I'm in NEW YORK CITY. Brooklyn to be exact. Fort Greene to be even exacter. I'm here for the week. Getting ready for the reading of my new play and just immersing myself in some real deal East Coast magic. It's weird. Every time I visit NYC it's as if I never left five years ago. I fall right into the groove. New York City has the effect on people: the ability to embrace you, slap you, kiss you, lick you, get sick on you and remind you that nothing else in the world will love you quite like it does. And of course you fall for it each and every time.

I'll leave you with this: last night I had dinner over some friends, and after the amazing roasted chicken and South African wine and an episode of Lost, I was told this crazy story: The couple in the bottom apartment had a cat. One night they called my friend Natasha crying and weeping because the cat had died. It was 3 am, but Natasha went to them anyway 'cause she's sweet like that. When she walked into their apartment, the couple was standing there in pajamas holding a cat that had already reached rigor mortis—it was frozen stiff. Then the couple asked the cat to kiss Natasha goodbye. Natasha did not kiss the cat goodbye. She just smiled and went back to her apartment where she washed down with CLOROX.

A few weeks later, the couple asked Natasha if she would check in on their apartment because they were going out of town for a few days. She did. And one day she was getting some water and decided to chill the glass with some ice. When she opened the freezer, guess who.... ? Right. The cat. Frozen inside a plastic bag and looking right at her. When she casually mentioned it to the couple upon their return they said they were keeping the cat frozen until they were able to make a trip out to their sister's to bury the cat in the sister's catnip garden.

That was three months ago. The cat is still in the freezer. You got to love NYC.

Until next time,

Keith

While I was attending an art opening at the Tilford Art Group a woman with blonde locks came roaring over to me about the Midwest. She was from the Midwest and so were the two young filmmakers she was talking to. And someone had pointed out that I was originally from the Midwest, too. I believe they were having the cliched conversation about the Midwest and its ability to churn out artists: Toni Morrison, Bootsy Collins, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Dorothy Dandridge, Ruby Dee, and Kathleen Battle.

The woman introduced me to her musician-husband, also a Midwesterner, but a fellow Cincinnatian. Of course I excitedly asked him what part of Cincinnati he was from. He said the Laurel Homes. Although, I grew up in the quiet outskirts of Cincinnati [woods, deer and all], when my dad's family originally migrated to Cincinnati from rural Georgia they moved into the West End which included the Laurel Homes and Lincoln Court. And over the years those areas have changed quite a bit, crime encroached and so did poverty, and more recently gentrification. The Laurel Homes are no longer there. But this musician-husband lived there during the crime and poverty. I asked him did he know my dad's cousins, the Usherys. And of course he did. Not only did he know them, but he said they were Cincinnati legends. Jake Ushery Jr., my dad's first cousin, had a reputation for fighting off twenty Cincinnati cops at one point in his life. Twenty. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The musician-husband even said some of Jake's offspring [there were 14 children altogether], had murdered, burned, fought anybody willing to challenge their good nature in the good ole Laurel Homes. [Yes, the Usherys were also known to be a good-hearted, generous clan.]

Now, I did remember hearing about one of Jake's daughters being arrested for murdering her married lover. And an older son being imprisoned for dumping gasoline on someone and watching them go up in flames, but I didn't know Daddy Jake Ushery had a reputation in the City of Cincinnati of one black man you did NOT mess with.

After I left the art opening at Tilford Art Group, I called my dad to confirm and inquire. And he confirmed. My father told me how years ago he and his brother Robert, and Jake's brothers Willie Florence and James Aaron, were driving through the little town of Crawfordville, Georgia [the origin of the Adkins and Ushery clans], and that they were driving at high-speed and then pulled over by the Sheriff. My father said they were all asked to get out of the car and that he was certain something horrible was going to happen. It was Crawfordville, Georgia after all and the KKK was still in effect and my father was a young man from Ohio just out for a joyride with his cousins.

So they got out of the car and the Sheriff decided he was going to take Willie Florence, the high-speed driver, down to the jail. And that's when Jake's little brother James Aaron spoke up. "You ain't taking him nowhere. I dare you. I dare you to touch him. You better not even look at him." My father laughed when retelling this, but couldn't believe it when it was happening. The boldness, the courage. A black man was bravely confronting a white cop in "racist" rural Georgia.

