

Yanks world series champs.

Grubbin is going to Longuyland.

Smells a rat(tail).

Dreams are disasters when drugs are your master.

Errybody love bacon.

Hearken, and hammer day and night.

Hovercraftin drinkin salsa.

If crazy was money, I'd be a millionare.

Cure for hickups: 9 sips of water.

American pie: if all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work.

Fried turkey, dos equis, and jose. Getting blacked in manhat w midlug. I'm artfucking montrose.

If I were a sea creature, a narwhal I'd be.

PDX infiltrates NYC in the a.m. This week is the culmination of my educational career.

Gotta love longjohns. You don't have to be jewish to eat chinese food on christmas eve.

Riding a coda deck and taking an infinite jest tour into boston and the heart of Qubecois rebellion: ol' Montreal.

Spaghetti with epsauce.

Finite jest.

Excitation!!

It's gonna be wild and I'm gonna be crazy.

New York Writers Inc.