old boots flying past one another, close-up, kicking dust. black leather, brown suede, worn and scuffed - you can tell they’ve been here before. running like all fucking hell. running the way boots run when something runs behind them. running with hollow multi-layered click-clack in the wake; the rhythm of multiple pursuit. untied boots, laces flailing, careening through brooklyn labyrinth. pavement underneath, coated in grit. the thick sweat of the city which has gathered and settled and dried to become the skin of a sprawling concrete body. old filth fossilized and permanent, new filth decomposing and forming new layers, and these boots, veterans, tear-assing through it. boots which cost someone else, some stranger, probably a decade ago, 200 or maybe 300 dollars. savvy boots, shredding alleyways sharply, in no set direction. it’d be prudent though, i’ll let you personally know, to bet your god damn ass they’re going to get there.

step back, stretch your view. see the whole scene. witness this.

from above, the entropy of new york city radiates concentrically. with distance from the center, so increases the disorder of its composition. manhattans sober gridiron, ordered alphabetically and numerically, is stunted on all sides by water. the rivers harlem and east, and the upper bay below, give way to the diagonals and mild confusion of the heights, of park slope, of williamsburg and astoria, who in turn melt into the intricate chaos of flushing and jamaica, of flatbush and gravesend - the twisted bellies of queens and brooklyn - as if manhattans jenga skyscrapers have toppled east to describe borough streets and alleyways in their fallen discord.

we are in crown heights, brooklyn. the heart or the stomach or at least the geometric center. we are among store fronts, bodegas and hair salons, businesses that are always open or businesses that are always closed. we are among smells - roasted chestnuts from the old guy with a wrinkled face who sells nuts from his cart on the sidewalk and also possibly the smell of urine which comes in periodic wafts and which never gets stronger and yet never disappears altogether. we are among colors - brick buildings which have been painted and covered with graffiti and scraped and re-painted for decades and decades so that no two bricks are the same hue. the dull yellows and reds of signs belonging to delis or drugstores or something in spanish. we are among hooded black children of like 12 or 11 or something retarded, huddled on street corners, shouting “ERP ERP READIES READIES BLUE TOPS GOT THEM BLUE TOPS WHAT YOU NEED OLD MAN WHAT YOU NEED.” they are trying to sell you shit. we are among the noises of the city - babies telling mom that they are hungry or babies who hate the heavy heat. babies who are having precisely zero fun and want you to know about it. drivers who are experiencing a similar lack of fun and want the cars in front of them to know about it. a man staggering, palsied and thickly scented, yelling that he is having more fun than any of us. sirens are shrieking, either approaching or receding, cars are quaking with bass, children are cackling and yelling words too crude for them in voices too large for them. and underneath it all there is the steady hum that is built of a living cities myriad happenings - the personal vibrations of the greatest city on earth, softly rising.

cities have soundtracks the way certain homes have smells. beneath gunshots and car alarms in detroit there is the mechanical drone of a factory city. in tokyo it is a robotic pulse, as if something electronic, somewhere in the city, is oscillating. and here, the sound tells of movement - of hurried steps and frantic traffic, of trains underground and planes above, of ten million humans dashing always toward something new, some monumental future which just must live around the very next corner. the city is buzzing, low and with force. as you enter you will sense it waxing somewhere just below your ears, swelling until it carries you. if you live here long enough, you will (when one day you are visiting a friend or your parents somewhere in maybe massachusetts or kentucky) feel the ominous absence of something you can’t quite name - some cadence which has left your body and which it will feel absolutely vital to retrieve immediately and never be without again for it will feel as though someone has turned the world off and you will realize suddenly that everything in new york is racing away without you and so you will decide to cut the visit short and get in your car and fucking fly.

this is brooklyn. this is where you are when commotion explodes and in your periphery some sort of gutter punk skeleton kid hooks onto the sidewalk from an alleyway and erupts through a crowd of pedestrians as more men slingshot around the corner at his heels, giving chase. they are all barreling toward you. he looks to be maybe fifteen. get the fuck out of the way.