After I hung up with my dad, I couldn't help but to think about my father's cousins, the Usherys. Their unwillingness to be harassed, to be mistaken for less than human. Of course the murdering rampage of Jake's offspring I don't condone. But I wonder if they inherited this unrelenting pride from their father's people, but once placed in the poverty and crime of a marginalized black neighborhood, these warriors morphed from vigilantes of justice into good-hearted felons.

I will say a large part of me is proud to know Jake fought off twenty cops, and that James Aaron DARED a rural Georgia sheriff to jail his brother Willie Florence. I'm very proud to know that some black men in my world refuses to be subhumanized by anybody. I am proud to know the Legend of Jake Ushery [a man from the Midwest] survives even here in southern California.

Until next time,

Keith

I'm in between Friday errands, a mop down of the kitchen floor and a trip out to Santa Monica for music, literature and a peak at the sun setting behind the Pacific Ocean. It's quite a spectacle. The sun's setting, I mean. It often rips open the sky with orange and guavas and burnt bloods and purple Jimi Hendrix hazes. I often wonder if it's sad to go and having some galactic temper tantrum, or if it's just showing off, reminding us all how gracious we should be for its unconditional solar love.

I wanted to say this today: the sky is our measure for how large and wide we can live our lives. How unlimited and profound and colorful and thunderous our lives can be. And as long as there is a sky, there is life, waiting, arms open wide with a sun bulldozing significance all over the heavens.

I guess I'm simply saying: Take the sun's lead. Live. OH...and there's ALWAYS a tomorrow.

Until next time,

Keith

Check it out: You know how you go to events with lots of people, like malls, or movies, or poetry slams, or... film festivals. And you attend these film festivals and people approach you about your work. The people are usually full of congratulations and adorations with a rare and occasional "I hate you and your daddy's momma." And of course, they ask for a card. And you oblige. Out of the need to share your experience or expertise, or simply offer your support to some budding artist [or website maker]. Or that they just make you feel so important, so you egotistically surrender.

Well, last weekend, at the Arizona Black Film Festival, I did such a thing. After a two minute sparse and thin conversation with a tall brother [i'm talking the likes of the Mighty Green Giant] who told me about his website and that he wanted to start screening short films on it, I handed over the postcard of my film that also conveniently had my email addy printed on the back.

The first email from the tall brother arrived the day before yesterday: It was a simple, "Thanks for allowing me to stay in contact." I replied with a simple and succinct: No problem.

The second email was a bit more convoluted: Something about check out my website. Something about spiritual children and iii's that get stuck. Something about burning religion and clutching "grammer" [yes, it was spelled that way]. And some interesting thing about "clits and dicks". I replied with a simple and succinct: I'm confused. [I also checked out his website that was simply two images of what looked like Cala Lillies-hyphen-vaginas. And with a quote from Jesus that said: Let me be your Friend.] Yeh, I was REAL confused. And starting to get a bit spooked.

The final email was a hodge-podge of bible verses and poetic ramblings about the birthday scene in my film and Oedipus complexes and the book of Matthew, Chapter three, verse eleven and then a trailing away with being ordained by the High Priest.

Look... I don't know what the Mighty Green Giant was trying to communicate. He could have been trying to explain a path to a higher spiritual self, or trying to convert me to the ways of Jesus because he felt my film was tainted by evil, or he could have been simply trying to make a new friend. Whatever it was, I was not [and am not] willing to gamble on the personal agendas of strangers I briefly meet at film festivals. And not once did he mention screening my film on his website.

By the way, after I replied to his first email with a simple and succinct: No problem, the Mighty Green Giant responded with a: I just started working on my website FIVE minutes ago.

I tell you, the LESSONS learned...

Until next time,

Keith

Early Saturday morning I drove across Interstate 10 into Phoenix, Arizona to attend the Arizona Black Film Showcase. My short film INVISIBLE SCREAM was being screened there. It was a 5 hour trip with a landscape that would make your soul drop, TWO TIMES! The desert is an amazingly beautiful terrain. Cactus, Joshua Trees, tumbleweed and dry red mountains that leave your lungs arid and angry, but their momentousness has you reveling in how greatly created this earth.

I found Phoenix to be an extremely clean and new city. Lots of clean people with clean haircuts walking down clean streets with a backdrop of clean air [it actually rained after a 130-day dry period].

