About Solomon

Welcome

Creative Radical, Radical Creative

These two words have been integral to my understanding of who I am for most of my life. Whether adjective or descriptive noun, they define me and what I stand for.

Creative as an adjective:

relating to or involving the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.

Creative as a noun:

(informal) a person who is creative, typically in a professional context.

Radical as an adjective:

(especially of change or action) relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something; far-reaching or thorough.

Radical as a noun:

a person who advocates thorough or complete political or social reform; a member of a political party or part of a party pursuing such aims.

I grew up the eldest of two sons to a single mother in Hayward which is a large city in the East Bay, south of Oakland and across the Bay from San Francisco in California. My father would take us to his home half an hour away every other weekend as was the custom in America during the 1970s and early 1980s.

My father being half Native American would be just the beginning of the multicultural influences on my life. My grandmother married a Black man in the early 1970s and my mother married an Iranian man in the late 1970s as a revolution was occurring in his home country. We lived among people of all cultures in our crowded apartment complexes — one unit of twenty-eight.

I remember the police beating a neighbor teenager in the carport. I remember a helicopter searching for another teenager on the run. I remember the single moms making a neighborhood Halloween party for fear of poisoned candy. The neighbor who got beat by the police dressed as a mime, likely so he didn’t have to talk about it. The neighbor who had been on the run was in jail. This party was my first instance of understanding community organizing.

I always did well in school and entered the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program in fourth grade. I took honors and Advanced Placement (AP) classes later. Moving to Oakland following the hopes of my Iranian step-father, we lived just outside the richest part of the city, meaning I was a minority in a mostly Black middle school. I learned empathy there as a live presentation of teen refugees from Cambodia and Palestine echoed the television interview of a teenaged young man in South Africa resisting Apartheid. Then the sorry conditions of my fellow classmates’ education became clear as the teachers went on strike. I moved again, this time because I wanted to know my father better and go to a better school. There in Fremont, reading the V for Vendetta graphic novel on the recommendation of a young comic shop owner was my first interaction with serious art for adults and with anarchism.

That suburban East Bay was swapped out for a rural suburban Central Valley when my father and step-mom moved us. All of my parents’ moves apparently did not consider my education as each move was a downgrade in that arena.

I ended up ditching school the majority of my senior year, pursuing love with a Jehovah’s Witness girl by sneaking around. When her family moved an hour’s drive away to ostensibly get away from me, I would drive in my ’72 Volkswagen Squareback with a rebuilt ’68 engine the distance listening to punk and ska music, feeling the glory of a road trip every few days of the week. My grades suffered, but only slightly.

I moved in with my mother and step-father in San Leandro, California while I attended Cal State Hayward (the only school I applied to) and fell in love again with a young woman in an Environmental Science class. I dropped out, unconvinced I could afford it. We moved up to Arcata, California together where she completed her education. Our desire for freedom got the best of us and we parted after several years, including a period of time when we referred to ourselves as “married” despite no legal attachment.

Soon after moving to Arcata I watched Manufacturing Consent and recalled the art of V for Vendetta used that same term — anarchism. I became involved with Food Not Bombs, a mutual aid organization which also embraced anarchists and I embraced the term to describe myself. The liberal city council decided to sue us for sharing food, threatening us with jail time. Around the same time I protested the construction of the new jail and was kicked out of the jail. We would eventually settle out of court in the hopes of not setting bad precedent. When many of my comrades finished degrees (which I believed I could not afford to pursue) they moved away as happens in Arcata. Our do it yourself (DIY) community center Crowatan Art Works folded.

I funded all my experiences by working at Los Bagels, a multicultural bakery, doing most jobs in the shop, cleaning, delivering, baking, managing, and working the deli. I learned how to work and how to bake from scratch. I fantasized about the shop becoming a worker owned business, but the owners are liberals, not radicals. Still, I gained much from my time there.

I lived in 13 homes in 13 years in Arcata and I am certainly the poorer for it. I squandered many relationships, both friendly and romantic due to my personal shortcomings and my inherited inability to keep in touch well. This reminiscence also shortchanges the many friends and lovers who impacted my life. I am grateful for them all, even those who I disagreed with. I wish I kept in better touch.

Toward the end of my time in Arcata, I attended the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theater in Blue Lake. Theater had always been a part of my life, from teen theater addressing social concerns like drug abuse and suicide in high school to street theater as part of my political activism to a year at Humboldt State University before again dropping out due to financial concerns. I somehow overcame a scarcity mindset just enough to sign up for the nine month program, using Americorps awards to pay for the schooling. It was an odd time of transition at the school and our class was one of the on average older classes of the institution. Still, I learned a lot about who I am and how my body works to tell stories.

The meaning of my life changed drastically as I married and had two kids. While in hindsight I can see that I should have ended that marriage at least ten years earlier, I have been blessed with the love and meaning that being father to two children has brought me. Of course, I also learned much about how to be a better person because of the twenty year relationship, despite the physical, emotional, and financial abuse I suffered. Onward.

Upon my divorce, my community has supported me. Despite my shortcomings in being a friend, I have been amazed at how folks have rallied behind me. I am so grateful. I also rediscovered my guitar playing and creative spirit that has found expression only in bringing levity to the kids’ upbringing. The essential part of me that longs for a better world for all people has also been unchained. I spend a lot of time doing that work now, in addition to my perhaps final career.

I worked a variety of places over the years including my step-father’s street side flower shop on Fisherman’s Wharf, Ramone’s Bakery, two separate years with Americorps at schools in Eureka, the Humboldt County Clerk/Recorder’s Office, Starbucks, Kookies by Katie as their bread and cake guy, Los Bagels (as mentioned above) for over ten years, and the US Forest Service for over ten years. With the Forest Service I learned a lot of administrative skills that would position me well for my current career.

My kids in the bookshop years before I bought it

I bought a bookshop and the building it lives in. I live there now with an immense debt, and I feel like I have a mission to support those I meet. Despite my challenges, I hold immense privilege. I work to leverage that every day, because I don’t expect to be able to retire. Rather, I will do this work until the Parkinson’s (like my grandfather), heart attack (like many in my family), dementia (like my grandmother and mother), or cancer (like my step-father, step-grandfather, and so many others) gets me. But it won’t be suicide. That’s how my dad went soon after my oldest was born. He never met my kids and I only went to the reservation at Turtle Mountain he came from with the kids after he had been gone for many years. When I get a chance I will go back there, because my soul knows it is home. Until then I will find free moments to write speculative fiction about a beautiful world that has a center there.