Reflections of a 22-Year Old Black Man (Draft 1 of Chapter 1)

My life is full of unfinished stories. Moments where the idea is clear and then gone. Maybe that is what life is. One unfinished story moving to the next. I don’t remember my first stories. I remember the re-tellings. The tales my parents have passed onto me and I will now pass on to you.

When I was first born I sneezed and blinked. When I was born I was small. My father told me once that I fit into the palm of his hand though I doubt that. My mother had a cesarean section to birth me one month before I would have been born otherwise. She told me the doctors believed at the time I had a weak heart. Ever since then everyone… well everyone on my mother’s side calls me Dinky or Dink the Wink, or just plain Dink.

On my second birthday I climbed up on the kitchen counter and starting eating my birthday cake before it was officially cut. I believe it was a chocolate cake.

If I am going to start telling tales I believe a few introductions are in order. I am Gregory Daniel Miles, Jr. It always starts as Gregory but within a few days everyone calls me Greg. To be honest I don’t think any of those names suit me. I call myself at least a dozen other things in my mind and the internet, but when anyone asks me my name straight out I say Greg Miles. A name is supposed to tell who you are but that name says next to nothing about me. On the net I am the Cyphered Running Wolf, The Mirrored Dog, but those names are part of stories I have yet to tell. Right now let’s get back to Dink.

I am and have always been a momma’s boy. A while after I was born my mother had to do what most working mothers do and had to find a daycare for me. It has hard looking because whenever she would leave I would cry. And I wouldn’t eat either. My mother ended up taking me to the doctor because they thought I had a stomach ulcer. It just turned out that I was a momma’s boy plain and simple. I once drove my maternal grandmother crazy with the crying. My mother left me with her for a few hours and I just started wailing because I missed her. I was old enough that I could speak and I remember how I tormented her. I would calm down for five or ten minutes then . “Momma!!!!”

I had a very distinctive cry as a child. My cousins would call it a moose call. Some children have a sob. Mine was a loud penetrating wail. Let me quantify loud. I grew up in a ranch style house. The kitchen was on one end of the house with the living room on the other. If I started crying in the living room you could hear it very clearly in the kitchen. The odd thing about crying as a child is that afterward my nose would sort of close up and I would get a splitting headache. As I got older it didn’t bother me much but when I was very young after I was done crying that would just lead to more crying.

I am a first and only child. If I wanted friends I had to look outside my house. When I got older it was a bit harder and a bit easier for me, but as a child my cousins were the closest folk I had to siblings.

I have a huge extended family. I do not want to annoy any of them by acting like they were not a part of my life, but as much as I hate to admit it I did spend more time with some rather than others. Alicia, Marvin, Spud, and Justin were the ones I hung with on my Mother’s side. Each of us was separated by no more than two years from one of the others. I was and am the third oldest amongst them. As children we were inseparable. In the summers we would swim and travel together. The first years of my memory are dominated by bus rides and train rides where we would play Uno until we got to a hotel where we could swim.

I may be a bit out of shape now but back then in the water I could beat them all. There were other places we would swim, the Southfield civic center, and the Colman Young Recreational center. Colman Young’s pool was bigger and was inside. I scared my mom several times by swimming to the deep end. I liked not being able to walk in the water. I liked having to swim.

In the summer between first and second grade my Aunts decided to take us to Disney World. The park wasn’t that fun. We all got lost and separated. My mother decided to stay put and wait for the others to find us. We roasted in the Florida heat and humidity on a bench, while my cousin Alicia rode magic mountain. When we all got back to the hotel we found a Gauntlet arcade game. Between us we probably dropped $70 into that machine.

When I was a child they would spend the night. I enjoyed their company but the same time. I didn’t. Even now I hate compromising for the sake of the group. If everybody wanted to watch a movie I wasn’t particularly interested in, I would just go off on my own. They loved Child’s Play. Its not a particularly frightening series to an adult or even a teenager, but for a little kid it will fuck you up. For a long time I hated horror movies because I either had to watch Chucky kill people with my cousins, or go down into the basement and play Nintendo by myself.