Now about the clean film festival. During the screening of my film the audience was with it, laughing, screaming... that is until the main character [a black man] falls and the serial killer [a white man] gets the upper hand. When that happened their tone changed to vocal disappointment. Which is fine. I don't expect every audience member to embrace the whys and hows of my socially-charged short horror film. But I do expect respect. After the screening, the moderator of my film talk back announced there would be no post-discussion. Then after I shouted that I was there, he brought me down to the front and attempted to reprimand me for not registering [which was a lie], then after that he asked for my name in this "let's get this over with" tone. All of this over a booming microphone. Talk about embarrassing, talk about feeling unwelcomed by your own people. After a series of questions ranging from "why did you let the black man fall?" and "what was the significance of the cicadas?", I thought Why is this moderator not participating in giving context to me as an artist and a fellow black filmmaker. Why is he letting the audience throw daggers [not all of them, but definitely enough of them]? Then I thought: Maybe because my film was not neat enough, not clean enough. It was a bit too dirty for Phoenix. They need simple and clean.

Needless to say, I was feeling a little disappointed in the cleanliness of Phoenix. Then I met Kathy Singer.

The following day I walked into a "Southwest" novelty store in the Arizona Center with my traveling companions Tamika and Jimmie. Kathy, the store's owner, walked up to us and I immediately sensed something pleasantly urgent behind her eyes. From her heart. She smoked [which you don't expect to see in Phoenix]. And her voice was loudly raspy with a history of difficult experience and harsh realities. Then she just... unfolded her life before us. She was born in Florida. Her two children were kidnapped from her when they were toddlers. One was taken to Yemen. Fifteen years ago she finally located her son in Yemen, and recently went there for a visit and told us the most amazing story of a people who beamed with clumsy and honest humanity. I tell you, Kathy was a stand out. She reminded me that amidst an arid, dry and clean environment, there is always life, ready and willing to be thorny and bruised. Kathy lost her children, found them, went to Yemen and seemed to have be revived by the possibility of humanity. When she talked to us, I felt like I was participating in a conversation, a real and genuine exchange of not so clean ideas and a not so clean life. And, oh, how I so needed that.

Until next time,

Keith

I've been a little busy lately: conquering L.A.'s unusually cold weather [it snowed], playing host to an out-of-town guest, and actually trying to make a decision about going forward with a reading scheduled in NYC in a few weeks.

Let me start with the weather. My God it's COLD! It feels like an east coast winter. Although an east coast winter these days consist of 75 degree temperatures and thundering tornadoes. But even native Angelinos are expressing their surprise about this cold. Everyone I know wants it to be over. WHERE IS THE HEAT?!!

My out-of-town guest has been a bit disappointed, too. He was expecting 70 degree days with plenty of outdoor eating. An in some interesting attempt to reject the reality of cold, he refuses to pack away his flip flops [i guess he figures he'll at least enjoy the culture of L.A. even if he gets frostbite].

Now... my reading in NYC... yeh, it's quite a sticky situation. The reading was originally scheduled for early March, but due to the artistic director's trip to Italy, the reading was rescheduled for early April. And since then a play entitled MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE has created quite a wildfire about artistic censorship in the American theater. Without going into an exhausting run-down of what happened and who it happened to, I'll say this: The New York Theater Workshop was negotiating the probability of producing this one-woman play about a young American activist crushed to death by a US-made Israeli bulldozer in a last attempt to save a Palestinian home from being demolished. The Royal Court Theatre in London was going to remount the production at the New York Theater Workshop until Jim Nicola, the artistic director, decided to postpone it due to "not enough time" to contextualize the possible political ramifications of such an important piece of theater. And that's when all hell brook loose.

Here's where I come in: My play Crossing America, the story of intra-terrorism in rural America, is now scheduled in a few weeks to be read at the New York Theater Workshop. Add to the recipe that the artistic community has been in cyber-outrage about the theater and its "artistic censorship". Emails and blogs are red with disgust over the theater's alleged cowardly move to postpone My Name is Rachel Corrie. And I understand it all. Meaning, I understand the need to outrage.

Several years ago, the same theater led me on about producing one of my early plays. And I was heartbroken when told they decided not to do it [this happened after a previous discussion about making choices on directors]. I healed and survived and realized every theater has their personality and the power to do what they want, when they want. Which brings me to this: I think the theater made a dangerous decision to postpone My Name is Rachel Corrie. Not because it could easily be tagged as a censorship move, but more because the theater has a reputation for being indecisive and ultimately that is very damaging when it comes to the souls to hard-working, sincere artists. I think what artists need more than anything now is institutions who take a stand, whether it's pro or con. Things are way too watery in the world today. We look toward our artistic leaders to stand their ground. Never waiver. Or if they waiver, be honest about the waivering.

