No. 2 No Ones are Alike
But just so you don't think I'm a hedonistic creep, I absolutely understand my social life isn't the only thing around. I have some kind of consciousness, even though I only recently arrived in the city after my parents died. I paid off my own college loans, indentured to the workforce before I was old enough to buy a bus pass. I ate my share of donuts and pizza in community college trying to feed myself, which has contributed to this Michelin tire that I'm trying to work off on the jogging track. It all filters down. So what are we going to do? Wait for a new cultural phenomenon like when hip-hop was real and fresh to pull us out of the doldrums? So I came to a decision. I felt good about it. I had this sense of certainty in my gut. It was the same sense I had when my writing teacher in community college told me I'd never amount to anything unless I figured out how to put together a sentence. I'd break into a cold sweat anytime I was in the same room with a keyboard, unless it was to program. I sweated it out, but I managed to put one sentence in front of the other. So I knew. It was the right thing to do. I was going to build a mass movement.

But my outstanding question was how, how was I going to build a mass movement? Now there was a guy I grew up with in Eureka; Prowlie, we used called him because he was always prowling around trying to hustle the tourists along Highway 101 who were on their way to see the redwoods, who use to talk to me all the time. Actually, he didn't say much, but one thing he did say stuck with me.

"Kid, you need to look at the world through your own glass and watch the light spread."

Now, of course, that didn't tell me anything about how to build a mass movement, but at least it was a place to start.