Everyone thinks the Fourth of July is the main event. But the night before is the real one, and I have proof.
I got off the F at York Street last night and walked toward the water in DUMBO, where the Manhattan Bridge stitches Brooklyn to the sky. Tourists gone home for dinner. Locals not out yet. That gorgeous in-between hour when the cobblestones are still warm and the city hasn't started performing for anyone.
I sat on a stranger's stoop on Washington Street — sorry, stranger — and watched the light go pink and then violet behind the bridge. Somewhere a kid was setting off tiny illegal firecrackers, a little rehearsal for tomorrow's Fourth of July. Practice pops. The city clearing its throat.
I love being alone in this neighborhood at this hour. There's no loneliness in it, only spaciousness. Back home I was never alone — Indian households don't really allow for it, someone is always in the doorway asking if you've eaten. I used to crave solitude like water.
Now I have oceans of it, and DUMBO on a July eve is where I go to appreciate it before it tips into too much.
The Fourth of July here always makes me a little sideways — celebrating a country's independence that isn't the one that made me, on the same August-ish week my own country got its freedom. I hold both. I contain a whole subcontinent of complicated feelings and I'm fine, thanks for asking.
But last night I didn't think about any of that. I just watched the bridge glow and ate a dosa from the cart near Front Street and felt, for once, exactly the right size for my life.
Go find the quiet the night before the noise. That's where the real fireworks are.
Love,