Ada Limon & the Sense of Brooklyn Possibility

Like anybody I guess, I assumed New York City began the second I walked in, and would disappear the moment I left. Just now I walked by my freight elevator, where a kid in his early 20's wearing a Yeah Yeah Yeahs t-shirt was excitedly loading in boxes from what looked like his parents' minivan. - XMASTIME

In searching Xmastime for Ada Limon just now I stumbled on this post from almost exactly 10 years ago, and her talking about living in Brooklyn is exactly how I think of it, ten years after I left:

After living in Brooklyn for 12 years, I think I got accustomed to letting the day take us wherever it wanted (even if, at times, we didn't want to go there).

But now, the city-dizzy weekends go on without me. And I'm in the country left to my own delirious devices. I'm coming up with plans for big creative projects and making new girl dates with new lovely girl friends. But still, the days don't quite unfold with that easy lost haze of Williamsburg when the same 15 or 20 people would meet up at the same 4 bars telling the same stories we all wanted to hear again. Most of the stories we would tell each other, would be about what would happen if we didn't live here? What would happen if we moved? How weird would that be? We would swear we'd never do it. We would promise.

Somehow, I wandered off however. And sometimes, I must admit, it feels like I've wandered way too far from my ladies, from the 10 block radius that we called, "campus," from the late night conversations about art and fame and love fueled by concrete heat and the ever-coming-one-too-many. I miss that sense of possibility. That sense of, "It's all happening right here, right now." But we can't be everywhere at once, even if we desperately want to.