From 1996 to 2011

I would like to confine most of the whining in my life within the 15-year period—spent almost exclusively in Los Angeles County—from 1996 to 2011. Now, here is a sentence that scares off a lot of attractive women all around the world:

In 1996, I was 28 years old.

1996 represents the year that I ‘turned myself in’ to the corporate authorities, becoming a salary man and then a contractor, working “at will” of psychopathic corporations. 1996 marked the end of my 20s. My 20s were devoted to being recognized as a writer of poetry and fiction while I scraped by as a LAUSD substitute teacher, transitioning into temp jobs related to graphic design.

The Black people of Los Angeles recognized me as a writer of poetry—fiction, not so much…

Let us, in the 21^st century, try to respect what I am saying here with the phrase, “The Black people of Los Angeles.” From a real-estate speculation point of view, “the Black people of Los Angeles” are a withering demographic, fleeing to the southern parts of the United States in droves. My mostly dysfunctional support system was being taken away from me, leaving me effectively two choices: (i) gentrify my friendships and act like nothing tragic is happening to “my people” or (ii) kick it like Obi Wan and become essentially a corrupt monk, ostracized in the deserts of fantastic L.A.

When I was 28 years, old I had no idea that my choices were so stark. I optimistically assumed that there were more choices than these impoverished two. Most of the personal-ish entries in this Blog are a pathetic, convoluted, confused record of why I was broken down to these two choices.

1996 to 2011 represents the bulk of this horrible journey. As of this writing, only 2005 through 2011 is covered in the rasx() context, this Blog. Six years of stuff like:

2005 (mostly fascinated with the Blog concept itself)

• “Photograph of Gayl Jones”
• “The Son House Definition of The Blues”
• “Running around Leimert Park with Babies and a Momma”
• “Two Stills from KRST Unity”
• “My Son, His Hydroponics Experiment”
• “Tut George”
• “No New Material at kintespace.com?”
• “The Community of Negativity”
• “Meditation Super Powers”
• “Imperial Conditioning”
• “African Linguistic Realizations of Empire”
• “Sensitive ‘Colored’ Poet Guy Standing in Front of Whole Foods Market”
• “Why do you pay so much attention to the ‘cynical observer’?”

2006 (tech interests/struggles overtake humanities)

• “Spoken Word in Babylon System: The Professional Poet”
• “Remembering Trey Ellis”
• “My Manager Gets ‘Fired’”
• “Apple is like Little Richard and Microsoft is like Pat Boone”
• “Will Bryan Stop Bashing African-American MacArthur Fellows?”
• “The Sincere Innocence of Jon Udell”
• “My Eldest Son and the Hawaii Earthquake”
• “BAM and Dare Obasanjo”
• “James Brownian Motion”

2007 (FaceBook was destroying the Blog and I was burning bridges that I would burn again)

• “Flippant Remarks about Egocentrism and Ironic Poetry”
• “Much Respect for Steve Jobs”
• “audrey kawasaki reminds me that I was born a poor Black child”
• “The One United Bank Experiment”
• “The Grand, Unified, ‘Arrogant’ Theory of the Artistic Person”
• “One Open Email to Dr. Margo Crawford”
• “The Musicality of People”
• “The Undercover Black Man Blog”
• “Flippant Remarks about ‘Getting the Love You Want’”
• “Somehow I don’t think that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a Black boyfriend…”
• “Ed Dunn on ‘Who Screwing Who at the Workplace?’”
• “Honey Crawford Reading at Skylight Books”
• “Why Bryan Wilhite Failed Miles Foster”
• “Lurkers with Strong African Features”
• “Candace: Supermodel86”
• “Flippant Financial Statements”
• “Flippant Remarks for Oprah Winfrey in 1986”
• “Not Enough Tsehaie in the World”
• “MonaLisa, Her Studio and the L.A. Collective”
• “‘There was a war. You lost.’”
• “Flippant Remarks about the ‘mass exodus of African American male tourists to Brazil’”
• “What I did to Leslie Nia Lewis in my early twenties…”
• “Flippant Remarks from the Rental Class”
• “One Physically Attractive Woman and Her Mobile Phone”
• “Ostracizing Remarks about Being Ostracized”
• “The Medicinal Relationship”
• “‘The Deal’ from Too Many Black Women”
• “DJ Spooky in Mufukkin’ Antartica”

