Spreadeagle | Main | VET TIME FOR OYBEAN
November 21, 2003
FLIGHT PATTERNS
I’m a sucker for sitting on window ledges late at night. Sometimes, if the city is quiet and dark enough, when I am tired enough to very still, my legs stretched out to the length of the sill and back straight against the vertical window casing, I feel my human self dissolve into the blank anonymity of the brownstone’s eyes. It’s at these moments when it feels like I’m observing the pure nature of the city, sitting so still that I can capture even the most minute of details, the smallest sliver of movement.
Last night I discovered flight patterns. They began with two parallel bright lights far in the distance. Two buildings framed them. As I watched, the lights grew slightly closer, slowly rising above the striated apartments of Brooklyn; in their wake grew smaller versions of the same yellow-hued light. It was as if I was sitting against the screen of an old video game, watching fleets of fireflies appear as pixels in the background, moving rhythmically toward the middle ground in timed increments, arching upward, until they rose to an altitude no longer visible to the omniscient eyes of my dwelling.
It seems like such a simple discovery, I know, one that almost everyone bears witness to daily, especially in Brooklyn. But last night, with the thick silence of Park Slope insulating even the sharpest wind, I felt like an invisible explorer witnessing the syncopated movements of the night for the first time.
I still think Park Slope is weird, but it’s starting to grow on me,
Posted by callalillie at November 21, 2003 7:06 AM | Life in the Slope
i lived on the uws for the first 16 years of my life before i realized that one of the flight paths for planes landing at laguardia went right over our house. you'd think i would have noticed the zoom every 5 minutes....
Posted by: dahl at November 21, 2003 9:07 AM
One of the only things that I hate about Brooklyn and especially Prospect Park) is how low the planes fly. It bothered me even before 9/11...but no moreso. Sometimes it feels like someone could reach out the plane window and touch you...or land on you...which really creeps me out.
Posted by: callalillie at November 21, 2003 9:19 AM
i love watching planes approach the airports. it's especially cool at newark liberty (damn jingoistic names).
Posted by: tien at November 21, 2003 9:29 AM
this will probably creep you out further. it's unlikely this will ever happen again, but in 1960 a plane crashed on Sterling Place in the Slope. pretty nasty.
http://psreader.com/article44.html
Posted by: Jimmy Legs at November 21, 2003 11:08 AM
I know! There was actually a front page article about that plane crash in the Park Slope Reader. It was very interesting.
Posted by: callalillie at November 21, 2003 3:07 PM
last night i was in park slope at my boyfriends and i kept watching the planes flying from out his window - i wonder if i would have even noticed them had you not pointed it out...
Posted by: dahl at November 22, 2003 3:59 PM
I never noticed the planes much at all until one bad day in 2001. Now I seem to hear every single one that flies over 7th Avenue. I can see them coming out of Newark down across the harbor too.
(Join the coop -- it gets weirder and better still.)
Posted by: maurice at December 5, 2003 2:41 PM
