Back to Oakland

Have you ever really felt free? Breathed a breath so liberated that you seemed to glow from within your core? That's how I feel now being back in Oakland after 12 years, 12 long, hard years of a sort of self-imposed exile in Suburbia.  My hometown came calling on me. So, when the opportunity arose this month to return, I jumped on it. I returned to the flatlands like a duck to a watery haven.

Listening to my L.A. girl Brandy on Pandora in the solitude of my own space. This is indeed an upgrade from my last few living situations. Here, there is no situation. It's just back to me. No lover, no family. Just me. The phrase "Just me" will forever remind me of the fictitious Miranda Hobbs, "Sex and The City's" red-headed and independent BFF of Carrie Bradshaw. She used the phrase quite a bit after purchasing her first Manhattan apartment. I have a slight smirk on my face, as she did every time she had a chance to utter those two words, and a coquettish twinkle in my eye when I say them too.

Not only am I the ruler of my roost yet again, but I have been blessed to be one within one of the world's secret treasures. San Francisco is "The City" while Oakland is known as "The Town." Within the entire Bay Area is found a microcosm of what has to be the closest thing to the entire world. That's how I think of the Bay Area and I'm not alone. We may not be the center of the world but we certainly possess a cultural and racial diversity other places around the country are just now beginning to experience.

 Oakland is the cornerstone of the Bay's beauty, politics and culture. Once the furthest Western outpost, the end of the line for the Transcontinental Railroad with a bustling port, Oakland was the mechanism that fed the Bay like no other city. Oakland's magic has been eclipsed by it's inner city's poverty, dismal high school drop-out stats and escalated homicide rate. If you believe, as the poetess Gertrude Stein wrote about Oakland, that there is no there here you couldn't be more wrong.

I settled in West Oakland, just a stone's throw from Berkeley and Emeryville. Over half the block is populated by Whites. Contrary to popular belief many Whites are living and thriving in the flatlands of Oakland. I think they play a part in keeping the secret that Oakland is rich so as the flatlands won't be populated with too many Concord-Walnut Creek type transplants. However, The Town's underbelly shows. Men and women out of luck walk the street along side rickety shopping carts full of recyclables and trash. Prostitutes display their wares on infamous street corners. Sirens blare twice a day on average. The Town's grit is intense, sometimes overwhelming but always reminds one of the frank realities of urban life, The Concrete Jungle. Slip and you will be swallowed by The Town.

I drive the streets, haunted by the past lives I've lived here in The Town. Born in Berkeley, my first residence was on High Street. I was welcomed by mom, dad, sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who already called Oakland home. By 5, 75th Avenue was home. Back then I could walk several blocks to school by myself undisturbed as The Black Panthers still patrolled the streets. Always the baby, I hit the local roller rink  and a thriving Eastmont Mall regularly. My love affair with Hip Hop began there in The Eastmont Theater over a blue bubble gum ice cream cone and Beat Street. The screen faded to black and it was a wrap. In search of a better education for her two girls, my mother and new stepfather moved us to Union City.

By 25, after living in The City, I returned to Oakland and settled by The Lake, Lake Merritt. My extended family had long moved on to other states and the great beyond. The Town was colder and more perilous than it had been in my youth. Working in The City and living in The Town wore on me. I craved a simpler life with a slower pace. I retreated to the 'burbs were I remained the next 12 years.

This time feels different still. This time I know who I am. I'm a seasoned Sistah, self-possessed,  living for love and liberty. The road that led me back to Oakland is paved with platinum memories, I wouldn't change one. That road built this diva, for better or worse. "Things take time," my friend reminds me. As the next chapter of my life unfolds I stand humbled to be present in such a lively milieu saturated by color, art and music. I'm already making beautiful music here as my instrument, my voice, rings out to The Town. It belts out a hundred thank you's.