Hail Fellow Well Met From The Jet Plane Atrium

I’m not even remotely dead yet, just louching out in the Terraces Lounge at JFK, immersing myself in the peculiarities of my countrymen in preparation for a visit to Australia.

I think my absence demands a slightly more involved explanation than normal. It was quite possibly the most sustained and hellish period of work that I’ve experienced for a very long time. A combination of the increasing demands of my work, and my inability to delegate.

Which is a shame, because the Borough of Brooklyn is undergoing a period of profound change, which you can see in everything from the recent election of a Haitian councillor to replace Yvette Clarke, to the fact that Brooklyn condominium developments are now advertising on television. Coney Island will be a vast development site, fourth avenue is turning into Battery Park City, and I haven’t even begun to mention Atlantic Yards.

There’s a certain amount of guilt on my part in writing these words, since much of my spare time, and the reason for my inability to post even at weekends, comes down to my current obsession with house-hunting. Yep, I’m looking at my own gaff, and being an evil gentrifier has given me a different take on the neighbourhood.

Whereas once I’d seen Park Slope as divided between the east of 6th avenue family types, and the Western hipsters, an appreciation of the PS321 school district boundaries has suddenly enlightened me as to why the hell they’re throwing up new condos on somewhat southerly blocks between fourth and fifth.

I even caught Marty Markowitz on television the other day, burbling away at the unveiling of the new ice-rink plans. More in sorrow than anger, it now becomes obvious that the man is an irrelevance, a smiling face on a process of upheaval he can neither control nor comprehend.

I hope to abandon at least some of this rather bleak demeanour as I return to taking constitutionals, start job-hunting, and stop mooching around inside. In the mean time, I’ll try and grab some pictures in Australia to help the reader warm up as much as I hope to.

I haven’t forgotten about my on-going mission to look into corporate nonsense, I’ve just been experiencing such fear and pain operating my scanner that the idea of relying on any computing applications beyond Word, Firefox and iTunes seems too much.

Anyhow, and knowing that I have but a few regular readers, and even they may have stopped bookmarking, hope to reconnect soon.