The block is quiet this evening.

Well, not still quiet. Still the sounds of air conditioner units, the occasional peel-out on 43rd Street, the chirps and squawks of small birds and the occasional wayward seagull.

I sit under a large umbrella whose angle keeps the sun off my face, but onto my legs, stretched out on our back deck. My toes wiggle in the warmth, unaccustomed to not being inside socks.

My phone lays In the shade, and I have resolved not to touch it except to change the song playing on the Bluetooth speaker. I’ve selected a playlist of old school R&B and somehow can’t help but to remark how on-point my music selection is.

In my cup is bourbon, or is it vodka lemonade? A bottle of water’s condesation forms a ring on the small metal end table out here for the purpose of holding drinks and the ashtray which, while barren now, would have a cigar’s smoke wafting lazily had the urge struck me.

The wind makes the foliage growing between the porch and the fence rustle; I should really cut that stuff, but that entails getting under the porch and I have neither time nor inclination. You win this one, random weeds.

The calm I feel, outside, blessed to not be stressing about loved ones, or my next meal, and I am thankful. The voices in my head whose suicidal urges and negative talk were really loud when I was younger barely make a peep now. I am looking forward, figuratively.

I can’t really look forward literally because there sits a house, newly built, between me and these sun rays. Sunset over that house yields an artificial sunset, one where the porch is drenched in shade and the temperature dips. So I look off to the sides, at our lawn, slightly brown due to the recent lack of rain, or to the other side, a large vacant lot who, if city records are to be believed, were once home to three other buildings like ours; two flats with a basement, enough space for two or three families to live. This space is now stalked by a number of feral cats amidst the wild grasses, mown twice a summer by the city.

But I sit in this quiet, and my mind can wander, and I am at peace.

My mother, 80 years old, spry and full of vigor, was on the courtesy cart driven by the red-shirted Amtrak employee. Before he could speed by me, I loudly exclaimed “you can let this one off right here.” My mother turned around and smiled big.

My mom hadn’t been up to see me here since my wedding five years ago. After Dad died, I pushed to make sure that she didn’t withdraw and still maintained her social network, and she flourished in many ways, reaching out to people and connecting. The pandemic brought connections through Skype and phone calls. But she didn’t travel, and I kept bugging her to come up and visit.

After much prayer and deliberation, she finally agreed to come up. Since the train goes right through town, I was able to avoid the hassle of the airport and get her a train ticket in sleeping car arrangements. Sure, it wasn’t as quick as the plane, but it was a lot more relaxing.

So, preparing for her visit was nerve wracking. Where do I hide the liquor? Do I bother hiding the cigars? What about my laundry, piled on one of the guest beds? Will she say something, or no? Is my house clean enough?

My mother, in her own special way, alleviated those fears. She told me that she was proud of me, that I had went off to college and never moved back in. That I got a degree and got a job without them worrying much about my work ethic or questionable choices. That I was able to navigate a personal life with people who are happy to be with me and around me.

Was I able to relax completely? No. There were still snide comments about the amount of liquor I have in my house, the humidor with cigars in it, and why frozen pizzas are in the freezer, but those were outweighed by how much fun we had just sitting around and talking. Her seeing me as an adult and not just her kid has rally improved our relationship.

All is well in parental relations. And it started with just buying a train ticket.

First off, I hate that term. If you can’t say “women”, just shut the fuck up.

But, there is a special kind of dunderhead on these innanets, and this irked me so bad that I had to write something.

“Why would you want a woman friend? All you’d want to do is fuck.”

“I don’t care about what women think, or do. That’s not what men do.”

These two statements have been living rent-free in my head for a little bit, and I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why.

But a number of people, specifically Black women, pointed out something which makes a ton of sense. This kind of thought is based on two things. Patriarchy, and something they called “emotional attraction”.

