Sunday Memories - The Exhaustion of Diaspora: Part One

"The Exhaustion of Diaspora" is a week long series of what it means to leave home and seek home and sometimes even find home, but not necessarily in any particular order.

***

We start with one of the many ends to this journey



That's Florence's window behind those trees. The white corner coffee table is poking out of the taxi's trunk.

We tie the trunk as closed as we can get it which isn't very closed -- actually the young man from Pakistan ties it not-very-closed with a scarf I had found in the Laundry Room in the "up for grabs" pile. It takes about five minutes on the corner of Columbia and Grand to get the table into the trunk and to make the knots hold. This pisses off several mini-vans of Hasid origins since the taxi driver isn't white, I'm wearing pants and they're in a hurry.

On the way home I stare at First Avenue - I look at the east side of the street rather than the west side. The day is dark and grey. It is not the day Florence and I rode up First and stared at the west side of the street. (APRIL, 2008: CAR RIDE TO THE DOCTOR).

This is my neighborhood. This is my home. This is where I have lived for 33 years. Do I recognize it? Do I understand what it means? Is there a reason I keep starting to cry?

I give the taxi driver all but $5 of my money as a thank you for driving with his trunk half up. I hold onto the $5 just in case I need emergency Chinese food or intervention ice cream.

It's only afterward, I see bruises up and down my arms from all the moving.