Terra Nova

Today I walked around the corner to wash some shirts at the laundromat. I met the Laundry Queen, who is said to impart her disguised wisdom in the crudest ways possible. When she saw a pair of underwear on the floor she exclaimed, "Someone dropped their drawers," and one woman answered, "Them drawers are too small to be mine. I wear an extra-large." The laundry queen responded, "Girl, don't even go there." I stood outside eating a cherry popsicle with an Italian man who has lived in the neighborhood since 1953 and his wife from West Virginia near the Ohio border who has lived in Little Italy for 30 years.


We talked about all kinds of things, from the names common in West Virginia- - double girl names, like Deborah Lynn. They told me about the best bakery in the neighborhood, called Terra Nova, or new earth. I think about a poetry collection I once read, I think by Louise Gluck, called the same. Apparently they bake fresh bread that melts in your mouth and sell premade pizza dough for 65 cents. I also got a recommendation for a hair salon to get my hair cut: Lucy's, down Arthur Avenue, for $15. I told them I was worried I wouldn't be able to find a place that could cut white people's hair (like in Ghana) and they told me, no, there aren't any "chop shops" around here. They told me I need to go to the Bronx Zoo, and I myself can't believe I still haven't been. Wednesday is free, so with the help of these new friends I decided tomorrow I will go to get my haircut and then walk to the Zoo, cornered at the main road. The chili dogs and cheese fries both came highly recommended to me.


If I were going to write an essay about today I would describe the rich unsweetened taste of my whole fruit popsicle, a shade of mauve lipstick. I would capture the dialogue of the Laundromat Queen, and somehow bottle the burning smell of my clothes when they are finally dry. I would mark the temperature, note the summer heat lacking humidity, remarkable for late July in New York. Most of all, I would write about my own terra nova, this new place on which I've put my feet, clad in low heels, or business-sensible flats, or barefoot on recycled carpet. I would describe myself, unsure and uncertain, standing on terra nova so strange and different I cannot even feel the dirt or grass beneath my toes.



http://www.terranovabakery.com http://www.bronxzoo.com