Patriarchy tells boys that girls are to be conquered. They’re not worthy of having thoughts or opinions or dreams. They are barely human, and not to be listened to or really respected. All things are Man, and Man rules all…except the kitchen and doing chores and being a mom and Shutting the Fuck Up.

So, those boys grow up, and become men who only really respect one woman in their lives; their mothers. And so they can’t think of women of anything BUT a sexual context. What else are they good for, after all? They can’t hold conversations, or think or talk about careers, be into sports. They’ll talk to other females, but I’m trying to have sex with those women too.

Which leads to the second concept. People do things to get approval from their peer groups, and for a regular-ass hetero dude, it’s other dudes, because patriarchy. First, it’s the gain approval from Dad. Then their other dude friends. In time, it’s other dudes, socialized the same way. Women are seen as petty, chaotic, far beyond the ken, understanding, or bother of Man.

So, it goes to reason, I didn’t listen to them growing up, why should I start now?

There can be patches of resistance, I suppose. Growing up around girls, tp be involved in their worlds, can yield some empathy and some appreciation of them as people, which sounds like a small thing, but that small thing is amplified as the years go by.

Too bad we are where we are, though. Women have some interesting things to tell us and teach us.

A lot has been written about sports fandom. In the US, we have all manner of teams to root for, depending on where we live and what our favorite color is and even who else likes them too. This is the story about the latter.

A long time ago, in an effort to bond more with my biological father, I became a sponge of information. What kind of beer he liked. What kind of cologne, and his mannerisms and what he would say when he got mad or disappointed. I never wanted someone to like me more in my entire life.

Anyway, my father lived in Arkansas, and though he wasn’t a huge sports fan, he had a passing knowledge of the state of professional athletics, as well as the flagship university’s mens teams, the University of Arkansas Razorbacks.

Now, a razorback is a kind of wild pig indigenous to the South, and it is nowhere near as comforting as its domestic cousin. It does not give up its bacon willingly.

For the razorback is ornery, and aggressive, and many a dog and quite a few hunters have fallen prey to its tusks, which is a real up-close-and-personal way to deal with those who want to eat you.

Anyway, the university’s sports teams are named Razorbacks, and its women’s teams the Lady Razorbacks, and, to my knowledge, they’re the only ones in the country named such.

So, in an effort to connect with my father, I became a Razorback fan. I would cheer them in every game. I begged for apparel. I bought hats and shirts with my allowance money, but could only wear it when we went out of my neighborhood. For I lived on a Crip side of town, and cardinal and white was literally waving a “please shoot me” flag to those who wore blue.

Anyway, I have long figured out that loving Arkansas wasn’t the way to get my father to love me, but old habits die hard. And last night, the university mens basketball team beat a team they weren’t supposed to, and all I could yell was “SOOOOOIE PIG”, which is nonsensical on its face, but is the rallying cry for pig farmers and Razorback fans alike.

Perhaps one day I’ll grow out of this. But, someday, I don’t suppose I will.

In my line of work, there’s very little leeway to do much else. Everything starts and ends with binary, and few people imagine our lives to be much more past that. We have no loves, no joys, no other interests that cannot be expressed outside of an electronic device.

So when someone has realized that I do, in fact. have other interests, and they engage me in them, I am eternally grateful. Today, I had lunch with a creative that I used to work with who let me hang with the cool kids many years ago.

Because I’m usually tasked with dealing with the tech needs of creatives, I’m usually on the front lines of their problems; printer drivers, screen calibration, finicky applications. While I deal with those, I’ve come to know my people; people free from the structure that my profession seems to embrace.

Those people and those situations have yielded so much enrichment in my life. Excited and energized, I’ve left their presence and created work of my own. It’s something about that energy that’s so different from the tech stuff that nourishes me in a really unique and welcome way.

Moral of the story: your tech person likes more things than computers.

As I wait for my wife to complete her nighttime ritual and come to bed, I totter around the Internet on my tablet. Reddit, Facebook, Twitter. Random questions enter my mind – what Murakami book did I read first? – and I look them up. Propped against a bevy of pillows, I am comfortable and content as I attempt to not think about tomorrow, just to look forward to the sleep that is coming.

