Next Monday, we’re having an anniversary party. A one year, paper anniversary, because we’ve been New Yorkers for one year. Now, more than! We’re making a pinata of the B43 bus, which will take you from Greenpoint through Bed Stuy to Flatbush and back, in honor.

Here we were, last June.

Since then it’s been fast, especially the last few months. Things are steady; I’ve only moved once, maintain a regular work schedule, and get my nails, groceries, and laundry done when I  have to. Recently, the things that felt insane about living here at first, like commuting 2 hours to work, spending days in multiple boroughs or rush hour on the bus, planning well ahead to meet up, biking to the subway, or across large distances in Brooklyn, still feel abnormal, or particular, but also more simple. Here you are surrounded, always, and cannot always have or transport what you need when you need it.  This is just the way it is.

But we are so lucky that it is the same for our friendships, the ones that traveled here from the west coast and stayed. They just are. All my anniversary friends have developed in this year, taken on new responsibilities, goals, lifestyles, and partners, but are loyal to one another in a plain way, offering each other support in the form of supplies and time and practical criticism like travelers do when they are camping, or climbing. It’s possible that living here now, in this way, seems do-able at all because we have become more accustomed to sharing resources and space in a manner that doesn’t require generosity, or effort at all.

I worked late last night then went to go pick up the paper mache bus at Jarthur’s, to take it home to be finished. Like you do! I’d been  chewing a piece of grayed bubblegum for hours. I bought a pineapple on my way to the subway, because it felt like the right thing, some thing, to bring. Jarthur matched my token with a sweet and hearty dinner, the kind you make for family and not company, when you are hungry but must keep going, still.

He said he didn’t have anything and I said I knew we could make it work anyway. So, we cut the mold off the bottom of the broccoli sprouts, used the last of the greens, and oven roasted a just okay tomato to make a salad, then opened a can of beans and quick cooked some quinoa. To those, Jarthur added some harissa and masala, which, along with the sticky savory roasted tomatoes coating the greens, made this plain appearing plate of food both surprising, optimistic if not particularly ingenious or inventive, and satisfying, anyway.

With fuel enough, we ate some chopped, demi frozen pineapple from the freezer and started home with the to-be-bus box crowding the subway car. The Lakers won the NBA finals, and then a nap later, at 5:45 am, I woke up in Brooklyn, thank god!, again.

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