Listen here if you prefer to hear my voice instead of read.
This is everything I can find recorded in history on IG, Anchor, and Facebook with the inclusion of a few pictures from work as a Forklift Driver in City of Industry, California. I was at the back of a high school bleacher, the high school was Santee High School, Los Angeles California. As you can see from Google satellite pictures and videos I’ve recorded while I was there during my state of homelessness. All below full of information, but here, on my website, three years later, I will talk about my experience during the time of my plight. Keep in mind this was not my first time but was the first time since I was released from prison. The reason I point that out is because I want you to see the injustice regardless of participation in their program. As you know I’ve been an artist for quite a while now, at least publicly, and as a novice journalist I wanted to know firsthand what steps one would need to take in order to achieve one’s goals. All of course starting from the bottom not by my choice if you ask me but let me not complain. You see, I was on a mission…….
On a mission to change my life for the better now that I had a daughter to be thinking about. I was already aiming to start fresh and work on my steps for a future she could see without the baggage I had accumulated over the years. I set out on a journey to correct my steps and instead things derailed me further from my main objective. To be clear, I’ve been making music for several years, but I always had a natural inclination to write, be it poetry, in my journal, or just thoughts for book idea, but in this world, it doesn’t quite work like that, and I wondered why things wasn’t designed for the betterment of humankind. I had just ended a relationship with my ex who was living with me for several years, and the way I chose to deal with the heart break or sudden change I wasn’t expecting in my life was to fly away to another country. During my stay in this country, I got married and had a child, but many things happened after that. I wasn’t in a good place with my own parents who never showed support to my ideas or who never trusted me with anything as simple as the key to their car. I never agreed to how they showed love by showing favoritism thus creating a division and resentment on my part, but nonetheless, I put up with it because that was the only family I had, but in further studying the abuse I noticed it was not what they did but how they expressed themselves with words, and what they would say without their intention much the time was the very thing driving me crazy. My only remedy was to seek asylum in however I could attain this, and so, I sought to forge my own path and get as far away as possible before it was too late, and I was forever maimed incapable of achieving anything.
I didn’t want to continue going down the path of nowhere and I was tired of hearing people talk about how they would like to one day do this or that. I didn’t want to sound like the rest of the people who only talk but never did, and so, I set out to change the course of time in the attempt to change mine, but before I could do this I had to suffer more persecution and go to jail in a foreign country where I couldn’t relate with the behaviors of the culture I was in the middle of. I did five months in jail, but it was like doing 20 years. First, the prison or jail system in a third world country is not like the ones in America. When I was finally sent to the jail where I was to serve my few months, I saw the inmates in control more than the officers. I saw people with machetes, knives, real cash, lighters to smoke, and sex on visitation. All the things that are forbidden here in America I saw over there. I saw the corruption and the people disappearing and not from early release or any release for that matter. The things I survived I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, but when I was finally released and still unable to fly back home due to the suspension of my Passport or the unfinished community service that I now had to complete in order to fly again. I was burning inside but had to silence my thoughts just so that I can get approved to what was my birthright. Can you imagine my pain when I finally completed all that only to fly back home and get arrested again at the airport of JFK, because of a warrant I had no idea about. I had just survived a riot that came out on the news the next day from where I was at, and many people died in that prison, and now after 2 years of confinement to the Island I was able to fly only to go back in I was seething inside.
At the time I was making progress in the pursuit of my own music, and by that, I mean I was recording, showing up on T.V. networks, and radio talk shows, and these little accomplishments was boosting my ego to a place I didn’t expect. When you are making music you effect people’s behavior, emotions, and attitudes to mimic that of the one giving it, and so, people started acting shady, ego driven, and arrogant because of my failures, and so I lost many friends. Before I left the country where I had to remain prisoner till my passport was cleared for me to take again, I had run into someone I thought had to do with my injuries a few years earlier, and at the time, I was very much still an adolescent in many regards still with the mentality to get pay back for the grievances inflicted upon me, and so, I assaulted a guy who I later found out had nothing to do with it, but before that would haunt me I left the scene and decided to leave the country to be with my wife and kid. Here, I suffered the incarceration that I endeavored while staying over there, but upon my return the charge awaiting me at the airport was assault. I had no problem doing the time. I was in the wrong and needed to pay for what I did, but how I was accused and convicted was what made me even more angry. I later found out it was two people I grew up with that snitched to the cops and was the reason for my warrant and arrest at the airport. You have no idea how my blood was boiling with revenge. Anyway, I soon learned not even the people you knew could be trusted and when they heard I was looking for them they made sure to stay out of my way, out of the fear of what I might do to them, but still, this also, was a motivating factor for me to leave and start anew again, because had I stayed, I probably would have sought revenge. This was in 2015 when I came back to the country and got arrested again due to two snitches that acted cowardly and sought to obstruct my life from hidden corners no one could face.
