Na Forget Mi Roots

For the first few nights I left in my new home -- aerobed style, before furniture arrived -- I got very little sleep. I woke up suddenly at 5 a.m. with the loud noises of trucks barreling. I tossed and turned (as best as you can in an aerobed), and eventually gave in and went to get coffee, wild eyed and cranky. The lovely unobstructed view comes with a special bonus -- The Brooklyn Queens Expressway, known here as the BQE.

While I did know that noises would be muffled once furniture arrived and rugs got placed, I was pretty concerned. I asked people about soundproofing curtains, wave machines, playing background music all night, what to do. My friend Paul ventured "I actually think you are just not used to noise". He was right, I was used to a sleepy beach town, and waking to birds chirping in the tree in my yard -- how was I going to live here and get used to that noise? Friends came by and said "I don't hear anything at all." I barely did either. It's interesting what you get desensitized to, and rather quickly.

The often work hard, play hard sounds of New York, primarily Manhattan, often come straight out of central casting -- horns honking, ambulance sirens, garbage trucks making that beep-beep-beep 'back up' noise (those who know, know). For three days last week at work, we had the sidewalk being repaired outside of our office and worked to the noise of jack hammers for nearly 8 hours straight. Every time I get off the subway in Brooklyn Heights, I just exhale, so grateful to be in this small, beautiful village, where there's a lot of walking and not too much mad driving on one way cobblestone streets; the energy and pace much more relaxed.

During the ‘unpacking’ process, have been listening quite a bit to two playlists friends made me before I left -- especiallyJen's “Reggae Love” and Jeremy’s appropriately entitled “Enjoying the Ride”, which was also his advice when I was leaving. “Na Forget Mi Roots” – Don’t Forget Your Roots - is one of my favorite songs on his list.

The other morning I was going to work and heard some noises over the sounds of the street - the tribal rythms of a berimbau, used in Capoeira dance-sparring. It was something I first heard and saw at a Sambazon party at Natural Products Expo West when I first moved to San Clemente, and was mesmerized by the centuries old Afro-Brazilian fluid 'dance of war'. Looking up I saw a capoeira troupe, in the concrete jungle instead, performing in front of the stately columns of a city court building. I watched for a while and thought of the way the light slants and shimmers on the equator in Macapa, Amapa.