Diary
Where have i been? Well, i can confirm that i am, in fact, alive. Though only because i sleep. If i didn't sleep i may have been shot last week. No, i'm not kidding. I woke up last Saturday morning for a sip of water to find plaster all over the floor beside my bed and contaminating my water. At first i thought something mysterious must have fallen out of the ceiling, but the next day i noticed a hole in my painting and, behind the painting, a hole in the wall. A bullet hole. At level with where my head would be if i was standing up.
Here, have a look:
the wall
the back of the painting
the front
the ceiling (above my bed)
The neighborhood i live in is Bedford-Stuyvesant, which, for those of you unaware, has had a dicey history of race riots, ghettoization, and been subject to racist red lining by banks unwilling to grant loans and mortgages to blacks, leading to a precipitous decline in home value and all the terrible decline that comes with it. However, like Harlem, many parts of Bed-Stuy have recently been gentrified and the area has been been on the upswing. The part of town i live in is very quiet and relaxed with beautiful tree lined, brownstoned streets. It's all very Sesame Street and i have always felt very safe here; it's been a respite from the pummeling noise and frenetic pace of Manhattan, where i work.
So, i've tried to laugh it off. I'm pretty sure it WAS just a fluke. But i still find myself thinking all sorts of frightened, paranoid thoughts. I mean, here i am, a drop of milk in a bowl of raisins, living in a room with windows overlooking the Gates Ave projects and i start to think crazy, vaguely racist things like, 'what am i the whitey in the window for target practice?' and now when i walk around i can't help but feeling acutely out of place. I can't help but wonder if my presence is resented. I can't help but fear that my head will be shot off when i get up to go the potty at 2am. This is what fear has wrought.
Don't get me wrong, i'm not holed up in my closet in a bulletproof vest or anything. My experience is tame compared with what others i know have seen, heard, and experienced. Like my friends who were mugged at gunpoint not a far cry from here, like the gunshots i heard outside their apartment in Crown Heights or the man shot on the next street over from them in front of three police cars. This is the big city, kids, and i'm lucky that i slept through the shattering of my naivety. Some plaster in my water is a small thing, after all. I've ingested worse.
