We sent a note to members of The Rumpus Book Club asking for a paragraph or two about where they live.
**
I live in Brooklyn, about two blocks from the Promenade (which would be called an esplanade in Manhattan, or anywhere else really, but language changes once you enter Brooklyn) and it was there, on a park bench, looking at the river, that I read the book club selection. I live alone in a tiny studio above an ice cream shop (that I never visit) and a thrift store (that I visit too much) and through my one and only window, I see trees and water towers and tiny terrace gardens. My studio is quite so tiny that a visitor once asked how it felt to live in someone else’s kitchen because that is how she felt sitting on my daybed looking at a half of a wall that was a pseudo-kitchen. I asked her how it felt to insult something someone cared about in a way that belonged to that person and that person only. (She apologized but I refused to give her any more wine.) I live in Brooklyn in a tiny, expensive, conveniently located studio that feels like another world because it is mine and only mine.
***
