First Day of School

First Day of School

I crossed City University around 7 am and jotted down the steps of Frederick Douglass Park, the marker of two neighborhoods, in a state of slight, or not so slight, shock. Children of all ages donning street clothes and uniforms of primary colors carried their new, patched up, or still holey backpacks and marched past me. We were all climbing or descending the hill of many stairs that I have only just begun to conquer. The whole journey takes just 20 minutes and already I am motivated by my favorite early morning bodega on 135th street. A large coffee with one cream and one sugar for a dollar and a comfortable feel that has brought be back three or four times. Perhaps it is the smile of the shy cashier or the variety of the regulars, but it's like that here...to make it your own you have to connect these dots, these places where you sense some comfort and stitch them up to create your spot, your New York, your Harlem. The trick is not to prick your finger too many times because at the end of the day there won't be anyone to kiss your fingertips except yourself.

I live in a Dominican neighborhood. At the local wine store the owner kept describing every bottle as "nice, good, sweet, smooth," and the really good wines as "niiice, sweeet, smoooth, good!" Confusion set in as I looked at the French wine he was recommending and the neighboring pretty Chilean Malbec bottle with a deep purple embossed label. The color had been sticking with me everywhere in the City and a patch of it was even hanging in my new 10x10 room. I went with the "niiiice, sweeet, smoooth, reeally nice" French one after all and thought to myself, "How do we know?" "How can we know?" I was needing affirmation when the owner asked me if I was "new." I admittedly said yes, and he warmly responded, "Welcome home!" He then asked me where I lived. My mind immediately put up a guard as I peered passed the shiny wood floor to the littered, populated street and so, rather tensely, I answered, "Oh just over there near Amsterdam." Then he said he delivered. Forget it, I thought, and asked him for his card.

A glass of wine, like milk, can do a body good. I am reflecting, thinking, and trying to establish my new station in this most recent revision. From the emotionally disturbed child that ran out of my classroom on a whim, to my syllabus not being ready as promised, it was a day. And then there were all those eyes, that hundred pair of brown eyes that were deciding....that were making their minds up about me as I was about them. At once I felt all the need, the hope, the cynicism, the warmth and the chill.
This school of "social change"
This marker of the Great American Jazz Age.
What does it all mean
exactly?

I am finding out quickly.

Cheers and more to come soon.