My reverie is interrupted by my tablet, rudely posing up a warning that my battery has only 10% power remaining. I am chagrined at this, and then remember that I’ve used this quite a bit today.

The question crosses my mind – what else can I do before she emerges from the bathroom? I need to charge this thing for the morrow, but my brain panicked momentarily. I reached for the charger on my nightstand and saw a pile of books and magazines, and had to laugh aloud.

I was so focused on the possibility of one source of entertainment that it did not occur to me that I had a pile of entertainment right next to me. A pile of entertainment that required no plug and no electricity, save the nightstand lamp, and only required me to reach into the draw of the nightstand and pull out reading glasses. This is a necessary indulgence as to keep me from getting a headache from straining to read words in less than 14 point font.

Tablet plugged and charging, my wife comes out of the bathroom as I’m flipping pages. I smile, put the book back on the nightstand, and put my glasses back in the drawer from whence they came.

Just some spur of the moment thoughts…

I saw some poll where it asked Black people in my age group what they had when they were young ad don’t have anymore. “What do you miss now that you had back then?” And the number one answer was a sense of community.

But then someone asked, why do you feel like you lost that? What happened? No one really answered that.

Thing is, the people in my age bracket are the ones making these decisions. They are heads of families, making decisions. They are the ones making that happen. We can’t look at our parents’ generation for “you got us into this”, we are the active ones now.

So, what happened that people feel like they lost community? I think the answer is simple; money and permanence. Community existed because we were in places, whether houses or apartments, for long periods of time. We knew our neighbors. Our friends went to school with us. Now, because of a wonky economy, folks are moving, because they have to and they may want to. No time to put down roots on a consultant gig. No time to know your neighbors if you grinding and hustling and aren’t home.

And in this paper chase, you realize what you miss. No one is an island. It still takes a village.

Over the weekend, I was invited to a naming ceremony for an adorable one-year-old whose dad I work with, and it made me think of culture, and tradition.

So, the dad is Ghanaian, and the mom is Belizean, and half the reason I wanted to go was because I’d never been to a child-naming ceremony before. I had done a couple of baptisms, but was curious as to what the pageantry of the baby-naming was like.

The child was a year old, and already had a name, but this made it official. From what I could ascertain, in Ghana, the first name you are given is dependent on what day you were born. You rock with that until your first birthday, when your parents throw a party and announce what your whole name is.

What was really interesting to me was the line of demarcation between the religious and the spiritual. Most of the ceremony was Christian in nature, with Bible verses and the use of water as a cleansing agent. But after that was done, some elders pulled the parents away to invoke the calling of ancestors to protect and guide the child. Both emphasized the welcoming of a new life into a family; reminders to be mindful of those who have gone before and those here to help and support. There were introductions of godparents. Acknowledgements of friends who had made the trip to witness the ceremony.

Got me to think about Christianity in Africa and the pull away from spiritual traditions. Thinking about all the love there for this little boy who was zooming around the room, followed closely by a bevy of aunts. Thinking about what makes family, and the hope that things will get better for the children coming up now.

And thinking about how we had to leave after the ceremony, and I didn’t get any jollof rice. Dammit.

One thing about me is that I overthink some things. Someone doesn’t email me back is because they hate me and never want to speak to me again. A stomach ache is because my intestines want to leave my body. Rude people in the store is grounds for a road rage incident. That kind of thing.

So, some time ago, I was asked to participate in my old high school’s Career Day, and I jumped at the chance. They were offering it remotely, so people who couldn’t get to show up on campus could still do it. A friend of mine (and fellow alum) who lives inEngland did it last year, and I figured I could too.