For this reason I was also a pretty bossy kid, to the chagrin of Marvin the youngest of that group. We would fight about it all the time and eventually it would always lead to a wrestling match. By the time we were twelve we had established unofficial teams. It would always be Alicia and I vs. Marvin and Justin. Marvin had childhood arthritis and one time we were going at it I heard a snap. It was nothing. I don’t mean nothing serious. I mean nothing. I doubt he even felt it, but I instantly released him from the shoulder hold I had him in and said, “Are you okay.” I don’t know why but that cracked everyone up. For a long time after that was an inside joke amongst us. Another time we were going at it on the front lawn of my house . I was winning against Marvin but he called Justin the oldest in. They double teamed me, and Justin kicked my front teeth in. I still have the bonding. Yep that was one of the times the moose call came out.

That was the first real dental work I had to have done. Oddly enough I didn’t have any cavities until my junior year in high school though I did wear braces. I hated them I’ll get back to that later through.

The preschool my parents eventually settled on was Babes Academy. It wasn’t too far from home. I can’t remember a lot from there but I do remember a few things. When the Gulf war jumped off, we showed our support by dressing in military costumes and doing a medley. I don’t know how accurate a camo cowboy hat is though. We also had a hula party and did mock weddings. Mine was to a girl named Erica. She went to just about every other school I went to though admittedly after elementary we weren’t that close. Eventually the place went out of business but for a while one of the teachers used to allow the kids to stay at her house while the parents went to work.

I went to kindergarten early. My birthday is in November, after the start of the school year. I forget all the details but my mother was given the opportunity to let me start a year early. Up until my weird college years people would ask me if I was promoted. In retrospect it gave me a bit of an inflated ego being the youngest guy in class. My mom says on the day she went to register me for school I yelled for everyone in the room to be quiet. I don’t remember it exactly but I can imagine it. A bunch of noisy kids. Even then I hated chaotic noise. I can deal with TVs and radios but I hate cacophony. That was one of the few times my mother spanked me.
Unlike the rest of the school children's day kindergartners had only a half day. The bus would come pick me up at 11:30. The kindergartners had their own part of the school, mostly because they were on a different schedule than the other kids. If you were part of afternoon kindergarten like me you got out at 4:00 while the other kids got out at 3.

I almost failed kindergarten because I had the chicken pox. I was out of class for two weeks because of it. The school had a policy that if a person missed tens days of class they automatic had to repeat the grade. During my illness I was mostly babysat by my father’s only sister, Aunt Joyce who at the time I thought was very mean. I had the habit of eating the baloney out of the baloney sandwiches and then eating the rest of the sandwich mom made me and Aunt Joyce yelled at me because of it.

Why, WRIF, Why

First of let me apologize for not posting in so long. My computer crashed and I don't know. Life was pretty wild.

Now that that's out of the way. Time for me to go on a little rant and tell an anecdote.

Once there was a kid. This kid normally got decent grades but when he was about twelve he didn't do so hot on his report card. He took the TV, out of his room as a commitment to show his parents he was going to try harder, but he left the radio in his room.

And good times were had as while working on algebra he heard awesome music on the dial. After 10 pm there was an awesome 2 hour commercial free rock block on the local hard rock station. He heard a lot of his favorite bands, The White Stripes, Disturbed,Nine Inch Nails, Evanescence, Drowning Pool, and Rage against the Machine for the first time on that station.




WRIF, what the hell happened? Nearly every song now a days is at least 10 years old. There is no new stuff. I can name at least 5 bands that qualify as hard rock off the top of my head who came out with new albums this year. What happened to the commercial free rock block. Why do everytime I turn on the dial I get either commercials, talk, or old stuff that I have mp3s of already. If I want to listen to music 10 years old I can go to the classic rock station down the dial or better yet just go to my own collection.

Maybe it's falling revenues. I'm an old fashioned guy who believes in competition in the free market (to a point). The internet is kicking your asses but there are some things a DJ is better at than Pandora, and there some things satellite can't do either.

