If You Think Mailing Bills Affirms Your New Sense Of Location...
...try doing your laundry in the local 'mat!

But what's even way, way more cooler? I went further south of the laundromat to find a cage-buggy/wagon to carry my laundry back and forth. I can try to describe what this buggy is; I've seen them in abundance in Harlem and scarcely elsewhere. They are rectangular, upright, with bigger wheels on the back than the front, with a handle. They fold, are made of metal tubes that are so thin that calling them spikes isn't entirely inapproriate. When you push or pull them, they sound like a sustained jazz percussion note. They come in black, blue, and red mainly.

Wow. Digress much? Anyway, I found it in a variety store two blocks south of me and made a heart-wringing discovery in the meanwhile. Anyone ever read "The Secret Garden"? Well, I discovered mine two blocks south.

Once upon a time, long ago, an aged mother used to take her young son back to the land of her youth and her kinsmen. She had tried to make a life with an even older prince on the west coast of this land, but alas, the marriage was not so to be. She had to leave her infant son on that west coast and make a life for herself far upstate away from the husband and her son. In that time, the woman's husband did little to nothing in the way of keeping her son in touch with her kin, so she would come back to the west shore on her days off from her work and take the boy some avenues east to the province called Harlem where she would take him around to his aunt and uncles.

On one of the streets in Harlem reigned a Baron who used to cut hair in a small shop. The woman's uncle would sit across the street from the Baron on the benches where chess was played. Sometimes the uncle would be in the Baron's shop. Each time the mother would bring her son into that street or that barber shop, she would be greeted with loud salutation and open-mouthed smiles. They would call the mother's first name aloud and talk with her as though she were not really a mother, but a beautiful young woman with friends who was greatly loved. Her son would watch in fascination. Once the son became entralled with the chess game at the bench where his uncle sat. He discovered it was not really chess, but a game of "cards". He wished he too could have a deck of these "cards" but his mother did not have the money to buy them. Just as the son tried to accept that he would not have his wish fulfilled, his uncle gave him a five-dollar bill to purchase himself his own deck! The son was overjoyed! He even has coins enough left over for candy!

Eventually, the mother gained enough gold to be able to afford to take her son upstate with her, far from the west coast of island Manhattan and the uncle and aunts and the Baron. They would return yearly for a New Year's celebration at one of the aunt's apartments but it was just not the same. From that time onward, the son had many strange and fantastic and some awful adventures, but nothing ever was like the isle of Manhattan and the uncle and the Baron.

Until today. Two blocks south of me is the street where my uncle played cards at the stone chess table outside the schoolyard. Baron's barber shop, (that was his actual name), is gone, replaced by a new, nice apartment facade. That block contains my secret garden, where some of my best childhood city memories were made.

Where I live--I think it's where I was meant to be.

And speaking of 'meant to be', I made it to church again today. This time, all the way to Brooklyn Tabernacle. And this time as it seems every time I go there, I am reached by either a song or a sermon. Today, I got it from both. No doubt in my mind, that's the place I'm "meant" to go.

Now, I need to get the job I'm "meant" to have. (Never satisfied, are we? What a species!)

Me at 2/01/2004 05:24:00 PM

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