As I sit to write this, I have to acknowledge how impossible it is to reduce my life, or any life, to a string of sentences, syllables or letters. Scientists worldwide are working to decipher the genetic code of Earth’s creatures, the sequences that are part of who we are.
But I’m from Brooklyn. East New York, to be exact. For a few years in the last millennium, my hometown was the murder capital of these United States. So I know that nature tells only half the story. The age-old battle of thinkers has been that of nature versus nurture. I know, from personal experience, that this argument needs to become a civil dialogue – that of nature and nurture.
I am inseparable from my community, and in fact, from all poor communities on this planet. The violence, the addictions, the abuses that are permitted to exist among us, perpetrated upon human beings, marry us all to suffering. It is my need to see that sort of suffering end which moves me to apply to The School of General Studies.
I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness. My parents were, and are, extremely committed to justice for all people. I do not consider it a stretch to say that so is God. The faith in which I was raised teaches that true peace only comes through honoring God, and through the brotherhood of all people. The American Constitution talks about the same ideal.
From a young age, I walked the streets of Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant preaching the good news. We were often ridiculed, ignored or insulted. But that was life. I didn’t always understand why I couldn’t celebrate birthdays, or pledge allegiance to the American flag, with my classmates. I suppose I accepted it on faith.
I didn’t understand a lot. When my mother went to enroll me at our local school, she was told I was “too smart” to attend there (What does that mean?). As a result, I started Pre-Kindergarten in Flatbush. Later, I was bussed to South Ozone Park to complete my primary education, starting from first grade.
There were very few children as light-skinned as me (hunh) in The Osmond A. Church School. After second grade, there was maybe one white kid, so I guess I served as a stunt double. My older brother had to beat up a few kids for calling me white boy, but he had his own education to pursue.
After starting at Hunter High School, I saw the reverse process take place. After two years, there were less and less people of color among my class. I also noticed that African, Latin American and Asian history were given short shrift in the curriculum. Often, we had to cram hundreds or thousands of years of noble history into just a few weeks.
Many of my classmates went on to attend some of the most prestigious institutions of higher education we have. I got a job at a securities firm in midtown Manhattan. There, I got valuable experience by observing my colleagues and New York City at work. My employer called me the Vice President of Acquisitions. See, I would acquire Burger King or office supplies at Duane Reade – things of that nature.
I also lost and found my faith in God. A newly minted atheist, I was walking east on 87th Street smoking weed. A young lady named Iva asked to help. She recommended a book called Be Here Now by a man who was known as Richard Alpert, and came to be Baba Ram Dass.
I was back.
I decided I needed an education. I chose SUNY-Geneseo because no one I knew from high school went there. Also - it was cheap!
Also, I had had my first run-in with the law. It left me rather nonplused.
Geneseo was not the place for me. I liked Art History, and enjoyed the day in English class we spent on the poetry of Phil Rizzuto. Most of my time, though, was spent writing raps. By the time May 1999 rolled around, I had one rhyme that had me convinced I could do it professionally. I returned to New York, and told my parents I was going to be an emcee.
They were overjoyed.
In October of that year, I was invited to a spirit camp being held by a council of men in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. I’d read Robert Bly’s Iron John in ’98. The smell of sage, the Berkshires, and the rituals of the indigenous American people were revelations. That weekend was the first time I’d ever wept and felt the tears weren’t my own. I sat for a sweat. I called a rock Grandfather. I listened and learned.
I kept working on my craft. In January 2001, I got a desk job in the stockroom of Brooklyn Public Library. Often, people would bequeath their personal libraries. The collections of knowledge would sit on the loading dock until they could take no more rain. Luckily, I smoked cigarettes.
Late that summer, I was beginning my day when one of my colleagues told me a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. Soon, it was two planes and another at the Pentagon. I was 21. That day, I walked up Eastern Parkway to Utica Avenue and had a rare beer. It wasn’t even 11 o’clock.
My colleagues were very angry. This was my first experience as an adult in how pain can create more. I got the e-mails about the airline puts, about the funding our government had given the bin Ladin family, and shared this information. We would argue about it. Bombs dropped on Afghanistan.
I needed an education again. I’d heard of a school called Naropa in Boulder, Colorado. I was considering applying. In early March, I heard a voice in my head (I won’t explain it any other way than that) say 22 was a master number, and I could no longer be working for the library on my birthday (April 2).
Inside of a week – tops – I submitted a letter of resignation. I decided I would check Boulder and Naropa out before I applied. I did the dog, meaning I took Greyhound. It was a magical trip.
When I got back, another emcee and I started rapping on the trains we’d grown up on. Our first day, we made a hundred bucks in mostly change, and were detained for a couple of hours in a Broadway Junction holding cell – so we knew we were doing something right!
That summer, I went on my first fast. Honestly, a looming insanity drove me to The School of Lost Borders, founded by Steven Foster and Meredith Little. I flew into Reno, Nevada… but I needed to get to Big Pine, California. The next day, I hitchhiked for the first time in my life, and went straight down 495 from Carson City. I was the old man on a youth fast, 22 now, and seeking to claim my manhood.
The next year, I fasted again with The School. I had been reading Jung, where he spoke of the anima in every man, and declared my intent to wed my inner Self. Her name: Miss Teri. I married the misstery.
That same year, I started an affair with a married woman.
Well, a second affair with another married woman, anyway.
It was the fallout from this decision that awoke me to the true state of affairs in our present day American society. I’d read about how crack cocaine, Vietnam, counter-intelligence and assassinations were used to destroy the communities of color demanding social equality in the 60’s and 70’s. I did not know the preservation of inequality remained an objective of some of our species. Or, anyway, that a Nuyorican preacher’s kid could be a target of such a cowardly agenda.
Early this summer, I wrote an open letter to one of the presidential candidates. As a result of that decision, I now see that “the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together”, and that “these are the triple evils that are interrelated.”
Those are quotes from another preacher’s kid. His name is Martin.
My decision to pursue the Human Rights major at Columbia is directly related to seeking solutions to those problems, which still confront us today. Seeing justice in practice is all that can possibly give my life meaning in this 2007 we must share.
