I spent the summer working at a black book store.

Each day I entered a free black space. The experience was as revelatory as usual.

Meanwhile, my youngest son matriculated in the root of free black space-the barbershop. He has a job at one that is owned by a former Harper Collins novelist just miles from where we used to live. He wanders in and out of the chairs doing simple things. He sweeps up the tufts of hair that fall off the heads of the men (and sometimes women) who are groomed there. It's a simple job, with not too much pay; but he learns the talk and ways of the intellectuals there. They nurture him in the old ways. Help him to regulate his ideas, Teach him to listen. Teach him the codes of respect and free black space intellectual exchange.

There's a T.V. above their head. They watch they news. People speak everything from the whack to the profound. Sports and the startling shit of the current tradition- a living room.

Meanwhile, it is the same way down at the bookstore. The owners there are larger than life. Sometimes in the morning when I come in, you find one of them gray-haired, broad shoulders holding court with a crowd of young people. They are New Afrikan in their movements and talk. Dreadlocks, scent of lemon grass, kales shakes from the cafe, good coffee, a beer if you like. Green fresh food. If food is the heaven of the people; here is one of the gateways.

Baba has the wisdom and experience and dialogues it into the atmosphere. They soak it up often breaking into laughter. Most often his voice seems to rise above the rest. They go back and forth, rise and fall. This is the exchange. This is how we learn.

He's a film maker, entrepreneur, and professor. Sometimes Paul Coates calls, sometimes Haki Madhubuti calls. Eloise Greenfield was recently there. Acklyn Lynch comes through, Tony Medina, Meta DuEwa Jones, Shauna Morgan Kirlew, professors from nearby Howard University-intellectuals of the highest order take a break, dialogue, buy books. Sometimes the phone ringing is a request from another country for copies of the film or rights to show it.

The door swings open and people arrive from Ethiopia and the deep recesses of African America. The Ethiopians bow their head slightly when they see you and make sure you briefly take in their eyes. They acknowledge your presence and demand you acknowledge theirs. They gather in the cafe seats and share the food they have while they laugh and talk.

There's Baba _____ whose six five and majestic, always dressed in a Dashiki mantraing, "There's no culture but agriculture." You must contemplate his presence on the borders of the known, in the midst of the profound.

There are the young people fresh in the culture of activism who pick up copies of Assata Shakur, Ta Nehisi Coates, and Carter G. Woodson. They have found this free black space but still are searching.

The constant back and forth is the mix of research, reverence, and dedication to what we know. We swim through the unseen, the unknown, and the unspeakable. We add to the mix of ideas by seeing differently, speaking, learning, and knowing.

There's nothing like it. I'm half academic because I gotta University job, but through free black space I experience the reality and beauty of what we are when we serve as the measure for what is said. The incidents that seem to charge the current media waves seem distant. The exchanges here are simply too affirming. We are close enough to the ground that the people matter. We reflect one another. We confirm our own audacity, discipline, reflection, and true potential.

Some would say, not much money, not enough publicity; I mean you may not really know where I am at. You may not go there too often. You may not have ever been there. But there's a wholeness. That dominant reference to the they is somewhere else. There's a we in it all. You can visit and experience.