Welcome to my Twenties and early Thirties
I
spent a whole lot of time at this point wandering the city, being some sort of
version of a beatnik poet, but clearly shoved into the wrong era for beatnik
existence. Yet and still, I persevered. I kept moving. I spent time in Golden
Gate Park by the carousel, I pounded pavement in the Mission, and also in the
Lower Haight and all the while I was driven to write poems and sometimes chants
that I felt compelled to share at the open mic poetry nights I found along my path.
How
do you know you have reached some measure of success as a person who
perpetrates counter culture? It seems that the accolades of modern society
revolve around mostly academia or in the context of what are considered “real
jobs” where one may land a coveted promotion, and so on. When I was asked if I
wanted to be featured, that was the warmest introduction to the stage as a poet
that I could have gotten. So naturally, I sought more experience in the
blossoming spoken word and performance art scene that was permeating the Lower
Haight.
In
this day in age, in the United States, a person of my background is expected to
achieve a certain level of success. In order to do that, you have to believe in
that very much promoted type of success, you have to believe it matters, that
it is for you, that you fit inside of it somehow.
I
never really believed in it. I may not have always had some other type of success
or goal to focus on instead of it, but I never bought into it. I got as far as
finishing a B.A. degree and then applying for a Master’s in Social Work. I
applied to several different schools. I took a trip to Boston, to talk to
people at the University about their program. I flew to England with my mother
to meet people at King’s College in London, where they offered a Master’s
degree in Comparative Religion. I remember sitting at a restaurant with my
mother and trying to talk about the concept of “World Rejecters.” She had no
idea how depressed I was at that time, how much I wished I could reject the
world.
She
responded by asking me, “Oh, do they talk about that in the literature?” How I
hated the place I was at that moment. How I hated this Ivory Tower version of me
that was looming over us at that time. How I hated this expectation of
incredibly pretentious dialogue about subjects only the super privileged people
who were overly saturated in elitist scenarios engaged in. I could not bring
myself to fashion my mind into the type of mind that ends up perpetuating
conversations or diatribes that are not much better than mental masturbation,
while the rest of the world burns. Yes, I know that the rest of the world lacks
authenticity in a big way, and deep down I know that I am nothing if not
authentic, nothing if not disgusted by elitism, and to step into that world
would have been to step into wretched terrain and ugly territory I wanted more
than anything to flee, to run from and never, ever look back.
That
is exactly what I did. I blame nobody for that time in my life. My mother was
only trying to help; she was showing she believed in me, my academic abilities,
and my intelligence. I do not fault her for not understanding my struggle at
that time because, poet that I am, I am still sadly at a loss for words when it
comes to this sort of confusion and angst. I do my best to capture it, when I
feel relaying it may do some good.
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