This Picture above is an art cover to a track I did later on in 2021, but my state of promoting this track was that of a homeless person living on the streets of California. All I had was an Obama Phone and through my social networks whenever I had Wi-Fi was when I could post my creation. Under these circumstances one has to worry about finding a socket just to be able to charge your phone if you had one.
While I was homeless, I had to find a secure location where I could leave the baggage I was carrying. See, I had clothes that I had acquired from different shelters and programs, and now I had no place to put them, and I still needed to have them in order to dress appropriate for job interviews and work that I was looking for. With no money, no friends, no family, no locker or anything. I had to find a place where I can stash it while I looked for a job, and hope no one stole my belongings while I was gone all day, because in LA people are always scheming and looking to steal from someone else to satisfy their addiction. I learned very quick that you couldn’t trust anyone no matter what form they came in. I was alone and, in a state, where I didn’t belong or was wanted. So, I had to trespass and jump over fences just to find a place to hide my things, and why I posted the above picture that day, because soon after all the kids were copying me. Everything was pretentious and so with the same energy I was given I was reciprocating in the hopes that I can survive and make it back home someday to my family, because not for a second was I safe or felt safe. I was always looking over my shoulders, and I say that to say that, while I was living in these conditions of plight, I still maintained an attitude of determination, of exuberance, and of joy. In retrospect I was just running away from the pain, and I would hide it with joy and laughter, but looking back now I was just trying to survive, and I didn’t want them to get the best of me. I didn’t allow them to ruin my day regardless of my circumstances, because I felt if I did, I was one of them and I was far from it in my mind. I had a lot on the line. I had the weight of my newfound popularity through music, I had a daughter, and now the very essence of the Patersonian in me was at stake. I couldn’t cave into the whims of a state that didn’t have a culture of their own. All I could do was adapt, improvise, and overcome my situation in the hopes that the sanctity of what made me whole was not jeopardized. I literally felt like I was Lot living in Sodom and Gomorrah, and unlike many who come to visit and have a good time before heading back to their origins, I was in a nightmare and often times thought about the movie “Escape From LA” with Kurt Russell. At times I thought I wasn’t going to make it back home, but I would ignore the thought and pursue my faith in Zog.
The Four videos above are Instagram stories I posted while I was homeless, and looking back at these, I realize I was expressing the anger I was feeling towards the State for the injustice I was receiving. It’s easy to say that I am to blame and that it has nothing to do with the State, but until you live their ways you won’t be able to understand. Where I was at it was normal for people to walk around with a knowing that segregation, discrimination, gangs, and racism was around. In my innocence I did not learn about these things that separated us until I came to California. Where I learned I was the only kind of my ethnicity for 7 thousand miles where you would see Caribbean people cohabitate with the East. Instead, I was seeing Central Americans, illegal immigrants from all backgrounds, Europeans, Australians, Russians, and Polish people. All looking at me like I was the alien and not a sovereign Citizen to my country. I had to constantly claim who I was and at times I had to rethink of my approach in how I would introduce myself just to throw them off.
The above post is the same I just posted them on different days, one on the 8th and the other on the 13th, but the link on the left is what the picture on the right shows once you put the link on your browser, and what I wrote was me trying my best to control my composure when in reality I was far from it and crying for help, because I was not having fun and I wanted to take a shower and go to sleep, but I didn’t have this luxury I had to keep thinking about my next move constantly worried about how to pay for a room, how to get food, how to get from point A to point B, If my clothes or property wasn’t stolen while I left the place I was sleeping to get a job or go to an interview. It was constant movement with no rest, and I was trying my best not to cave just to maintain the status that I was living under normal conditions when I was far from it.
Another 4 videos I posted as stories on my Instagram while under these conditions. I had gone many days without shower, and I was smelling bad, but I didn’t let this stop me. I distracted myself by working out at the high school which had a track, and I would run a few laps at times and workout by the bleachers during the day.
Here are a few pictures of my physique that I think was not in my best condition due to the malnutrition and inability to properly workout because I couldn’t shower right after. So, I had to at times not workout because I didn’t want to suffer the perspiration and reek, and then worry I couldn’t take a shower. So, to remedy this I would just not workout, but to do this was to obstruct the normal behaviors of my inclination and I hated that I had to alter my behavior because of the state I was in. I couldn’t perform my natural self to 100 percent instead I was acting at 60 percent, and it was killing me slowly.