My plea: The New York Theater Workshop become advocates for clarity. The New York Theater Workshop has an amazing history of mounting provocative plays and initiating timely discussions on our ever-shifting globe. We need you to be clear.

Which brings me back to me: I've been uncertain about my scheduled reading at NYTW. And although I do feel there's more to the My Name is Rachel Corrie controversy that will never be revealed, and I don't necessarily believe this is a deliberate matter of censorship, I do hesitate to cross any artistic picket lines [I'm the son of union workers].

But I must be clear. I support any theater that opens its doors to developing the work of artists. Not many do. And with the rise of these mega-theaters with their shining artistic directors and no-development-allowed attitudes, the New York Theater Workshop stands out like a jewel. My reading will HAPPEN on Monday April 4 at the New York Theater Workshop. I support them. They've made these mistakes before. They've made these decisions before. Hell, they did it to me. But one thing is clear: they believe in artists!

Let's just hope the Rachel Corrie controversy teaches us at least one thing: Clarity is a good piece of revolution.

Until next time,

Keith

It's been uncommonly cold here in Los Angeles for the last few days. It's nice to have a change of pace from the perpetual sunny and 70, but this blast feels arctic and the clouds yesterday were quite intimidating. Not since April 1974 when over 100 tornadoes ripped through my Ohio homeland has the sky been so uncharacteristic. All I have to say to that is: Interesting.

I was invited to participate in a panel yesterday for Dael Orlandersmith. Dael is an amazingly brave and daring playwright who's constantly challenging the dysfunctional world we've grown comfortable with. The panel was about family incest, particularly mother to daughter incest. The topic of her newest play. A topic that is quite disturbing and dare I say taboo, but all the more intriguing. Dael wanted to have a discussion about the topic and invited several local playwrights to participate in the discussion and give her feedback about the topic. There were three different "sexual" specialists invited to the panel. And each offered diverse interpretations of sexual abuse between parent and child: one believed sexual dysfunction originates from emotionally empty parents with sociopathic tendencies; one believed the dysfunction should be defined as a behavior that ranges from a mild kiss to penetration. Whatever the behavior, if the child feels "unsafe" or "uncomfortable" it should be deemed as sexual abuse; and the final and third specialist believed sexual pathology was another way the Republicans have found a way to convince Americans that the root behind most criminal behavior is sexual pathos and that the American people have now chosen sexual abuse as the new "witch hunt". He believed subtle sexual interaction within family is a natural as the impulse to eat [with obvious exceptions]. So... my reaction to this topic was this: extremely important. Because human beings need to be constantly challenged to find ways to discuss their honest lives and to find ways to walk the earth as healthier beings. Dirty laundry needs to be aired.

Now check this out: yesterday at around 6:55 pm I was driving down Melrose headed toward Highland. I was with my good friend Jimmie who had just spent four and half hours at Amoeba Music, shopping. And out of nowhere, a mid-sized animal scurried across Melrose like a bolt of lightening. I had NEVER seen anything move THAT FAST. I'm talking Cheetah-speed. I asked Jimmie if he saw it. Of course he says No. I don't know if it was a cat, a dog, an opossum, a coyote, what. But whatever it was: it moved at a speed that made me question the principles of gravity. Now I know I had two and half glasses of a Spanish red at dinner the night before, BUT unless slight dehydration has taken to hallucination, I saw something out there last night. Something fast, something almost... unearthly.

Until next time,

Keith

Sometimes I get so involved in living I don't to do anything else. I don't want to sleep or eat or write. I just want to surround myself with people who exude vibrant spirit, who are unbothered or untormented... and music, lots of music and an endless horizon. Yes, I need a horizon that stretches beyond every imaginable mountain range.

I often think I belong somewhere else. Another country maybe. Another time. Another era. Another face. It's not that I dislike who I am now or what I am and what I do, but I believe it's WHO I am that makes me crave for a universe more freeing, a time more fantastical. Sometimes I think San Francisco maybe, 1974. Or maybe Iowa City, 1995. Asuncion, Venezuela, 1643. And the faces I imagine excite me: A young fisherman. A settler on the Prarie. A budding movie star. A prince in a large east African dynasty. The lead singer in a rock and soul band. A spirit assessing life from a parallel world.

