And to think it all began…
...with the confluence of some political science and sociology courses with the social activism of Black radical-liberation activity and dialectics!
The Lonely Crowd, a 1950 sociological analysis by David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel Denne, was the beginning that was a self-indicting read in December ‘68 on my deferring to others' agenda than being an advocate, let alone a promoter, of my own agenda.
Soon thereafter in January ‘69, I did my own assertion of will which diverged from the here-to-fore subordination to my parent’s paternalistic agenda for me. By doing that I jeopardized my continuing and not happy presence at Yale. A black senior upperclassmen gave me some advice for the tactics of my newly embraced strategy for manifesting and exhibiting my will. He spoke to me on how to more cavalierly address classwork, but it carried over to my personality expressions that coincided with my translating the french version of Camus L’Etranger (The Stranger) as well as admiring “The Fool’ in Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’, plus advocating for the writings of Baldwin and the then Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka).
The chance meeting on the ‘Old Campus’ of Erika Huggins of the New Haven Black Panther Party before her arrest in the latter part of my freshman 2nd-semester provided an inspiration for who was a legendary icon before the Spring 1970.
The conventionalist proponents of the status quo-parents, institutional figures-were advocates of their adversarial resistance and obstructive presence and actions for me rather than positive motivators. They being such in the summer of ‘69 of Woodstock further alienated and disaffected me from them to the themes of ‘social and political freedom’.
Sophomore year came, and I was recognized by my upperclass mentors to have the talents to be their ‘Hiawatha’ representative with other groups. Since those ‘others’ were my weed/psychedelic partners, it was the perfect mix of business with pleasure. In the winter while my black student organization leadership had a good rapport with the New Haven Panthers, I worked in their Breakfast-for-Children Program. That allowed me to meet the icons of the national and local BPP, who were as down to earth in the same way they found me to be, despite being a Yalie.
Poli Sci classes were fueling my political didactic (Fanon), while I was incidentally developing my social niche that was a mixture of getting high and abstract speculations derived from being high and listening to jazz (Coltrane), rock (Santana, Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Chicago), plus the firesign Theater’s “All hail (Groucho) Marx and (John) Lennon’ + ‘Don’t crush that dwarf. Hand me the pliers!’. These and more would be the intellectual launching pad for my sobriquet, ‘Spaceman’.
I was still in a nascent emotional cluelessness, as an emotional larvae emerging from the shadows of parents and the social background of Syracuse. I got memorable advice during that '70-'71 period from two wonderful gals, who made crystal clear the importance of 'fidelity of commitment to one's declarations and promises', plus ' 'world liberation' begins with one's own habits and attitudes'.
The next 45 YEARS would season me ala the military, 2-plus ongoing marriages, travels and moves around the country and parts of the globe. Most importantly, I’d be disabuse from previous presumptions, paradigms, and homilies I’d trustingly or mindlessly followed to the liberation freedom of thinking and being I have today.
But, it wasn’t as simple as turning-on a switch, as it was engineering the trial-and-error production by insight and serendipity of the ‘switch of relative rectitude’. That came from accepting the haunting prescient of the necessary solitary and singular emotional effort I would have to endure. That was something I’d procrastinated and had refused to accept.
It wasn’t until the Bill Clinton presidency that I began to see the consequences of my thoughts not seeding the public platforms over the past 20-or-so years. [an apocryphal remembrance of me being at the vending machines of the Yale Law School which was kitty-corner from my dormitory (Berkeley Residential College). As I was putting money in the vending machine, I hear a country-sounding voice, “How ya doin’?”. I turn around to glance and respond to this relatively tall white dude with a cherubic-round, friendly facial expression, and say, “OK [muttering “weirdo”] under my breath to this unexpected cordiality from the normally snobbish law students. Later biographical and newspaper reporting indicates that ‘weirdo’ could have been Bill Clinton doing his law school charm.] Clinton and Gore, along with Hillary, represented the “matured” political liberal thought of my generation. After seeing the figurative smoke of rumors from their Arkansas habitation and presidential governance, then witnessing the political triangulation machination they were doing as ‘Corporate Democrats’, I realized how culturally corrupted my academic cohort was becoming or allowing.
But this was 1992-1994, before the full blossoming of the internet. I still had a year to go in the redneck-biased Air Force, and another year until August 1994 to go through my latest tar-baby emotional angst of having a family life (with what was proving to be a compulsive forgerer). There was any platform except with classified advertisements in niche and obscure magazines found on microfiche in the better resourced public libraries.
By the time in 1977 that I entered the internet with the affordable-for-me WebTV, I had experienced climactic serendipities that I chronicled in ‘Confessions’. In short, the aggregation of continual serial serendipities of asymmetrical fortuity since age 9yrs-5mos had finally reached a credibility that rivaled the conventional consensus of ‘It is what it is!’ of the ways of the world. I was still mostly clueless beyond the self-assurance that those serendipities would come. The next 22 years to 2018/19 would bring me asymptotically closer to a comprehension of my role-if not purpose-in this mentoring serendipity matrix.
What was the role in the matrix? 1-Embracing my unique set of demographic, anatomical, and psychological “gifts” with which I had been blessed/curse in my carnal development. 2-Accepting the imperative of my solitary tasks for me, I was more transactionally gregarious than socially committed to people. 3-Having a near biblical vow-n-oath to the muse of the solitary discipline: ‘Thou will have no other “GODs' before thee’. 4-A minimalistic preservation of energy in doing the imperative more than the elective and certainly NOT the whimsical.
Within that system of existential boundaries I’ve assumed a monastic’s existence of estrangement from the cultural and social trappings beyond the incidental imperatives for action in the course of temporal events. The following are some of the conclusions.
An intense adherence to the proscribed matrix will give the subject a clearer picture of themselves, though a strangely confoundingly clear picture to others.That intensity will transmit atmospherics with karmic consequences for oneself and indirectly for others in both one’s and their conscious juxtaposition (asymptotic position to) congruence with the matrix. The more congruence in the attitude of persistent repetition, the more one will have long-term benefits accruing to oneself. Not only the accruence for one’s self-benefit but also the altruistic and selfless philanthropic gracing for others tangible and intangible benefit.
Beyond those temporal and social factors, You-the subject-will have the graced engagements in time, despite the aggravations and disturbing drama atmospherics and actions others incidentally bring upon you in their incongruence of the entropied madness of humanistic-centered paradigms.
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