Brooklyn Elegy

by Keith Snyder

 

I know a place in Brooklyn Heights right across the water from the south tip of Manhattan. We went there to watch fireworks one year, and I took a book by the Dalai Lama there one Yom Kippur and tried to improve myself for about forty-five minutes until I got bored.

I thought if I went there, maybe I would comprehend what has happened. Maybe my inability was from being inside for a week and seeing it only on TV. 10:00 PM Saturday night, I just felt I had to go, so I got dressed and took the subway from Queens to Jay Street/Borough Hall in Brooklyn, an hour's trip that left me with at least a mile's walk. There are closer stations, but I wanted to walk up Atlantic Avenue because for several blocks, it becomes a Muslim neighborhood.

I don't understand what has happened any better or worse than I did before, but at least my memories won't be of a TV screen. I'm sorry most of us have just television, which is too fast and has edges.

I don't know how long I walked and sat and looked across the water, or how many times I searched for my feelings, and then searched for a hint as to whether their absence was because I was numb or because I'm just too small-brained to understand things so much bigger than me; but it was after 3:00 AM when I got home and smelled incense, which is "I love you" for late-roving husbands.

**Keith adds: "People who download the video (from Keith's website) can use the space bar to freeze any frame they can't make out. I left in some quick zooms and cuts in order to save file space. They can also probably double the picture size in their viewers."

*Mystery author Keith Snyder wears many hats: writer, musician, composer, and designer.His first book was published in 1996. Show Control stars Jason Keltner, electronic musician, and his friends Robert and Martin, who have a knack for getting into trouble and get involved in adventure, espionage and mystery. Mystery Scene said it was "a highly impressive first novel of rare quality," and readers agreed. The success of Show Control landed him a contract with Walker & Co for his follow up novels Coffin's Got The Dead Guy On The Inside & Trouble Comes Back.Visit keith online at http://www.woollymammoth.com/keith