A few weeks ago two of my favorite women were visiting NYC from California. Tracey and Aida. [And yes, I dragged them over to Brooklyn as well]. I showed Tracey the peace of Prospect Park, had lunch at this amazing Japanese-Peruvian restaurant in Park Slope where I ordered a red snapper dish in an orange-cilantro sauce and I nearly flipped through the glass window because that dish was THAT good. I ordered another.

From there, I escorted Tracey down to Fifth Avenue in Park Slope where we excitedly ventured into The Chocolate Room. Now this sugar foodie is the best kept secret in the world. It's a chocolate bar/cafe where all things are chocolate. From the sorbert to the brownies to the beer to the wine. Not to mention all the varied ice cream and cookie variations.

Needless to say, after biting into the chocolate sundae and sipping on her chocolate port Tracey literally swung her head back against the wall and found herself wedged between Seventh Heaven and Orgasmic Euphoria. Yes, the Chocolate Room has THAT kind of affect.

But the aforementioned was not the highlight. It was Kara Walker. Artist. Extraordinaire.

At 1pm the following day Aida called and said they were heading over to the Whitney Museum to check out the Kara Walker exhibit and to meet them there in an hour. I did.

I knew nothing much about Kara Walker. Except that she worked in silhouettes. And was young. Earned the MacArthur Genius Award a few years ago and was of African-descent.

I walked into the exhibit and there in sprawling grandeur was a mammouth-sized depiction of what I believed to be antebellum life on a southern plantation. The enslaved and their enslavers going about their day. You know, typical slave life. I walked out of that room to another, thinking, mmm... so this is just another tame, sanitized depiction of slaves in America. Then something caught my eye: one of the silhouettes: a southern belle kissing a gentleman caller was disjointed. Meaning, their was ANOTHER pair of legs under the wide dress of the southern belle. The barefoot legs of a slave. And I thought: wait a minute, is that a depiction of some raunchy sex taboo in slave land? And yes it was. And I just started laughing. At the devilish audacity, at the courage, and the humanity. At the underbelly of historical accuracy.

Oh yeh. I liked.

If you're in NYC, check out Kara Walkers exhibition. Very very interesting stuff.

The Chocolate Room in Brooklyn's not that bad either.

Until next time,

Keith

Interesting week.

Asa Coon went on a rampage at a Cleveland School revealing that blacks are still viewed as expendable in the psyches of the insane. And also revealing, vis a vis television interviews of the survivors, the public education system is failing many urban black youth. And their parents seem either aloof or blind to the horror.

On the west coast. A good good friend was pulled over by the Los Angeles police department. He was driving within the speed limit, taking a friend home, driving a sports car. And black. The police pulled him over. Asked where he was going. Where he was coming from. Wouldn't tell him the reason they stopped him. And after my friend insisted they were simply stopping him because he was black and then refused to answer any of their questions, they got nasty. After my friend finally relinquished his license, the cops left and came back and told him it was illegal for him to drive with an exhaust that was not manufactured with the car. My friend, who knows many things, ignored the insidiousness of the officer's excuse, retrieved the license, gave them a last piece of radical mind and moved on.

Part two. My friend called the police headquarters and filed a police profiling complaint. They took his name, number and address. A few days later he was busy hosting relatives from out of town and honoring Ramandan [although secular, he was raised in the Nation of Islam and Ramadan is the one thing he holds close to his heart]. Well, one night after 9pm his phone was ringing off the hook. He wasn't answering. At midnite, a call came in from the front security desk of his building. He and his guests were sleep. At 12:30am heavy knocking at his front door interrupted his sleep. Heavy pounding actually. His family became nervous. The pounding finally stopped. My friend thought it was some random ex who was acting out. Well, the next day, he checked his voicemail and it was the police. Checking up on the profiling complaint.

My friend immediately called the headquaters and complained. One, about the inappropriateness of the time of the calls and the uninvited visit to his apartment after midnite without announcing who they were. The headquarters told him, Yeh, we can get a bit ruthless when it comes to profiling complaints. We take them very seriously. [They're exact words.] Feeling a bit harrassed, my friend told headquarters that he wanted to drop the complaint and didn't want to have anything else to do with them again. The headquarters told him he COULDN'T drop the complaint. That he HAD to come down to headquarters and go through a 30 minute interview. And that was that.

Needless to say, my friend is a bit concerned [and so are his family and friends]... he has sought legal counsel.

Last but not least, I've surrendered to the unrelenting gray hairs in my goatee.

Until next time,

Keith

ANOTHER BURST OF CREATIVITY

[Roll with me one more time, but please read the previous post before this one]


Pierre was looking for love. That's why he left that town. His mother knew it. She never said it out-loud, but she knew her son. How he lingered at that door after company left, hoping they'd go home and long for intense human interaction as much as he did. Or how whenever it snowed he go back and forth from the radio to the front window. Excited by the possibility of stranded motorists who would relinquish their everyday guardednes and allow a complete stranger to pull them from the shoulder of the road, then walk off into the blinding white forever. Or how whenever he met a new friend, he'd offer his undivided attention so much so it unnerved the recepient who would back away and eventually never show their face again. He acted like friendship, human bonding, was the sole reason man was dropped to earth. Yeh... his mother knew. And she also knew he was in for a complete surprise. Because nobody, not nobody, was interested in love like that. Sexual love maybe. Aggressive lust and psychopathetic orgasms. Romantic love even. As long as the object of desire was close to what society deemed perfection or tradition. Or even friendly love. The kind of love you get in church on Sunday afternoons. Cloaked in scripture and witnessed just once a week. But real love. The kind Pierre left his town for. Love shaped by soulful expression and intellectual curiosity. Love defined by its lack of boundary. Its willingness to embrace the inadequacies and perfections of somebody without the impulse to spit them to the floor. Real love. Ordained by something the Universe conceived. Where the soul and the sex and the mind and the heart look for ways to bring meaning and depth to any interaction, any day of the week. It's highly likely Pierre didn't know any of this, or the consequences and truths that sit at its center. All he knew is that once he found it, he'd look for ink or lead and sketch it on paper.

Until next time,

Keith