So, here’s the thing about my old high school. Those of you reading who know me either a) know this already (because you were there too) or b) have heard me talk about this before. But, in short, I went to an experimental high school aimed at getting more minorities and women into math and science. We were the best and brightest, and no expense was spared in getting us to school. We were on a university campus, and used some of their facilities and took some of their classes. Our gradutaing class was 105 or so, so I knew everyone in my class.

Thing is, I made a lot of great friends there, and while high school wasn’t the most awesome time of my life, it wasn’t the pit of agony and despair as it could have been. So, 30 years removed from when I first arrived, I went back (virtually) to talk to current students.

None of the facilities are the same. No one in administration currently as there when we were. I have no connection to this place other than…well, the people I went to school with and an idea that the school still occupies the same physical space as we had.

But, I’ve been occupied with a sense that I need to give back. I haven’t called CA home since ’97, and I’ve toyed with the idea of a scholarship of some kind. Until that comes to fruition, thought hat could I do? How about…talk to the kids?

So the presentation was on a Friday, and I was off Thursday to get some stuff done at home, but I ended up spending all day trying to get a presentation together. What would I say? What advice would I have listened to when I was 16 or 17? What am I wearing?

I cared a lot. I somehow waited to fit some positive affirmation, some sage advice, and some sense of connection into 45 minutes. I was probably doomed from the start with that, but I couldn’t help it. I was a walking bundle of nerves on Friday, with presentation time being noon Central time.

In short, I rocked it. I did my seven slide presentation, and answered a pretty decent number of questions. “How tall are you? What was high school like back in the 90s? What’s your average day at work look like? Did you play sports? Do you ever come back to California?

I may have rambled at some parts, but I think Was okay. And after it was over, I’m really glad that. feel I was able to drop one or two gems on them. Things I would have loved to hear, loved to have known. The thought that you are not locked into anything at 17; you can change your major, go to the Chess Club, play intramural sports, laugh at inappropriate jokes at 2am. The thought that what you do for a living may not be something you majored in, or even went to school for.

Look at me, trying to be a mentor for the kids.

This is a story about peace.

One thing my sister impressed on me was the notion that, while the world is confusing and tumultuous outside, your home needs to be an oasis. Somewhere that you are proud of. Somewhere you can escape. Somewhere that you’re okay with everything in it. Where every decoration, every piece of art and furniture and fixture is something you like. “I love everything in here,” my sister told me. “The carpet, the hangings on the wall, the colors in my bathroom, all of it.”

In every space I’ve inhabited, I’ve tried to keep this peace. Why bring in problems into my living space? Why have things that aren’t functional, or that you hate looking at? On the interpersonal side, why have negative people over? Why invite that aunt you don’t like, just because you feel you “have to”? The expectations and social norms being what they are isn’t an excuse to just go along; this is your castle, even if it’s a studio apartment in the hood or a condo with spectacular views.

I was talking to my mother recently, and while my mother has never verbalized it, she is a strong proponent of peace in her house. Plastic on the living room furniture, a cabinet of china and glass. And when she retired and moved South and built her dream home, she did it the way she wanted to; nothing is too small, or cramped; it’s just right. We brought a ton of furniture from the house where I grew up, but also got quite a bit from local places. Got our first few bits of Black art. Everything in its place.

A few months ago, the mother of one of my uncles-by-marriage died, and they started cleaning out the house recently. He asked my mother if she wanted one of the chairs. Sturdily built, real wood, by all accounts a comfy chair. Mom’s polite “no, thank you” was airborne before he finished the question.

My uncle’s mom, by all accounts, didn’t like my mother. She didn’t like any of our family, least of all her daughter-in-law, my aunt. And while my mom’s politeness won the day, I asked her why she was so quick with the answer.

“What kind of fool do I look like, putting that woman’s stuff in my house?” she asked. “That woman didn’t like me, didn’t like any of us. Why would I bring her spirit in this house when she was never invited to it in life? I don’t want nothing of hers in my house. Not in my house.”

Even when we’ve moved on to the astral plane, our spirits live on in our possessions. Be the type of spirit people welcome.