Tuesday, August 21, 2012.
I had a meeting with LAMBDA fellow poet and high school teacher Charan P. Morris at Astor Row Cafe at 4 o'clock.
I finished work at 2 o'clock so I decided to ride up the West Side Highway and swing by African Voices to personally invite Carolyn A. Butts to Raw Fiction's launch at FiveMyles on September 15. The magazine shares an office with the NAACP and as I sat next to this driven editor and journalist I couldn't help but conjure W.E.B. DuBois and think about The Crisis. Harlem in the early 1900s, in the 1920s. Harlem a century later: Red Rooster and Starbucks, The Apollo and H&M, The Library, The Schomburg Center, rent prices going up while community staples are shutting down.
Hue-Man Bookstore. I rode up Frederick Douglass Boulevard. It has a bike path etched along the side - I love how powerful the bike lobby is in this city.... if only those people could rally for our schools and social services then we might actually see some progressive change. Instead they get lanes carved into roads that push out ancient business owners because they are now safe roads in safe neighborhoods attracting all sorts of safe people. The city needs more bike lanes so Harlem's jazz legacy can eke out a living based on the generosity of bussed-in tourists.
I saw Hue-Man Bookstore. An empty storefront. What will move in? A real estate agency? A Five-Guys burger joint? An organic restaurant? Owned by how many people who have only been to Harlem once?
I passed the building that once housed Hue-Man Bookstore and I felt something akin to disillusionment washing through my gut.
I crossed 125th Street and continued north. On my right appeared Amsterdam News. Inspiration resurfaced and an idea for a really cool field trip was planted.
After getting a coffee and chips from the deli I go to when I go to The Schomburg Center and sitting on somebody's stoop watching people coming and going from the Countee Cullen Library I popped into the Schomburg to see what was up in the front gallery. Gordon Parks: 100 Moments. Gordon Parks was the first black artist to produce and direct a Hollywood film, "The Learning Tree."
A lot of thought and inspiration can happen in two hours. As can a lot of cycling. I rolled down to 130th and locked up outside of Astor Row Cafe, named for Astor Row which is the nickname for the stretch of semi-attached row houses along the south side of 130th Street between Fifth and Lenox.
There are some people that you know you're not going to get a lot of time to talk to so it's important to make the most of the conversation. Charan P. Morris is one of those people. She is a straight-shouldered, straight-talking kind of poet, performer, educator. And I wanted to know what she thought ... about education, community, gentrification. I wanted the reality check I knew she'd be able to give me. She, like me, speaks without smiling when she's passionate, her eyes clear and vision focused.
College: Everyone should have the opportunity to get there.
Literacy: Our youth need to learn how to read and think critically. Literacy is necessary in high schools because our elementary schools and middle schools have failed our youth and continue to push them out toward adulthood.
Charter Schools: No. Not a solution.
The Future:
Charter Schools, Bike Lanes and Red Rooster
The Past:
Hue-Man. Public Schools. Baldwin.
But not if we can incite change. How? I don't know. But it won't happen unless we try.
After eating a toasted sesame baguette filled with mozzarella tomato and avocado with an iced hibiscus tea, discussing Raw Fiction and the logistics of connections made I said goodbye to Charan and headed back to The Schomburg to meet up with Akeema-Zane and catch the Moneta Sleet, Jr. exhibit in the back gallery. Glorious photojournalist. Rosa Parks. Lena Horne. Martin Luther King, Jr. singing and playing piano with Coretta Scott King and their daughter, Bernice. Eartha Kitt and her baby, Kitt. Haile Selassie.
Akeema took me to The Shrine. We caught up. Recollected about a movie seen and totally forgotten over a year before. It was a French film she remembered. African. Cote d'Ivoire. And out tumbled a loose storyline of images of love, betrayal, violence, obsession, lesbians, homophobia, friendship, exile and a heroic return. Who called Jared Diamond a racist? We spoke about her love for Octavia Butler and disbelief in the universe. I hate outer space and all discussion of conquering("exploring") it but I love the universe and her energy, even when she completely baffles me with her lessons and methods of interference. Imagine though. We've never been to outer space. There isn't even an outer space. No man on the moon, Curiosity is zapping some dust on a rock that is floating around in our very own atmosphere. Man has duped himself into believing far more absurd impossibilities than the existence of the universe, our planetary system and life outside of earth.
What is the purpose of mankind within a universal context? Probably insignificant.
What is the purpose of the individual within a universal context? Irrelevant.
What is the purpose of mankind on the planet earth? Arbitrary.
What is the purpose of the individual on the planet earth? To be significant in his community.
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