i am a palindrome today.
I found Greensboro in Brooklyn yesterday. I was wandering Williamsburg, the closest B'klyn neighborhood to Manhattan, after my yoga class there. It is very much like downtown Greensboro, with dirty industrial buildings slowly being renovated into hole-in-the-wall diners and indier-than-thou record shops. I found a coffee shop with my favorite tea from the Green Bean. Then, turning a side street in search of a thrift shop, there it was: water, and the downtown skyline. It literally took my breath away. That is why I came here, that is why I watched Woody Allen's Manhattan and wanted a black-and-white metropolitan love story of my very own. This is home.
And, in honor of my birthday, an appropriate gift from W.H. Auden.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free."
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a-plenty
And sold for endless rue."
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.