How Having A Conure Precludes One From Moving to Groovy Brooklyn

Last January I went to NY and stayed with my French chef/poet/fellow cheese freak friend Robin. To show me world class fromage as well as poetry, Robin gave me a tour of Murray's Cheese's underground cheese caves, and we went to a reading at the KGB Bar. Back in her Brooklyn neighborhood, I walked her senior greyhound around the brownstoned streets, we ate delicious food a block from her house (arugula with thinly sliced pears and gorgonzola, a couple of blood orange cosmos, kale-stuffed ravioli served in a broth made of the rind of parmesan), got bagels delivered to her third story walk-up--that lovely apartment filled with light, books, and edible delights. Her apartment was a block from the subway where I had easy access to the likes of the Museum of Art and Design, where I saw a wickedly smart exhibit on embroidery (who knew it could be so cool?), as well as the delicious and famous St. Mark's Bookshop. In the city, we ate chocolate bread pudding in a store that only sold that dessert. I was too full to go to the pommes frites place (dammit! www.pommesfrites.ws), so sad, the two times we walked by. I was awed and addicted to Pinkberry frozen yogurt--tart, light, mine ordered: vanilla with chestnuts and monstrous blackberries, me wanting to order it all over again even as I finished the dish in front of me, me gasping that NY and CA are the only places one can get the stuff. I saw Paul Giamatti, scowling about the Village. I even met a cartooniologist--really! (www.tmotley.com) Ah NY, ah Brooklyn--

I went home after five days, not wanting to go, but Robin and her dog Hazel walked me with my rolly suitcase two blocks from her apartment to a busier road, I hailed a cab, and like that, I was gone.

While I was there, I started to exclaim in front of my hosts, I'm moving to Brooklyn! In my heart's core, however, I knew this to be a lie. Jonesy would never move there--she wants out of cities, not towards. Sometimes I do, too. I have a fear aggressive pup who would be impossible to walk nicely along the sidewalks of the burrough. And her barking tendencies would not make her a good apartment dweller.

And then there is the bird. Oh, loud-mouthed one. He would not make a very good neighbor.

I was implored on my visit by Robin to not talk about how cute SSW was, for her husband Evan needed the littlest of coaxing to begin bringing up again we should get a bird. Robin is wise and knows that a parrot's shrieking goes right through the walls of an apartment. A canary, a cockatiel, but, no no no, do not bring home a conure, dear.

I can hear my own SSW in the summer a block away when the window is open and he sees me leaving with the dogs in the morning. He has ears like a mother listening to her teen sneaking in after curfew (his acute hearing is due, of course, to him being a prey species protecting his feathery bum). Does he hear the dog tags jingling as we return? Does he know which car is mine as I pull up in front of the house? Or does he alarm at any random car door, any person talking/walking by?

So Lulu will live another 10 years probably. And SSW another 30. By then, I'll be 67 and my student loans will be paid off, but by then, the groovy brownstones of Brooklyn will probably be renting for a sum I can't even fathom could be real. And to be the rain on the picnic I am known to be, isn't vacation always so much more fantastic than the actual day-to-day, plod to work, go buy groceries, pay yer bills, that drags any good fun down, no matter where you live?

I could go for some Pinkberry and pommes frites right this minute.