rick j

About me:

i was born in boston massachusetts and grew up in a multi-ethnic city on the outskirts of boston. i was into track, particularly long distance running, and hardcore street basketball. i joined the army after barely graduating one of the worst public highschools in new england (my teachers went on strike just to get paid) to become a tanker. i ended up serving in germany for three years where i worked as an executive assistant, radio operator, and tracked personnel carrier driver, monitoring various wargames near the "front." afterwards i attended college at the university of maine, orono where i intended to major in journalism but instead majored in potsmoking and beer guzzling. i was called back into the army for desert storm, though never deployed. i dropped out of college and drove across the country in a beat up plymouth horizon to check out the northwest scene and lived in portland for seven years. i got involved in the local poetry scene and studied radical leftist politics, buddhism, advaita vedanta, yoga, ayurveda, jazz and learned how to blow flute. i eventually left to explore intentional communities around the united states, visiting twin oaks and the lama foundation, and living at sunrise ranch and yogaville, where i took the yoga teacher training and taught hatha yoga, in addition to seriously studying astrology in the hope of becoming an astrological counselor. i left in 2000 and traveled some more, visiting ganas community in staten island new york before returning to sunrise ranch. eventually, i moved to madison, wisconsin as an experiment in locational astrology which indicated that madison was ideally located for who i am and what i wanted to do at that time. i worked at a used bookstore and a library for five years and continued my studies. i remained in wisconsin for much longer than i would have liked because i was diagnosed with testicular cancer and had to have surgery, and then radiation therapy. after a period of time, a lump appeared at the bottom of my throat, which was found to be a third stage tumor just above my heart, for which i did several months of extremely intense chemotherapy. after being pronounced cancer free by my doctor after a year and a half, i moved back to portland to write and read poetry. check out some of my readings at: http://www.brokenhours.net/podcasts.html