A long day's journey into night

December 20, 2017

Still ill.

This has been several weeks in the making, the run up from being rundown to finally when my chest fills with phlegm and the best I can do it cough it up at night and hope Nightquil can keep me asleep long enough to feel strong enough in the morning to work.

This is not one of those mornings, and yet, I work.

Yesterday, I wandered through lower Jersey City to cover two events, and got a chance to walk down two streets that remind me most of growing up in Paterson, where people struggle among vacant lots and run down stores to find hope.

People shout out to each other in the early morning, perhaps acknowledging that they have managed some how to survive another night.

Since most of my time is spent wandering through the wealthier parts of the city, this is a sad reminder of the real struggle people face, things we do not see in the protest or even in the newscasts which focus on the almost unreal antics of national leaders – few of which really represent the reality of people's lives, the hopes and dreams or lack of that makes even cold mornings like yesterday a relief, part of that long journey into night from which people can wake up alive.

I came to cover events in a part of the town where there is little interest to our readers, except in the sense that people here face the same hardships they did when I was a kid, the same racial profiling that makes cars speed up to get through traffic lights in order not to be near groups of men hovering on street corners – jobless, bored, hopeless souls who would like someplace else to go, but have nothing, and share that nothing with each other.

I walked down MLK Drive from near its top to a place near its foot on the south end, passing through these street corner gatherings, a stranger in their strange land, locked in a time warp from when I was a lone white face in housing projects in Paterson. If people noticed me, I didn't get a sense of hostility, as if we all had some reason for being in the same place at the same time, even if we didn't ask what.

In one place, when I was looking for the entrance of a senior building, some of these men gave me instructions, “You knock on the window, brother, until someone sees you.”

In another part of the street, I saw the new government building still unfinished in which the city has great hopes will help transform that part of the city into a thriving hub. It seemed isolated against the backdrop of buildings where windows are covered with plywood, and doors marked with the X of fire department suggesting danger.

I coughed as I walked, which made me fit in with a number of other men, struggling to stay warm, and healthy in these blocks, and others, who asked me for change, knowing I had something jingling in my pockets that might provide them with coffee I clutched in my free hand.

The walk was a lesson in humility, and an understanding of just how far we have not come, and how far we have yet to go before this part of town feels the way other parts of town feel, and while there is a survivor's pride here, life has to be more than just survival. This has to be more than a long day's journey into night.