Postcards

Dear Everyone,

It's fall in Brooklyn. The midday air is cool but the sunlight is still very warm.

Classes are going well. Finally found my groove and am staying ahead of the curve. I'm in an intense two week crunch of projects, research, exams, grant outlines, and presentations. I'll write more soon.

Miss you. Wish you were here.

xoxoxox

Mike

Photos:

• Brownstones in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood.
• A neighborhood not far from the Brooklyn Children's Museum.
• New York Stock Exchange before the protests.
• Maritime museum along the East River in Manhattan — the Peking is an all steel sailing ship, the last generation of its kind.
• Two murals in Ditmas Park, my neighborhood.
• Part of DeKalb Market at night just outside the subway stop I use to get to school.
• Washington Square Park in Manhattan — much of NYU's main campus surrounds. If you peek through the arch you can just make out the Empire State Building.
• A stationery shop's window in Park Slope.
• Barclays Center: Future home of the NBA's Brooklyn Nets — just a few stops away from me on the metro. The team relocates from New Jersey in 2012.

A day in the life: This is Prospect Park

My first apartment out of college was in Kentwood, Michigan. It was concrete and cul-de-sacs as far as the eye could see. At some point in those years I bought my first bike as an adult. Except for winter, I rode it all the time. There was a rail trail — a railroad line converted into a paved pedestrian path — not far from my apartment. It was part of an as-yet incomplete network of trails. I would bike down to it, ride until the asphalt ended, and then turn around for home. The rail trail cut through urban sprawl and then through farmland and then finally through woodlands.

Each time I rode that trail I had a profound experience in my soul. I'm not entirely certain just how to describe it. Something that was closed off in me would open up. Something withered would stand tall and alive again. It wasn't until I was on the trail skirting past streams and passing under cathedral ceilings of green that I could feel what driving and shopping and living on busy streets did to me.

Prospect Park is not far from where I now live. I can even take the metro just two stops and walk off a train into the park. Prospect Park is quite literally Brooklyn's Central Park as it is the heart of Brooklyn and was even designed by the same two men. It is a gem.

In many ways I am reminded a great deal of Reeds Lake back home. A park. A lake. A loop around them both. Boating. Occasional festivals. I regularly rode down Wealthy Street through Gaslight Village and took laps on the Reeds Lake Trail. For anyone who's done this as well, you know how peaceful that loop is — except for climbing @*$%! Hall Street hill.

Now having my bike with me in Brooklyn I've ridden over to Prospect Park twice. Today I decided to go exploring through the inner portions of the park and take some photos. Prospect Park is big with trails crisscrossing through all parts of it. Reminiscent of that rail trail back in Kentwood, the park lies along a larger route known as the Brooklyn Queens Greenway. Pavillions and bridges and arches dot the landscape. The park is home to a zoo and botanical gardens as well as soccer and baseball fields and several playgrounds. All manner of people spend their Saturdays there. Musicians and painters were common sights today. I rode through the scent of barbecue. I saw a piñata tied up in a tree for a birthday. There's even horseback riding. I nearly rode through a gift a horse left on the pavement for me.

I've been in New York for two months now. Without even noticing it, I've grown accustomed to traffic noise and small spaces. I know which car to ride on the train home from school so that I step off the metro right onto the stairway to ground level. There's no fan in my bathroom so I shower with the window open slightly; I can see down into the concrete courtyard. There's very little privacy in this city. I can overhear most any conversation I want. Even at home, there are people just across the way that can see into my apartment from theirs. I've been settling into a routine and working hard to keep on top of my schoolwork. I just finishished my first midterm exams and projects. My research project is starting up. I'm also helping rework an existing project to better support its experiment design. I have seminars to attend every other week. There's talk of a conference I may be sent off to in May.

While riding through the park this afternoon I felt it. I remember this sensation. My soul exhaled. Though it may be autumn, something within me opened up, bloomed just a little. Certain ancient cultures speak of spirit and breath as one and the same. Today I breathed life. I was renewed by the divine. This is Prospect Park.

A day in the life: My first semester of classes

I snuck this photo during class on Thursday evening. I'm sitting about one third up from the front of one of the few large-ish lecture halls at Poly. My other class is of perhaps twenty five or thirty students. That room is much smaller and has clearly been pressed into the service of education for a lot of years. My third class consists of meeting with my advisor once a week to guide the direction of a project. More on that later.