It's not every day I feel this way. But somedays, it sweeps me off my feet. This impulse to do nothing be sniff through life and unturn rocks, see what creatures scurry there. See if I see myself scurrying. Somedays I even imagine myself somewhere far into space, the final frontier. Beyond Jupiter, Pluto, beyond the boundary of this solar system. I'm not sure what I actually do there. Maybe find a planet, explore and taste, and love anything willing to love back. Or maybe I just fly through the blackness, soar high above unnamed stars and super-novas, above inquisitive yet cautious alien life.

But then I drift back down to Earth, because sometimes it overwhelms me, too. Its beauty. Its impossible yet miraculous physics. Salt, dirt, tree, bug, man, woman. Sky, cloud, cool breeze, orange butterfly. It all overwhelms and at times brings me to my knees in complete disbelief, in complete awe. God, Divine Order, Supreme Creative Entity. It helps the awe, the overwhelming. Well, temporarily at least. It quiets me and helps me remember to eat and sleep and write.

Sometimes I get so involved in living I forget there are two sides to it: the one where one must survive and endure; the other where one can invent and expand and explore the gifts. My journey continues to be how to marry the two. And I like this journey. A lot.

Until next time,

Keith

Listening to the DEVICS today. A Los Angeles-based band who's relocated to Italy. Husband and wife. Who interestingly enough both lived in Hawaii. Sara Lov was kidnapped by her father and taken to Hawaii's neo-Bohemian new age community and then later to Israel. Dustin O'Halloran was seperated from his mother due to illness and was taken to live with his estranged father on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Real interesting to me. They both knew they wanted to be musicians at a young age. They eventually made their way to Santa Monica College, met, clicked and now together they make musical magic. The Devics.

Yesterday it rained. A steady calming rain. That when watched through windows makes one think of hot soup and holding the one you love.

Last night I went to the memorial service for playwright John Belluso. John was an amazingly talented and important playwright who championed the voice of the disabled. He died suddenly a few weeks ago in NYC while workshopping one of his new plays. John was born with Engleman-Camurdrie Syndrome, a non-fatal bone disorder that limits muscle strength. A great man and artist and I was happy to have known him. He was 36.

Apparently, John once said when he died and went to heaven that he wanted to slide in there, with a piece of chocolate in one hand and a martini in the other, screaming " Whew! What a ride!"

Until next time,

Keith

The Oscars. The annual parade of who's who in "great" Hollywood filmmaking. This year I must admit was a year full of projects that offered a more truthful testament to the world we live in: Brokeback Mountain, The Constant Gardener, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, Tsotsi. And I must confess I was routing for Good Night and Good Luck not only because I thought it was an important project about censorship, but George Clooney was at the helm of it. And George is a greater-Cincinnati boy. His dad Nick Clooney worked as news anchor at the ABC-affiliate in Cincinnati throughout my growing up years. Secondly, I was routing for Phillip Seymour Hoffman for his performance in Capote. I love Phillip. Not only because he's a champion for New York theater, but his skill in Capote was top notch. It's so inspiring to see an actor who loves what he does, who commits to every role as if it were his first.

But then came the PIMP song. How disturbing. Taraji Henson sang the song as if it were a testament to Jesus during Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting. She looked like a fool. So desperate. So bleached teeth. So willing to showcase her talent and daringness so Hollywood will cast her in something big that pays lots of money. Yeh, that's exactly what she was doing.

Something is very wrong in our world that ACCEPTS a film that chronicles a pimp's life written and directed by a white artist who romanticizes about black ghetto life and is rewarded for it. How titillating black ghetto life can be. How sexual and brutal and highly entertaining. Ha!

I didn't like Hustle and Flow. But I had quickly revived from the deadening slap of its critical and pedestrian popularity. BUT with last night's "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp" receiving a soulful rendition with costumed pimps and hoes strutting along in choreographed RIDICULOUSNESS, I couldn't hold back the nausea. It was like a circus. A carnival of freaks high on opium. A display of artists of color trapped by their own unwillingness to settle for excellence and dignity. To stand up and say: They're is NOTHING hard or colorful about a man exploiting women in the streets to improve his pocketbook and the length of his fur. I say, challenge social/economic marginalization and find another business plan.

Oh, and when Queen Latifah [Dana Owen's slave name] happily announced the winner and the PIMP song won.... Needless to say, I could've spit a hole through the TV.

The time is now. To really examine WHO we are. WHAT we've endured. HOW we live and love and think and believe and try and hate and batter and bully and save and embrace and cry and shout and divorce and educate and cuddle and sing and laugh and rage and steam organic broccoli in a bamboo steamer. WE have to be more honest about US. About our contractions and conflicts. I believe once we embrace THAT journey, it can only empower us, make our voices stronger, help us infiltrate this industry with projects that MATTER. From broad comedy to serious drama.