Here in the above pictures, you see me at work where I would take the bus from LA to City of Industry, which was pretty far from where I was at, but I was desperate, and I needed cash. The way I found the high school where I was sleeping behind the bleachers was because I was originally staying at a hostel for a week on Hollywood Blvd, and when I couldn’t pay for another day and no one to help. I called an Uber and asked the driver if he knew about a cheap hotel, which was right at the back of the high school where I had to eventually sneak in by jumping the fence, but later I found the gate cut open by the side where people would come in and run at the track at night. There was this crazy woman who would sleep by the bushes of the cut gate in cardboard boxes, and I would always see her talking to herself, but the difference between me and her is that she had people coming to her and giving her food, and what not, from her own kind of people. Meanwhile, I had no one and I had to get my own I only know this because one time I was going to give her food when I saw she had, because people around the way knew and would feed her, so I kept to myself. I needed to worry about myself, because they had help but I didn’t so I had to be a step ahead of them by constantly planning with no rest. I picked up a job at a warehouse as a forklift driver unloading and loading trucks all day, and then take the bus back to the same spot every day. Many times, I would use the socket to charge my phone at the cheap hotel I was driven at the first time without their knowledge, because people hated that and there was one outside, and I would use it. So, I would station somewhere in the front of the hotel which was at the back of the high school and waited four or five hours at a time just to be connected to be able to look for hotel deals, apartments, etc……..
This is me at night getting ready to go to sleep on the pavement floor behind the bleachers. At times people would go to the hotel for a few hours just to have sex and then leave, but I would take advantage of this opportunity when they left and sneak in to shower before the housekeeper would come to clean the room, and this would happen only 2 times before it became much harder, and I started to pay for the room. I was on parole and one time I had to use all the money I had to pay for the room for few hours just to convince my parole officer that I was doing well, and that I was working when I really didn’t have a place to sleep, and as soon as she left, I would shower, lay on the bed for a few before going back to the bleachers where I was stationed at.
Above are more pictures of me at work and where I was living behind the bleachers of this high school, and as you can see even under these circumstances I was still writing and going over my notes.
During this time, I was still able to be active on my anchor account and post a new podcast episode where I was just basically buying time talking about anything and everything except the reality that I was in. In retrospect I think I did it the right way because I was certainly not after sympathy, and I didn’t want any pity, so I tried to remain relevant by talking about the news or what I thought was going on at the time just to maintain the status quo and not lose the audience I had gained over the years.
The rest of the above post are from my IG, and one time I picked up a job just for the day as a sweep cleaner at a rave concert and I went and recorded it, but of course, in none of the videos you would think I’m homeless. I remember being a shame that I had to admit that in order to receive food stamps or any government help, because I was not brought up to think it was an ok thing to do, but here in LA the people would wear it like a badge of honor and be proud that they were homeless, and I could not understand that. Also, the first post where I’m talking about irrelevant issues of the time just to maintain rapport with my viewers I was charging my phone, and it was off this socket by the restrooms of the high school field that I was staying at, and the socket must have had low voltage, because it would take all day just to charge, and in those in between times, while charging I would go live on Facebook, and why you see me walk off at intervals and come back like nothing happen. It’s because the phone was connected to the socket, and I couldn’t grab it until it was charged.
https://fb.watch/iyjjPm602o/ 7/25/2021
https://fb.watch/iyjFM8kMYd/ 2/27/2021
https://fb.watch/iyllZc0ZWL/ 7/27/2021
https://fb.watch/iyjSEV3PDk/ 7/27/2021
https://fb.watch/iyjZMEAs_4/ 7/27/2021
The rest of the above links or post are from Facebook and again, this was all around the time I was homeless eventually I was approved for housing and made my way to a halfway house, where I had to share a house with 20 other individuals who not only had a problem mentally and physically but were essentially drug addicts who weren’t on their best behaviors as far as cleanliness goes. From here jealousy and envy grew to the heights of burning the house down, which I also posted earlier on my website you can watch it here on this link: https://lmicv.wordpress.com/2022/11/04/last-night-my-house-was-lit/ . The third link from above the Facebook post are visible you just have to click the link as well as the last two links. For some reason it is not showing up like the others but all you have to do is click the link and you will see the post.
The Prayer Hand is a link to my GoFundMe Page all you have to do is hit the picture and it’ll take you to that page just follow the steps. Thank You.