Serendipity and missing home.

This is bonus blog! No...there is no prize at the end. No...you don't get entered into a contest just for reading.  And no...there will be no number to call for monetary compensation in the last paragraph...or is there... This bonus is that this blog is a two-fer. I saw something and it made me think of two entirely different topics. Rather than bore you with two blogs, I'm cramming them into this one. You're welcome...

So here you are. This week's entry is about the kite in this picture (know you can barely see it...blame my crappy camera phone!). I was walking home one evening and above me was a reminder of my childhood: a mad bull kite.  A mad bull kite is a homemade kite. You can't go to a store and buy one (or at least, I haven't seen that you can). It's an octagonal kite made from butcher paper to make it durable. It has a hitch in the front to invite air currents and strung across that opening is a flap of paper that loudly announces its presence to other kite flyers. Back home, we would attach razor blades to its tail and have kite battles. Mad bulls are hard to make and even harder to make properly. The skill required to complete one automatically vaulted that boy into the hierarchy of the neighborhood social structure. The kites were dangerous and deadly to other regular kites and I always wanted one. But as I said before, they weren't available for sale and I had just learned how to make a simple kite. Mad bulls weren't in my future.

So here I was on a street in Brooklyn where the tallest structures were multi-family apartment buildings, not trees, with a mad bull kite floating in the sky. It was fluttering loudly above my head, in between apartment buildings and it looked completely out of place. There were no open fields or piers from which to launch its flight. Furthermore, I wondered how it had managed to clear the power lines. I followed the line from the kite and, low and behold, it originated from the roof of one of the buildings! Of course! That's the only way you could get a mad bull up on this street. And that made me realize two things: the ingenious lengths that immigrants go to in order bring aspects of their culture to this land and serendipity. Let's talk about the latter first.

My wife says that I kill people. Now before you go off and call the authorities, let me explain. If I ever, in casual conversation, muse about whether a famous person has died, be assured that if the grim reaper hadn't already visited them, he is on his way to their house! I once told my wife, while at a Yankees game, that the guy announcing Derek Jeter had recorded that intro before he died. Problem? The man wasn't actually dead...then. Three days later he passed away! That happens all the time. I also "talk things up". I'll mention something or wonder about its existence and poof! there is a news report about it. She says I need to talk up some money! And that happened to me with the kite. I had JUST finished reading the chapter in the Kite Runner that talked about the kite fight on the train and I walk out to see this kite from MY childhood flying above me. Ridiculous coincidence or maybe a harbinger... Either way, I wondered if that happens to other people as often as it happens to me.

The other issue is that this kite was flying in the sky at all. Think about it: someone had to have wanted to desperately fly this kite near their home. I live a short train ride from Prospect Park and a bus ride from Floyd Bennett Field, both ideal places for kites. But here was someone who wanted to have this particular experience in this specific place on this day. He or she was going to make it happen then and there.  They took the time to make this kite (a mad bull takes hours to make) and found their way to that roof and just like that, they were transported to their homeland. No passport needed. I see this everywhere. Snippets of a former life, a distant culture burgeoning in the concrete jungle. Hindu worship altars in front yards scarcely larger than the offering itself. Steelbands practicing in garages crammed together in a space like a high school rock band. And the list goes on. We find ways to make this place seem more like home, no matter the inconvenience. To us, it's worth it. It's hard enough to survive in NYC to have to do so without the comforts of home. So we cook meals for 40 people out of kitchens in Queens studios apartments. We do tai chi in Chinatown parks next to drug addicts. And we fly kites from the roofs of Brooklyn apartment building. Don't judge us...we miss our homes.

These are my thoughts...what are yours?