We can NOT settle for mediocrity and SOME ONE exploiting our experiences. The Tyler Perrys of the world are full of fun and laughs, but they're also a testament to how thin our search for truth really is.

Yeh, as long as there's an UNEARTHED us, there will be plenty of romanticized pimps and men in drag beating up kids for laughs.

Until next time,

Keith

After a nice and sound sleep I woke up, hit my ITUNES and asked BONGA to step forward. I literally danced for one whole hour. Non stop. And that's nothing. Back in the day, when I was a teen and sneaking out to Cincinnati's underground alternative dance club Metro, I would dance from 12 am until 5 am, non stop, with brief breaks for water [handed out by girls dressed in second-hand green and purposely ripped stockings]. My stepfather caught me once and when I explained I was only out dancing, no drinking, no drugs. He smiled and said when he was young he'd dance even longer.

BONGA is an ultra-amazing artist from Angola who can spin you into life in the first beat of a track. And I mean SPIN. And then he can send you drifting into pensive memory with his ballads that seem to hit every cord in the individual's emotional scope.

As I was dancing to BONGA, non stop, high-paced, I thought of my mom and her brother Gordon dancing the 50s version of the Swing at nearly every family function. Their moves were so precise and concentrated. We giggled of course, us kids. Snickered and defaulted into embarrasment. But they had been known to attend parties in the 50s and dance "to beat the band", as my grandmother would say. Then I thought of my grandmother and grandfather, dancing the Cha-Cha and the Salsa in their basement. Laughing, drinking beer with their friends, unafraid to be alive and in the moment. And then I thought of my grandmother's parents, Leslie and Carrie. How my grandmother said they were known as "some kind of dancers". He was 6'3, she was 5'2, and the site of them dancing together was "something to see, Keith" she would say. "They would really cut a rug".

So as I danced myself into a trance I thought of them, my ancestral dancers spinning along with me. Understanding the impulse, excited by the life spinning within the morning. They would have loved Bonga.

Until next time,

Keith

Today was TAX DAY for good ole Keith. I often dread this day with its prerequisite of calculating receipts, FINDING receipts.
But the ride down the 110 to Gardena to pow wow with my tax lady Carol Montague is always a worthwhile dread. Carol is real people. Straight-forward, honest and funny. Last year Carol was a little under the weather during tax time: she was suffering from bizarre light-headedness that she was remedying with herbs and small meals every few hours. She was concerned, but completely diligent with her tax expertise. Today Carol looked great: rested, upright and smiling. And I told her so. Something I always do when I'm moved or intrigued by a person's explosive inner-being. She pulled me outside in the sun. She said she hates to miss the sun. And it disappears somewhere after noon. She also pointed out the trees. And how they were swaying in the yard but not the ones across the street. She found that to be fascinating. So did I. She said this mythic ocean breeze happened three times a day. And that she hated to miss that, too.

I had NEVER seen Carol like this. Free-flowing and unleashed.

Carol's confession was that her spirit had died in 1965, the day of her wedding. She said she didn't know it then, but after years and years of feeling silenced, she's finally divorced her husband and she's feeling REBORN. Alive. "And having fun being me". She took me into her studio where hundreds of small ceramic sculptures were displayed [she was an artist]. I gleamed, she laughed.

She also told me the story of when she moved to Gardena in 1968 and how one day she went outside wearing a floppy crochet hat [she confessed she used to crochet as well]. She was saying how there were only a few families of color living in the neighborhood then and how the police decided to stop her and... then suddenly everything she was saying sounded like mythic ocean breeze as my mind slipped away into feeling something familiar. Something warmly nestled behind my heart. I looked at Carol as she was talking and I thought: I've known her before. The crochet hat, the free flowing rebirth of spirit. Somewhere when I was a boy I knew that girl. And that girl wearing her very own floppy crochet hat made me happy. I snapped out of my lapse and realized Carol was pulling back inside the office. And I just looked at her and smiled. She made me happy. Happy that she was so happy and sharing it with ME.

We concluded our tax session with me offering my signature on a few forms and then our big hug goodbye. And as she walked me out the gate and watched me walk to my car I couldn't help but to think: This lady is living testament to second chances! This lady is real real special.

Until next TAX time,

Keith