Back home now, Las Vegas behind me, the first official day of spring raw, chilly and wet here on Staten Island. Across the hills and valley out my back windows the branches of the trees remain bare, and the birds haven\u2019t begun to nest and sing. But I have the green tips of bulbs forcing themselves through the wet earth of my almost-restored back garden, new leaves imminent on my hedges along the front fence, and it seems as if the place that Wu Tang Clan calls \u201cThe Rock\u201d is about to bust out all over. Fastest growing borough in the entire city, according to the new national census. Population up fifteen percent since 1990. With particular growth across the North Shore, my home turf, and a significant expansion of this area\u2019s African American, Hispanic, and Asian populations. Welcome to you all, I say; this place needs you. Help make it thrive and throb with life again; it\u2019s been stuck in the doldrums way too long.<\/p>\n
Down the hill from me, between my home and the Stapleton Houses, they\u2019ve almost completed a large new residential complex for seniors sponsored by St. Vincent\u2019s Hospital, due to open later this year. I\u2019ve seen them build it from the bottom up, and it makes a fine addition to the neighborhood, in my opinion; we can use some concentrated maturity and experience around these parts. It stands where, years ago, I watched local kids play little-league baseball on summer weekends. I like to imagine the psychic residue of that young athletic energy seeping up from the ground and wandering through the apartments and corridors and recreation areas of this new red-brick building, inflitrating and charging the collective unconscious of the elderly residents with childhood\u2019s diamond dreams.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s going on here has certainly begun to draw unusual attention from other quarters. Sunday\u2019s New York Times, which as a rule pays little attention to this furthest corner of the metropolis, had at least three stories on Staten Island — one relating to the census, of course, and another predictably addressing the closing of the Fresh Kills Landfill. Long overdue, to say the least, the shutting down of that monumental eyesore and biohazard. This resulted not from any long-standing goodwill toward Staten Island or good faith from the city government (though Giuliani did help on this) but instead from patient persistence — not to mention petitions, lawsuits, and the threat of secession — on the part of island residents and their elected representatives. Putting a permanent halt to the growth of the world\u2019s largest garbage heap became Staten Island\u2019s version of the Velvet Revolution, the peaceful, bloodless overthrow of the communist regime by the Czechs and Slovaks in the late \u201880s.<\/p>\n
Do you suppose that, now that the city\u2019s other boroughs no longer can dump on us literally, its residents will stop doing so verbally? The disdain for Staten Islanders and the eco-betrayal of the island by the rest of the city that the landfill represented for half a century now symbolizes a debt the city owes us, as well as a wound, literal and symbolic, that will take years to heal. And hugs and air-kisses won\u2019t do the job, I can assure you.<\/p>\n
While in Vegas, I got to hear the great Nigerian playwright (and Nobel Prize-winner) Wole Soyinka speak on what he calls the \u201ctheology of reconciliation\u201d now rampant in South Africa and other parts of that ravaged continent. \u201cNo reconciliation without restitution,\u201d he proposed. And that\u2019s what I say to the Manhattanites and Brooklynites and other New Yorkers suddenly cozying up to The Rock and assuming that, with no effort on their part, all is forgiven. Make things right and we may forgive. Stay on your good behavior and we might forget. But remember: In 1858 we burned down the quarantine station forced on us by the city government. We can do it again. Don\u2019t dump on The Rock.<\/p>\n
The third Staten Island story I found in the Times last Sunday obliquely concerned that historic event, and referred to it briefly in reporting the discovery of a 150-year-old quarantine-station cemetery under a section of the St. George municipal parking lot, where the New York City Dormitory Authority (don\u2019t ask me where that name came from) has initiated the construction of a new borough courthouse and a parking garage. In a timeline for the quarantine station, the paper of record noted that after almost 60 years of peaceful protest against the periodic infections of previously healthy Staten Islanders traced to the quarantine station, the island\u2019s outraged citizenry finally took matters in hand and torched the pestilential hospital buildings.<\/p>\n
The city papers dubbed this uprising \u201cThe Sepoy Rebellion,\u201d naming it for a world-famous 1857 struggle between the oppressed people of India and the colonizing British Empire. The analogy remains apt. And it\u2019s not coincidental, by any means, that the Staten Island poetry collective to which I belong has adopted with pride (and a sense of local history) the name of The Sepoy Rebellion. Don\u2019t dump on The Rock — or you\u2019ll have me, J. J. Hayes, Marguerite Maria Rivas, and Wil Wynn to answer to.<\/p>\n
Speaking of poetry: I\u2019ve just received notice that I\u2019ve been selected for a Council for the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island Performing Arts Award, to make possible the premiere on Staten Island of a multimedia live-performance version of a project called \u201dSpine,\u201d my collaboration (as a writer and performer of my own texts) with the Finnish photographer Nina Sederholm and the Finnish composer Mikko Hassinen. This represents my first grant ever for my creative activities, so I’m stoked. Don’t know which is more welcome — the funds that\u2019ll make possible the staging of the piece, the opportunity to perform it in full here on my home turf, or the recognition. But I\u2019m delighted that it\u2019s come from my own community. We\u2019re planning a June debut; place, date, and time not yet set. I\u2019ll post notice of performances here, and the Advance and COAHSI Newsletter will list it as well, so keep your eyes peeled.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s great to be home. See you around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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