My second time moving to New York.

At the time my heart was too heavy to entertain the thought, but in hindsight I do wonder if anyone sitting in the Grand Rapids airport around me was feeling like I was. Technically, I had already moved to New York three weeks before. But I can tell you that my heart was not yet aware of this.

I had come home to stand up in my good friend Aaron's wedding. The wedding had been planned since before I even applied to graduate school. In fact, I had to make special arrangements because of a school event I would be missing due to the wedding. It was an incredibly full weekend. Lots of fun. So wonderful to see so many of my people — even surprising a number of them when I showed up at church. The wedding and reception were two of the best I've been to. I even got to bring a date (it occurs to me that I have a very low date to wedding ratio which I think is due in part to attending so very many weddings). I drove by my former apartment and thought fondly of it. I stayed the weekend in a home that in many ways feels like my own.

The weekend ended with a rush just like it began. After an impromptu lunch (loosely in my honor) following church, I raced back to the home of the friends who were hosting me in order to pack. Then we all zoomed off to the airport. Of course, regulations have long since prevented those who are not flying from sitting at the gate. So after all the joy and energy of the weekend, there I sat. Suddenly alone with my thoughts. Waiting for an airplane. Surrounded by stillness. I had to wake up the man next to me when his aisle was called for boarding.

When I flew away the first time I knew I would be back in three weeks. In fact, it seems some part of me didn't really let go of home because I knew I would be back in three weeks. Because I needed to be back in three weeks.

This time there were no tearful goodbyes. No lengthy sendoff with a small crowd gathered. Because of the time crunch it was a few hurried goodbyes and a couple messages confirming that I made it to my flight. When I landed in Cleveland for a layover, there were no heartfelt text messages or tweets or emails expressing love and best wishes. It was silence in the air. And silence on the ground.

This time there was no familiar face to meet me at the airport and help me get settled for my first few days. I landed in New York with all my belongings (most still in boxes) waiting for me at an apartment in Brooklyn. I knew just where to stand outside La Guardia airport. I knew which bus to catch. I knew how to use my metro card. I had a student ID in my wallet. I had assignments and reading waiting for me. Now I realize that it was this second trip that really took me away to New York. It was this flight that really left me homesick. That really made it real.

It also happened to be the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the day that I moved to New York City for the second time. There had been much remembrance of the events ten years earlier. But overall the mood was one of not forgetting but moving on. And so maybe on the day I truly moved to New York it was fitting that I was in a place of always remembering but also trying to move on.

I went to Maker Faire. It's one part technology trade show and one part carnival sideshow.

Boy. I'm a week behind.

Last weekend I attended Maker Faire hosted by the New York Hall of Science. The event is connected to MAKE Magazine — a publication dedicated to do-it-yourself hobbyist hackers. This idea of a “maker” is almost a movement; it's a recognition and revitalization of the garage tinkerer, kitchen chemist, and junk artiste.

Maker Faire is one part technology trade show and one part carnival sideshow. It's difficult to explain and entirely ridiculous so I took lots and lots of photos.

My favorite things I got to see:

• Sashimi Tabernacle Choir
• MakerBot 3D Printer — including a display of amazing jewelry some of which cannot be produced any other way.
• Life Size Mousetrap — that crazy board game brought to life!
• The Urban Farming tent that included a table showcasing seed bombs for planting greenery on unused public property
• A history of computers as presented in dioramas with tiny videos constructed inside old monitors
• A fire-breathing dragon jungle gym assembled from old cars

If ever you get to attend a Maker Faire, you'll see families and people from all walks of life taking in the sights. But more than this you will see the same people on the other side of the tables passionately explaining their creations and teaching anyone who wants to listen what they've learned.

The people who show their projects at Maker Faire live outside the box. They have jobs and families and commitments, but yet make time to make. They are compelled to let their imaginations run wild and to make. The creativity and ingenuity is inspiring. Sometimes awe inspiring. I felt an electricity in the air (yes, they were at Maker Faire too but I didn't get to see them perform). It was a long, hot afternoon with lots of walking, but I came away invigorated. Maybe not so much in my feet — more so about my own dreams and callings that compelled me to come to New York in the first place.