Dream-state

Some days I fall into a dream-state and think about late Spring in Harlem. If I could click my heels together 3 times and be anywhere in the world, it would be sitting out on a porch watching people walk by. Smoking a clove cigarette and sipping tea. I have my sunglasses on staring up at the sun with my eyes closed listening to the bass line of “Umi Says.” Mos Def’s voice feels so liberating to me.

I open my eyes and look down at the back of my hand. A smile comes over my mouth in approval. There are many, many more days than not that I am extremely happy to be the complexion I am. I am proud to be the struggle that I am. I am proud to be the health that I am. I am proud to be the person that I am. I am happy to be the thinker that I am. I am proud that I have learned that the “Game” can be switched off, if only I can locate the places where that is safe. And I smile again.

I think about my family and my friends. I think about afros and firecrackers. Speeches and peach cobbler. I think about my favorite spades partner and wonder what she’s up to. I grab my phone to give her a call, but decide against it because I don’t want to stop the satisfaction this current thought is giving to me. I think about a point in time when I didn’t care that kool-aid wasn’t healthy for me and it quenched my thirst like no other drink; especially that orange or purple.

I think of the 7 train out to Shea stadium to watch the Mets. Particular happy moments were when my mother got tickets when Doc Gooden was pitching and I could put a guarantee on the fact that she’d get the seats out by right-field so I could watch my hero, Darryl Strawberry do anything.

I think about cartoons that felt like cartoons. Alf and Galaxy High and how much I hoped high school would be just like that. Transformers and G.I. Joe. Pound Puppies and Gummi Bears. I think about when I was young and played with my sister’s big dollhouse; didn’t have to worry about what people thought about that then, it was natural.

I take another drag of my clove cigarette and blow smoke in the air. I smile because the smoke starts to take on the form of church hats. My mother’s collection of church hats and my Grandmother’s collection of church hats. And all the church-hatted women standing in the veranda of the sanctuary at the Presbyterian Church sharing recipes for baked beans and honey ham, looking like a garden full of flowers with all the colorfully rich brims atop their heads. And it reminds me what I liked about Church as a kid.

My heart begins to flutter a bit faster. From my heart’s beat, I pick up a rhythm in my head. The rhythm becomes a melody and I start freestylin:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Check it
I beats rhymes, check that
No I beats time
Gotta feelin that this life
Is too genuine
My ghetto’s a ballpark
And I’m ridin the pine
Out enjoying the sun
But leaving the game behind
I sign. . .or co-sign my blackness
My nappy headed mind sees
Life and reacts to this
Simplistic view of what it is
You and me
Got white folks believing that
Black's the thing to be
So I sit on this porch
While my mind climbs trees
Swinging through the branches
Like it’s a monkey
And I see, that the intolerable
Nature of grown-ass men
Has me feelin like I’m left
A void within
‘Cuz I’m without
And I talk ‘bout
Being better than the rest
But I dare not travel that route
That. . .ah, ah, ah, ah

I pause and take a sip of tea, because I realize that my mouth is as dry as that freestyle I just kicked. But I smile nonetheless, because why not? Why not smile? Why be angry? Why be discontented and settle for being contented? I take a deep breath and savor oxygen. I’m feeling rebellious though at current, I’m doing nothing that is deserving of this adjective.

I take another pull of the clove and fade out. I’m now in a dreamscape as my body slopes back on the steps reclining in the best way possible against a set of rigid, concrete steps. At once, my metaphysical self, stands up leaving my body behind, just laying there. It stretches and yawns and begins to peruse its surroundings.

Nothing out of the ordinary to record for the sake of my dreams, so it steps off the porch and walks down the block. Though my metaphysical self can’t see, it uses recorded values of my physical walking self to know how far to go to get to were its going. Monochromatic magic, it reads the code in colors and knows its happy greens from its mellow blues. A tree grows in Brooklyn, but a black soul grows in Harlem. Refinement of my people nourishes my metaphysical self as I continuously think of. . .better places for us all. Location-wise and otherwise.

. . .to be continued. . .someday.