2008 (the year I commit to link compilations, trying to establish a routine)

• “Behind the Scenes with David Mandessi Diop”
• Flippant Remarks about These Obama Days
• Recognizing Strategic Obsequiousness
• “Ava DuVernay and Issac Klotz Show R/Kain Blaze”
• “The ‘Horns and Strings’ Metaphor”
• “The Pictograph, the Ideograph and the Syllabary”
• “The Black Hair Thing”
• “The Missing Persons in the Conversation”
• “My Theory of Girl Chasing”
• “The ‘Open Marriage’ Thing”
• “‘Maiysha is the Future’”
• “Saul Williams Has to Pay His Gas Bill”
• “Will Sheree R. Thomas Please Come Back?”
• “Carl Hancock Rux, Trey Ellis, Vernon Reid and Jimi Hendrix”
• “How a Terrifying Moment in Toni Morrison’s Beloved Relates to 1990s Thug Music”
• “Great Online Couples of the Arts”
• “‘Daughters of the Dust’ Hired Bahni Turpin and Made Moments of Healing”
• “Facebook and Julie Dash”
• “Being insulted by globe trotters of color…”
• “Curators Speak Out on SideStreet.org”
• “Recognizing the Existence of D-Knowledge”
• “Notes on the Desk of Sigmund Freud”
• “Notes for Saundra on Sweet Honey in the Rock Woman”

2009 (dominated by pre-twitter link compilations, food blogging and getting laid off from UCLA)

• “Visiting the Stone of the Old Kingdom”
• “Flippant Remarks about ‘Success’”
• “Dell is fired.”
• “Misreading a Scene from Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man’”
• “After My First Full Week of Being Laid Off”
• “Working for Songhay System ‘Ready State’”
• “Flippant Remarks about Dr. Sebi”
• “Drifting on a Life Raft 60 Days after Being Laid Off”
• “Regarding Fructose as Poison”
• “When You Stop Playing Games: Relationship Stalemates”
• “Stephen Batchelor’s Relationship Design: Marry a Buddhist Nun”
• “James Baldwin on Cheikh Anta Diop”
• “Flippant Remarks about ‘Why women have sex’”
• “Abdoulaye Ascofaré and the Film That Touches Me Most”

2010 (almost entirely link compilations, after leaving UCLA and returning to corporate enterprise)

• “Answering, ‘5 Questions Women Should Ask Men When Dating’”
• “Careful Remarks about My (Microsoft-based) IT Job Market”
• “No ‘rasx() on film’ for 2010”

2011 (in exchange for decent income, I lose everything else)

• “Flippant Remarks about ‘Building Pharaoh’s Ship’”
• “Careful Remarks about ‘Why I collect DVDs’”
• “One Picture of Personal Economic Health Held in Front of Me”
• “What’s most busy about the IT consulting business…”
• “NOK: My First Serious Indulgence in Speculation”
• “My Advanta Closed Account Closes”
• “My Serious Respect for Rejection”
• “The Telecommuting Experiment”
• “Telecommuting Experiment Concluded”

My “life” from 2011 to 2019 represent a maniacal devotion to establish that ‘ready state’ first mentioned in 2009. Either I am profoundly misinformed, but I remain completely committed to this self-organization and making a ‘complete expression’ (instead of depending on others to understand my intent I must ‘go away’ and make a complete statement of my intent).

I have spent 10 years making incremental movement to this ‘ready state’ and ‘complete expression’ (actually in the form of publishing). My surrender to the corporate world both subsidizes this “craziness” of mine and prevents it from progressing with relative ease and rapidity. One might say that the 15 years, 1996 to 2011, was my last desperate attempt to avoid going on this “crazy” journey almost totally alone. I am not the first adult to be confronted with this insanity. There are others, starting with my father.

@rasx()