I consider the architectural drawing of the housing unit I designed for the Tale to be central to the unfolding of its story. Drawn on a 3/16″ sheet of white PVC, this 30-60 kind of axonometric rendering is meant to be the exercise which will provide a smooth return to studio work, after a long but necessary medical downtime. A recovery exercise! Well, yesterday, I realized that this PVC surface was the first element, in the whole Tale so far, to not be ‘transparent’, permeable. I did not like this. I want to keep space flowing throughout the installation, unencumbered. So, I decided to cut open the 5 clerestory windows present in the drawing. Good thing: they happen to be at eye level or so. This, right away, provided a dynamic depth to the rendering and liberated my vision. Thus, the transition from before to after my operation coincided with the urge to move from the Tale as a memorialization of the endangered Charleston Soul Food culture, to the Tale as a proposal for the future … This transition happens to coincide with the unveiling of plans for the development of the Union Pier acreage, downtown Charleston! Facing the dangers of rising waters and climate change, the plan is one of denial. Complete with luxury condos, hotels and shops, fit for the rich and the privileged only! A typical gentrification scheme, with no specificity, generic. A real estate coup. Of course this revolts me, revulses me, so much so that it is causing me to question the very title of the project. For sure, I am going to change ‘a Tale of Charleston’ into A TALE FOR REPARATIONS. The dream is getting bigger and gives me even more freedom to propose a fuller vision of what Charleston could be. The Union Pier open space is still blank after all! Let the voices of the people and the hand of their artists design a land of opportunities! One opportunity will be to flesh out what the notion of COMMON evokes in Charlestonians. This idea that real estate does not necessarily belong to one private entity or person, but to the people! That they have the choice to assign it community functions … Going back to the axonometric drawing of the Tale, the housing units are free-standing under a roof for sure, but with open spaces all around and above. In this vast common, only doors guarantee the privacy of each unit. Front doors facing a green landscape, back doors opening on a large connecting corridor, also open ended but where hinged partitions can isolate each unit, at night for example … Of course this openness spells vulnerability, but what I offer is a tale. Isn’t a tale, also, the projection in a better future we are preparing for our descendants? The Tale for reparations is aspirational, utopian, attainable. The changes necessary to make the city more resilient will force cooperation of all with all, the sharing of resources, a sense of the local and one of belonging. Above all, a Tale for Reparations means the end of racial segregation, economic and educational disparity, equity and access. The first image to appear in my mind’s eyes when I opened up the clerestory windows was a horn of plenty, a basket full of fruits and vegetables. The vision of an urban garden/urban farm. Serious business – like OKO farm in Brooklyn. I could carve all sorts of fruit, vegetables and fishes in polystyrene, although I have never dreamt of doing this, for the life of me! Carrots, pears, tilapia, trouts! Also made-up veggies like blue-spotted potatoes or strapples … In paradise, everything goes. Or is it anything goes? Such an endless unrolling of imaginings is not obsessive. It is sustaining, living, through intense moment of creativity, slowed down (only) by the fatigue of age and … a fall in the tub … last night! Can’t we ever have everything?