In general, I've thought about the saying when my mother would ask me to go look for something when I was a child. I'd without fail, turn around to her and ask, "Where?"
In frustration, my mother looked at me, tilted her head a bit to the left in silence. It was her signal to me to take a better look at the situation. In many cases, the item desired would be sitting right there in plain sight.
As I've grown older, I've learned the same is the case with th e city Ilive in. For example, I met a man in the Bronx, who was born and raised in Brooklyn. His trip to the Bronx was his first. I also learned in my conversation with him that he had never seen the Statue of Liberty in person. It was hard to believe how a man older than Methuselah never took the time to see the Statue of Liberty, which was a train and boat ride away.
Unfortunately, I've had to accept that people are invisible to one another everyday. Today, invisible people tend to be the homeless, who I sometimes find myself ignoring to avoid giving them money or a bit of banter at the stop light. On my better days, I chat, acknowledge, or, at least, wave back to be friendly.
Whole parts of my neighborhood go unnoticed it seems as well. There is a cemetery that I pass with great frequency throughout the week. If you've driven down Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, gone to a University of Texas baseball or softball game, passed through the East Side to avoid I-35 highway traffic, you've probably seen the oldest cemetery in Austin: Oakwood Cemetery.
Oakwood Cemetery was my next destination as I biked through the light rain. As the oldest cemetery in Austin, it literally holds plenty of history. The first people to be laid at the oldest section were victims of a Comanche attack around 1836. For a cemetery where Texas governors, legislators, and other notable politicians lay buried, it also has a number of African American, Jewish, and Hispanic people laid to rest there as well. Since 1850, the forty-acre cemetery has been owned by the City of Austin,
I could not ride through the cemetery at the early hour; however, as I took a few laps around to view the hollowed grounds, I saw over 175 years of Austin history. In comparison to the Texas State Cemetery with its nice greens, trimmed and cared for live oaks, museum, and many water features, Oakwood is a shit hole. No paved roads, grass is as bad of shape as any unkempt empty residential lot, and full to the brim.
Oakwood Cemetery is directly adjacent to the Swede Hill neighborhood, which was a small community of Swedish immigrants and their families who settled in East Austin. It is nestled in an area mostly unnoticed unless someone gets lost looking for a cafe on 12th Street or if you're nosing around, probably looking at East Austin properties.
In the early hours, I took my bike around Oakwood Cemetery and Swede Hill to make sure I took a much longer look. I did not know the people who resided in Swede Hill. I did not know the history of the people buried at Oakwood. I didn't want to pass them by unnoticed, blind to the people who settled there, nurtured families, made careers, loved, and died.
Among African traditions, honoring the dead is one of many ways of demonstrating respect. It is also an opportunity to utter their names in stories, tell old tales of times almost forgotten, recollect fond memories, and teach values. Honoring them specifically by speaking their names also was an opportunity to keep them alive not just in our personal memories but in the afterlife as our ancestors watched over the community.
Once an ancestor's name discontinues to be spoken, it was their time to pass on to the next phase in the afterlife. To keep them literally present to watch over the community in the afterlife, meant talking about them in this life.
So, as I road my bike pass the Oakwood Cemetery and through Swede Hill, I stopped to read out the names of people on the tomstones and the historical markers in hopes that maybe their lives would be remembered and honored, or maybe pray for a lesson to be learned. At minimum, I remembered to take notice a bit more especially at the little things I may pass everyday without notice. As I rode through the early morning, I tried a bit more mindfulness in the moment, feeling the road under my bike, the air passing through my legs, and the moist rain landing on my face.
A little known fact: Rev. Jacob Fontaine help found Wheatville, the first emancipated black, Freedman community in Austin, named for James Wheat, a freedman who was its first property owner and resident. Wheatville is where the current West Campus is located between 24th and 26th streets with the hub designated at San Gabriel Street in the Fanzetti Building. The Wheatsville Co-op is named in honor of the old Wheatville community.
Today was spent on much to contemplate. Temptation continued to be held at bay except during times when feeling pretty thirsty. I left the house for work without drinking my first two servings of water. Lunch ended up being a wash with a Whataburger chicken sandwich and onion rings, no sweet drinks, of course.
Later in the evening, it was more food and lots more water into the night. I got to get out of this habit of rewarding myself with fatty foods after a long week of work. I do not think I need to avoid them as much as include vegetables and fruit as part of my meal. I did think of those vegetables, but they only came as an after thought. I do not find myself pining after vegetables or fruits. I must work on making it a habit.
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