June 28th, 2007

Humble Beginnings Cont.


Last Saturday was my Birthday! Needless to say I was completely surprised! And I thought that I was going to figure out when the surprise was. I had such an enjoyable time with friends and family. My Alice planned it all! At one point I thought I had a clue, but found out that she is a PRO when it comes to surprises, now if I could equal her prowess......





But Let's get back to the humble beginnings excerpt.....
This is an actual picture of the buildings that I used to live in when I was a kid. I found it online done by an artist getting a Master's Degree in Photography. Its difficult, even this picture doesn't do justice to the experience that I had there...I guess someone needs to profit from it.

This building represents the love-hate relationship I talked about in my last email excerpt. Chicago seen from a distance is a WONDERFUL place of opportunity and diversity (maybe not the best place to look at integration...but what are ya going to do?). In a lot of ways I consider this picture to be the doorway to hell, or at least it felt like it, not that I know what burning sulfur feels like but you know what I mean!

I loathed this place. In some ways I wish it was never invented. 16 stories of poverty. I once tried to calculate how many people on average lived in each home. 10 apartments on each floor. 4 APT's. with 4 bedrooms and 6 with 3 bedrooms. Two people per bedroom. 32 people in the four bedrooms and 36 in the three bedrooms....that's about 68 people or avg wise 70 people. 70x10=700 people and 70x6=420 people....that's 1,120 people in one building!!! Now I'm undershooting this number because extended families live with you as well. So let's double that number to 2,240 people! Most small towns can't even understand that amount of people and most people in general can't understand that all of the people who live in these buildings have Section 8 housing and working poor and on federal assistance, or both!



You look out of your barred windows and all you see are broken swings, drug deals, and hopelessness. In the distance you can see the Sears Tower, one of the tallest buildings in the World. You live in caged poverty, no opportunities, no banks, convenience stores with inflated prices, concrete for grass, and then you see opportunity staring at you, reminding you that you are just five minutes away from "Perfect Land" but thousands of miles from ever being accepted into that life.

I hear a lot of people tell me what you have to make the most of life, pick yourself up by your boot straps or you DON'T have to think this way. I say, the only way that people are able to say this is because SOMEONE HELPED THEM TO SEE MORE OF LIFE! We are all helped one way or another. These days I can be motivated about life, but I am still in the process of weening myself from the thoughts of hopelessness.

Looking from my window from the Projects at downtown Chicago left an impression in my mind. It began the mentality that I now to this day still struggle with. It has shaped my mind and for a LOOONG TIME had complete control over my destiny. I call it a Poverty Mentality. I saw life from a impoverished perspective. I saw opportunities as only visible but never real. I saw success as majestic and grand, but never close, or only a few "lucky" ones get to experience it, but only a few. Success was choosy, it didn't like certain people and completely ignored others. Or, success could be extremely ironic, making you successful at illegal things, but unsuccessful at getting an education. It's strange how you can live and become what you think.

So because of these things I begun to believe that I was destined for destruction. I lived in a harsh area, but I didn't want to become my area. Yet I saw no options into getting out of this arid life, so I reconcile in my mind based on some stats I had heard about Black Men living in volatile Inner Cities that a high percentage would be incarcerated, or dead by 19. I thought living past 19 would be like winning the Mega Lottery, and since I was never a believer in Lotto Games, and I seeing that I was robbed constantly and I was weak, I'd probably fall in the dead category. So there was it, my understanding at 11 years old, I was going to die by 19 and I believed it, wholeheartedly...

It has been 6 years since my prognostication failed...and I couldn't be any happier about it. But what was my mindset as young man with a short shelf life? Where was Dad? How did I grow up? Was I always in the Projects? How did I get there? How did I get to where I am now?

Many questions, so little time to tell....we'll pick this up later

Oh yeah, I'll try to update as quick as I can, maybe I'll decide to do a weekly update or one ever 3 days, its been good for me oh not every blog update will be Life Story Oriented, I'll mix it up with real time life updates...Tune in Next Monday!