Hosting a live party at the local club. Covering a concert at the local club or bar. Broadcasting local news, both hard and music related. Making relevant wisecracks. Call in shows and request hours. Interviewing local bands to have you finger on the pulse of the local music scene. These are things you can do better than your competition if only you would try.

You guys have a job. I subscribe to Rhapsody so I can get almost every song I want so why do I want you guys to succeed. Most of the bands on MTV and the non hard rock stations aren't my style. A few years ago I thought hard rock was dying. Then I started looking for myself its not. It just looks that way because my contemporary rock stations aren't doing their jobs.

Do I like Nirvana? Hell Yeah. Do I like Metallica? Sure. But if I hear "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or "Unforgiven" one more time, POW ZIP RIGHT TO THE MOON.

I can hear those songs whenever I want. Hell I can sing along, if I want. I want songs I can't get whenever I want on the radio. Those rare tracks from older bands. Like Pearl Jam's cover of I got a feeling. Or brand new bands I haven't heard. I'm tired of feeling like a 22-year old, 40-year-old guy who's nostalgic for old bands when there are plenty of new ones I just haven't heard because the DJs aren't doing their jobs.

I like the institution of radio. Almost every artist, I hear talk in interviews, says something about the first time they heard their song on the radio. Sure pod-casting can come close but the good old radio performs or is suppose to perform a valuable function in society. It exposes people to artists they may not have considered and brings together a geographic music scene.

Microsoft!!!!!!!!!!!

You know how a few weeks ago I was singing Microsoft's praises. Well my computer died. And what really ticks me off is I probably could have fixed it if Sony gave me a CD with XP on it but they didn't. The greedy sons of explicit deleated. Sony's boot disk partition won't work and a new copy of XP would cost around 300 bucks. Microsoft!!!!!!!!!!!!

I Hate Apple

I do not have an i-phone. I might love apple if I did but because I don't I can be a bit more objective. There is a lot of buzz about the i-pad but honestly. I haven't seen it. Right now Google is in the best position to knock a blow to Apple, but I hope the sleeping giant awakens and Microsoft does something cool.

For ages I have defended Windows and I will briefly do so again. I get the games. I get lower prices. That's starting to not be enough. All the apple ads make it seem like windows guys are stuffy suits but for me its the opposite. While at school I've been exposed to some pretty cool apps that would make the stuff I plan to do for a living easier, but guess what. Those all work best on Macs. The problem is the stuff I would do in my off time like playing Total War would work best on a P.C.

All of this is moot though considering I don't have enough money for a new computer anyway, and the same could be said for an i-phone whose lowest monthly plan is $70. I definitely can not afford that. My problem with apple is that their products are always out of my price range, which is weird since I am their target audience the young geek.

I keep waiting for Big Willy Gates to come back to the company like Jobs did and wow me with new democratized tech I can afford, but I doubt it will happen.

End to Detroit Social Promotion

A couple of recent news articles said that Robert Bobb is ending social promotion in the Detroit Public School system. Why does this matter to a dude who is 5 years out of high school who, does not and has never lived in Detroit? My mom is a retiring teacher in Detroit and she hated, scratch that loathed social promotion.

The teachers over the years have gotten a lot of flack for the problems of the Detroit Public Schools system, but there is only so much teachers can do. When a student can't read its harder to teach. Its worse when you consider that there are also other students in the class, and getting the ones up to speed who are behind just to learn what they should for that grade level takes an inordinate amount of time. Over the years the problems become compounded so that by high school students may be ridiculously behind. Some of them get so discouraged that they figure they can never catch up end start believing class is a waste of time. At that point some of them start dropping out or disrupting the classes as a whole.

I'm glad the problem is being attended to but at the same time there are reasons why social promotion exists. Having kids who are drastically different ages in the same class can be a problem. Sixteen-year-olds may pick on thirteen year olds. Also there is a stigma about repeating a class. While in college I've realized that classes are tough and have had to take classes over again. I'm not proud of it but its better than getting over your head. I think its similar for high school students and their parents want to them to move on maybe not considering the ramifications of moving forward unprepared.

