NYC: funeral, food, frivlery

Dear Topos,
While the people and landscape out the window of whatever coffee shop I type, has changed drastically from Asheville NC to New York City, the whether has not. A blanket of gray and rain has followed us from the day we left Asheville through our drive up through New Jersey and Pennsylvania and New York. The gray continuity between these places pulls jungle and city into one overgrown funeral gown. The earth is the burial ground for its people and the sky has come to the funeral a stride too early. The barrios piled with fruits and veggies, grown who knows where, and run by families from every part of the globe except the U.S., are the equivalent to the bountiful fruit trees and wild greens of Asheville. You only have to walk two or three blocks in either of these places to find fresh, or somewhat fresh, food. Only here you are supposed to trade money for the food. And there are about 200 more options to choose from.

The blanket of gray lifted and we somehow stumbled into Williamsburg, the throbbing heart of Hippsterism, located in north Brooklyn only blocks away from Hasidic Jew central. Every soul in Williamsburg is young and white and wearing the latest Buffalo Exchange outfit. In appearance I am sure I resemble these “progressive” bumbles more than the Hasidic Jews, yet somehow I feel more in common with the young Hasidic Jewish men in their long tailed black suit coats and two spiraled locks poking out from their black top hats then the Williamsburg hipsters. The Hasidic Jews intentional orientation to the world around them resonates with my efforts to exist intentionally in this world. If the hipsters posses intention in the world it is not a world I am interested in residing in the least. And I thought Atlanta’s Little 5 Points was a hipster bubble! Williamsburg out does it ten times. If this is utopia get me a ticket out.