Public Parking
A journal for storytelling, arguments, and discovery through tangential conversations.
Dead or Alive: Parables from Black Zombie Media
Tuesday, September 26, 2023 | Ketterick Waddell
On a late summer afternoon, while toiling in the garden of a mainline estate, my coworker Jarrod shared a prophetic dream of playing basketball and failing to make the winning shot. Though his dream was from the previous night, he mentioned it was a recurring one. Jarrod, a former Big Ten basketball star, claimed he hadn’t reached his full potential because he didn’t make it to the NBA. Now, in his early forties, he was in his fifteenth season as a landscaper. A muscular and unexpectedly meek Black man from a religious family, Jarrod was raised by a domineering father who was also the coach of his high school basketball team. When I asked him if he thought his stress-influenced dreams recycled through his memory as a result of his own insecurities, he shrugged off my question.