I did what I did and no one else

On the day I speak face to face with my God,
I shall not beg pardon for my sins because they were not mine
I will tell him I did what I believed best at the time
Not what my parents believed best
Not what my teachers and professors thought best
But for better or for worse what I thought right
I made my choices and will not recant them
I bear the eternal burden of them

My Mind Is a Dangerous Place

Too many paths
Too much data
Every thing screaming
Loud confused chaotic
A million different directions
Paths within paths
Ideas that come for only a fleeting moment
Never to be found again
But their importance was grasped
Holes
Data unclear
What does it all mean

The Good the Bad and the Downright Ugly

You want to know me
There’s too much
There’ Good there's bad
Cruelty and such
You have to take the ugly
But in the end I ain’t that bad

Twelve Armies

Twelve armies lie locked by the sea
cross it they try
by taking to the sky
They are blinded by what they believe

For the spirits of old cry
when they see the innocents flee
What will come is worse than all perceive
For the sky will be scythed

From the wound the dragons will bleed
Belching and Burning they will uses flame and fire
to release their ire
And when they finally perish it will be our doom they have brought

For this is what our vanity has wrought
Our pride has triumphed
For what we had was not enough
And as goblins we gobble more like pigs in a trough

Sorrow, Sorrow

I wail on the walls of my life
Sorrow Sorrow
On the outside there is no strife
But inward Scars and marks
of failure desolation and loneliness lie on my red beating heart
Where to start?
Where did it end?
Alone Alone

Where to begin?
Shall I bear my sins.
Where is God?
Is it that I feel his absence.
Is that what pains me
There is a God, I know but a sign there is no
I live day to day
Just trying to make my way
But that is not enough
what else what else.

Why am I so sad
There is nothing I see that is bad
At least in my realm
In the controlled
But outside of these walls
I Fear I fear

I hear the horsemens' hooves but their trumpets are silent
All within is violent
Despite it all the world must go on and will
And I with it
where is my place within it
I don’t know I don’t know

I wait
Why wait
move damn it move
The world moves while I lie still and silent in the corners
watching the mirth and the blood run
laugh you they tell me
and I do

I laugh

but at night my knees held to my chest I cry not for them
but for me
and my uncertainty
what to do what to do

“What am I” I scream
And then in the darkness my lips curl upward in a terrible way
I am the beast
The wild thing forgotten
Living only now not then only now
I live to laugh as all is done on earth as it is in hell
and Not even God seems to care

Where is he within me
Where is God within Man
Within me Within Me

I though I had a priestly nature
Kind and pensive
But I have lost all thought
I refuse to look back
To look forward

Now Now
You don’t have character until you know regret
I know regret
Is that why I sorrow
For the things I should have done
People I should have helped
Things I should have said
Questions I should have asked
Now Now

The past is gone
I can never get it back
atone atone

Its not the fate of my soul I fear
But the former states of my mind

To face not only the deeds of wickedness I have committed
But the deeds of Honor I have failed to make
And Amends can not be made all there is to do is regret
And wonder will the opportunity to stand ever come again
Never Never
Perhaps that is why I have sorrow

The New Mecca

The five points shall meet
All the bards of the day will take their seats
A new age will come
A renaissance on the horizon
The rise of the city will start
As it becomes a new Mecca of Art
Some will call it a crime
But generations later will call it sublime

Loud Silence

Too Quiet
I always enjoyed the quiet.
I found my peace, my center in it,
But, now I feel it’s a front on a fight
As Ajax said I’m tired of all this running and hiding
The peace has become a war

I Got No Game

I got no game.
I have not mastered the art of talking about sex while not talking about sex
The back and forth tennis match of erotic word play.
I got no game.
Nothing on the tip of my tongue pleases the ladies.
All my lines are too short.
My rhymes seem too forced.
It all seems rehearsed.
I don’t know when to stop and when to start.
When to speed up and when to slow down.
I got no game.

This Mind is Mine

This mind is mine
Think you know that’s fine
But always remember that this mind is mine
I’m closest to my closest thoughts
No… you can’t analyze it with ink blots

Hard as Rock

I am the mountain king
Unmoving unwavering
Strong as stone
And Hard as Rock