First-Year Writing

Among Other Things...Potholders

I've been thinking alot about what in fantasy we call magic; in religion, prayer; and science, string theory because when my dog was hit by a car and bolted off in flight mode I felt like she was in a different dimension for the five days she was missing, and it was prayer, the magic of dreams and portals, and a healing candle from New Orleans that I lit in my kitchen by her food and water bowls that brought her back. A suitcase of someone's life packed by his daughter decades ago is a time machine full of such magic and inter-dimensional portals. When I had my housewarming a few weeks ago my aunt asked me what I needed, and I said potholders. As we were saying goodbye on the first day we began going through the papers in her father's suitcase, she asked me if I still needed potholders; I said yes, and she gave me two that she had made for her father around fifty years ago and that were in the suitcase. It felt like magic: her father blessing our project and saying to me that there are things in the suitcase of value to me and my personal life. The importance of the kitchen--a place of stability and sustenance--is where we eat. There is more here to tell about how people in the land of the dead use texts to talk to us in the land of the living and the story behind the pot I needed the potholders for. For another time...

The Papers of Paul Morgan Genge

I'm starting a new project. My aunt has a suitcase of her father's papers. Her father was Hollywood actor Paul Morgan Genge, best known for his role as Mike in the movie Bullit (1968). My aunt has been meaning to go through his papers for decades now. What is our responsibility to the legacy of our parents? What of value and to whom might we find? My aunt has asked me to help her with the latter question in the months following her diagnosis of stage four pancreatic cancer. I told her I would help her and document the process on my blog. Sometimes all we need is a deadline to get a project moving. Today was the first step. Taking out and opening the suitcase. The next step is sorting through and organizing the papers--letters, manuscripts, published writings, notebooks, daily calendars, random notes, among other things.

Rainbow Flag at Half-Mast

I showed up City Hall today to fill out paperwork to be an Education Consultant for the NSA (Newark Street Academy). I parked my car on Hill Street and walked towards the gold-domed building, and I think first clocked the banner for Ramadan and then the banner for father's day, and then the rainbow flag at half-mast. I was wearing Tom Ford sunglasses bought two days earlier from Closet Savvy Consignment to accessorize an outfit designed for telling a group of colleagues at a university with a diverse student body that as group of faculty our lack of diversity may be a problem. As the only black person in the room my high yellow and high fashion was double armour. When I saw the rainbow flag in front of City Hall billowing in a soft wind at half-mast, my eyes under those Tom Fords welled with tears. The acknowledgement of my city of solidarity with the tragedy of my community as a tragedy of our nation. Half-mast. It was a moment of rare institutional love. Fleeting. The problem of what some may call over-thinking is the lack of rainbow banner on city hall during pride month. You get solidarity in your horror not in your pride. Steps. I took them down past the guards and metal detectors into the basement of City Hall where I was blessed with the youth farm-stand of the Newark Conservancy. I bought a green juice for my meeting, and when I left, I loaded up on mustard greens, swiss chard, herbs, radishes, strawberries, and jam.

The Irony of a Managment Company Named Alpha

There's the moment when people become energized in the moment of being harrased by power. It is when solidarity moves from being concept to being emotion. I am somebody who is careful about where I choose to live. As an avant-garde artist raised in Brooklyn I'm pretty comfortable many places and have been trained how to move through most geographies with safe passage. When I moved into my building I moved in when there were more vacancies than applicants, and I had my pick of apartments and chose a north-facing studio on the ninth floor right above the tree-line with views of the Passaic River, the Basillica, the sunrise over the Manhattan skyline, and several times a year when the conditions are right rainbows. I came in when apartments were advertised at a fixed-rate deal of $699 a month and a 5% discount for students and City employees. Security deposit was $500 if you had good credit. My next door neighbors were a large family with about as many adults as kids and would play music so loud sometimes my glassware would shake so hard I worried they would break. They were evicted and two young men who work at clothes stores in Manhattan moved in. They also sometimes would play music so loud my glassware would shake but not quite loud enough for me to ever worry that they would break. In this time the woman who had been living next to the elevators for decades and would sometimes take her exercise walking up and down the long hallway moved out. You begin to hear stories about doing cut-rate renovations to raise rents--fixed rate must be a thing of the past. The demographics of the building begin to change. The security however remains always poised to treat you as the threat to the building they see you as if you cross certain lines like talking to your friend too long in the driveway as she drops you off in the evening. The next door neighbors are also about to be evicted although I did hear them playing Amy Winehouse this weekend so maybe they'll be staying.

It was about a week ago when security started harrasing me to sign a sheet of paper because I have a dog. When I read the sheet, and it said that no dogs could even visit, I said I wasn't signing anything and would talk to the management. There is a feeling of anxiety when you have a puppy that goes to the bathroom about six times a day and security at the door that is harrassing you to sign a paper that feels like to sign would be signing-up for your eviction. The German flight attendant who smokes in the front of the building as she chats with neighbors or reads her book, was standing in her uniform and suitcases at the side of the building as I walking the puppy. All the neighbors have received the three sheets of paper that particularly call out pitt bulls as dangerous dogs. The pitt bull culture in our building is a community of love and support--Cashew, Taz, Blue, Duke, Afrekete. My neighbor asks me what I am going to do. I understand pitt bulls and smokers are the easiest to target because there are laws in New Jersey to regulate our movements. However, I understand that the issue is not about pitt bulls or smoking (especially because even as Security asks residents to refrain from smoking in front of the building, they leave their SUVs idling in the front). The issue is about removing as many of the old tenants as possible who have affordable leases to raise the rents as they bring in new tenants. When overnight you change the culture regulating people's homes by making it more oppressive it is the first tactic in alienating people from the land. But when your neighbors who have also now read that you are being targeted because of your happy little pitt bull puppy who stops and looks at everyone coming in and out of the lobby waiting for words of praise and love and when she receives them her long skinny tail starts wagging are asking what you are planning to do and when you explain you are understanding this as a process of capitalism and that they're targetting us to get us to raise the rents everyone understands what you're talking about and hoping you are planning to stay and fight. In other words, the next battle the pavilion tenants are going to win is the battle of the Alphas--does the management company really think they can out alpha a group of pitt bull owners. Mistake number one was to leave the notes on the door late Friday afternoon so that all of us can feel the solidarity build and plan our strategies over the weekend before we report to the office on Monday.

It is important to understand that this is happening under the context of a policy battle around how much rents can be raised. Two years ago we passed a City Ordinance to raise rents at the price of the consumer price index or 4%, whichever is lower. A building owner is now claiming hardship and filing suit to raise rents by 17%. The battle between tenants and owners drags on in the chambers of City Hall.