He First Loved Us
There’s another side to the “Board Heart.” You’ve got to hop the fence to see the “Grip Heart.” Not many can do it in a single bound. Now you’re in the interior. Sunlight conceived shade like camouflaged blades of grass. You’ll see the hard exterior like turtle shells and a beat only known with intimacy and rhythmic timing. They’re quick to snap when the contact mimics an enemy raid.
Lord you’ve captured my heart, and softened my meditations each time you marvelously land on rough surfaces. Your picture melts it all down. There’s a place for you on an outdoor couch and it’s happier than the Disneyland campus. Shoulders soldiering behind the camera, it’s time to set my works down. Recline on the armrest. The compartments of the white carryout containers are piled high with soul food. Jesus you’ve shown up when I ‘least’ expected it. Your love is pure. Nobody was asked to pose yet another instrument of the Passion appeared. The ‘Board Heart’ and ‘Grip Heart’ show how He first loved us. Love is made complete among us.
Nobody in the Buttermobile wanted the 5% percent tinted windows rolled up when Ms. King or the Long Beach local skateboarders were driven around the Eastside of Long Beach, the last city in Los Angeles county going south before the Orange Curtain is pushed around on stage. Yellow and black are dangerous colors here. In the fall of 2007, members of the Rollin’ 20s street gang were held responsible for the killing of Michael K. Green at the Long Beach Court House on Ocean Blvd. The yellow car popped in the search results on my Dell laptop within Room 8 at Helena Apartments on 28th and Orchard just outside the uniquely shaped campus of USC.
Johanna Wingert, a lovely Japanese grant manager, placed an ad on the doors of Waite Phillips Hall to find a graduate assistant. She loved high heels. A printed flyer caught my attention from underneath the leaping archways that surround Waite Phillips Hall. Each time I entered the darkened reflection of the black handled doors the flyer said now accepting resumes for a graduate assistant position on the 5th floor in the development office. The brick Waite Phillips Hall building hosted my Survey of Professional Writing course. I applied for the job. Later on, Johanna said as she looked through the stack of resumes something told her that I was the one she was supposed to hire. The part-time job at twenty-dollars per hour was plenty of money while I took my professional writing classes full-time. A few months into working in Waite Phillips Hall and around campus picking up check requisitions; I met some characters who became life long friends.
Hugo Garcia, a fellow USC graduate student who worked across the hall from me on the 5th floor of the Rossier School of Education at Waite Phillips Hall, drove me to an undisclosed location. The goal was to over look the city of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The sightseeing offered me a year ahead glimpse into the future. I was completely unaware how the providential foreshadowing would manifest itself into my life. Press fast forward, now I can see in between the streets like Pacific, Hoffman, Olive and Anaheim, was a preview into the relationships I’d develop over several years to produce an award-winning documentary film.
Press rewind. Since it was in the air that I was looking to purchase a car nearly a year after my miraculous accident in Rifle, Colorado, my co-floor, co-worker Hugo Garcia told me on numerous occasions, why just get a VW Golf when you can get a VW GTI? Why get a GTI when you can get an Audi A4? If you get the A4 why not get the Audi sport sedan, the S4. Several months after I contacted the Audi S4 owner, Hugo took me on a scenic tour. Historical facts seeped out of his mind about California. Hugo like a tour guide wouldn’t disclose the exact location, “come on, let’s go.” I only knew the goal was to over look the city of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Spending time together helped me understand the context of the metropolis I moved to from across the country.
Press play. We exited the 405 South. Turning left from Cherry Avenue, we drove up the steep and winding road leading upward to Signal Hill. The destiny hour happened on the lookout. Lookout, there’s only so much you can point out. As you take steps around the park there’s a stark realization, before creation. My God has prepared a table for me in the presence of my enemies. He anoints my head with oil. My cup overflows from the persistent lowering and raising of the derrick to bring up the most precious and inexhaustible commodity: the anointing. At 365 feet above the rest, the treasure chest beams a signaling fire, breathing from the eternal love. Press pause.
The setting sun hung long enough for my tongue to form a sentence of praise above Rolling Hills, and to the illuminated tiny trees and houses of Long Beach proper, shipping containers and cranes. It all was right in front of me. Venting left me free from past tense. Why was I sent here?
Downtown Los Angeles stood up high behind the rusty and chromatic haze. Hugo asked, “Kevin do you want to go to Two-one and Lewis?” Although my experiences in the Westside and Southside of Chicago like a dot of whiteout on black construction paper instilled trust over fear; safety was my main concern in an unfamiliar city. Hugo kept insisting to ask the same question several times, just as he did about the vehicle suggestions, as we declined down the steep hill down from Skyline Avenue to Hill Street. The uncertainty intensified.
Heated streets weren’t for the faint of heart. Men bombed these hills on skateboards like a rocket launched on its side. Just before we arrived at the infamous intersection Hugo informed me how the demographics of the neighborhood have changed since the release of Warren G’s Regulate was released in the Summer of ’94. Hugo took some photos of me with a smile by the 21st and Lewis light blue street sign. When I returned to the office on Monday, I sent the sightseeing photos to my parents. Through the narrow black blinds inside the vertical windows, the Von KleinSmid Center’s iron globe
The Buttermobile, a German sports sedan purchased from Maxim, a Russian man who worked for 1-800-Flowers and owned a fancy home in Westwood. An individual case of Dom Perignon sat on the granite counter top near the sticker price paperwork. It was his wife’s car. Anna signed off on the auto loan at USC credit union. Cars.com had not mentioned that the vehicle had matching colors with the Rolling 20s in the description. The colors associations had no relevance to me like saying the color was like one of the colors of the German flag. However, when the first day of filming the documentary story at Eldorado Skate Park during a memorial gathering for Michael K. Green, who was the most promising skater of his generation in Long Beach, California. Three outsiders took a trip to Eldorado Skate Park where we took a chance among the urban skateboarding subculture. We were all graduate students from a top private university in Southern California: James the film student, Jake the engineer and myself the poetry student. Homies were gathered outside their cars shootin’ dice, hangin’ out, and skateboarding all around us: on the parking lot, in the basketball court and in the bowl.
What struck me was one of Mike’s friends had a car almost exactly the same as the one I just purchased. The Audi A4 was black and blue. Michael K. Green was captured in front of this car with a memorable smirk because the German license plate behind him read, “Ugly”. You can’t make this stuff up.
The signs detected from the righteous reflections first discovered upon Signal Hill at Hilltop Park bring comfort with the foreshadowing covering me in the Author’s love.