I have dropped off my car to have the cracked windshield replaced. So that I can see more clearly and so it doesn’t suddenly shatter mid-journey.

I am walking back to my house. I pass a storefront with a golden elephant front and center. “Ganesh,” I think. I go in. I immediately feel a sense of ease in my body. There is music playing. It is a store of African American Christian items. Words from the Bible are imprinted on towels, on statuettes, on aprons.  A dreadlocked saxophonist made of clay holds a horn to his painted lips. There are messages everywhere about reaching out to God, about praise, about faith. I look at everything in the store. I read what I can see. I know that this is not my vernacular but I’m reaching deeper underneath these words for what is essential.

I wave goodbye to the woman and leave the store.

On my route back home, I have the choice of walking past these striking wrought iron gates that I drive by frequently. They are really as much sculptures as they are gates, beautiful figures and motifs climbing all over them in metal.

I peek through the gates and see dahlias. Magnificent dahlias. Yellow and red hybrids. A garden that goes on forever, a garden paradise hidden in this dystopic corner of Emeryville, the land of crackheads and shopping carts. I turn the corner to look at another one of the gates and notice enormous goddess statues, of stone and mosaic on a building in the back of this compound.  I hesitate. I want to go in but don’t know how to ask. Do I knock on the door of the house?

A woman wanders out into the compound behind the gate and sees me. I say, “May I come in and look at your yard?”  She invites me in. I say, “This is your place?” She says, “Yes.” She says, “I thought you were my friend A….You look like A but you are younger. I ask for a closer look at the dahlias and then wander in her vast garden for a minute or two taking in everything I can; drinking it in.

I return to the complex of buildings behind the gate. She asks, “Are you an artist?” I hesitate. I’m not sure. She says something about how artists know that they’re artists. I explain that I’ve been a performer but have just started painting. We talk about how hard it is to keep doing art. That it’s hard work.

She asks me if I am a gardener. I say that I am an avid gardener but am currently without a garden. She says that the community garden across the street has openings and would I like to come Saturday at 10 a.m. She is its project manager. I say yes. I’ve been wondering for months and months about that beautiful garden filled with sculptures and magnificent boxes of vegetables and generous vines and whether I could possibly find a space (a home) there.

We agree to meet on Saturday and we say goodbye.

On my way back to my house, I give one of the Shopping Cart People $20, as a thank you.

I walk home laughing with delight and gratitude.