What I actually see

Never Done: Went to Brooklyn College

I've been holding tickets to see a new Gershwin musical for months now. It came through as a Groupon, and the show itself was of some interest to me, but the clincher was that the show was in the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College. Brooklyn College has been a mythical place for me for about 20 years (since hearing CW's stories of her college days) and even though I have actually lived in Brooklyn now for nigh on nine years (not excluding the Exile in Jersey years) I had never actually gone there.

But when I woke up on show day, I was still sick, and I had a hard time distinguishing among my priorities. On the one hand, I needed to get better. On the other hand, I have this commitment to doing something every day I've never done, and I had gone 6 months without skipping a day. On the one hand, I didn't care very much about the musical. On the other hand, Go to Brooklyn College has been on my Never Done list since the start. On the one hand, I could have gone to Brooklyn College any old day. On the other hand, it's been in my calendar for this day for months.

I decided to go. In retrospect, the wrong decision, but that was just because the show sucked, and I ended up having to leave early anyhow because I was really too sick to be out, but I did see Brooklyn College campus and get a little fresh air.

Who knew that Brooklyn College had a quad? And ivy? And a white clock tower? This was nothing like what I pictured from CW's stories, 20 years ago. I pictured something more urban. More of a clump of nondescript buildings, retrofitted for a college. Or something more like Hunter -- with concrete exterior spaces, but no quad, lawn, brick, ivy. It's strange that I have kept some of my old images of Brooklyn in tact, despite actually living here. Which makes me wonder how much I actually look around, and what I actually see of where I live.