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Who
is Nick Zentor?
My humble self has had no reason to go into any depth about my individual personage until I was recently reminded of the prejudgmental element of our world and put into a "report for the defense" mode. I have already provided some basic background about the author, which seemed like the civil thing to do. But to avoid any misunderstandings about who I am, I decided some further, more updated details about my previous life might be helpful at this point. As I write this, I am in my late 40s ( last I checked it was 45, but its been at least a year since). I was born in poverty, raised in poverty, and I continue to live below the poverty-line. The reason why I have never escaped poverty is complex, due to the social and psychological problems surrounding it, but suffice it to say that my basic formative program was both over-blown by idealistic hot-air and under-powered by realistic practice. Inotherwords, I got the "American Dream" thing implanted in my mind alright, I just never gained access to the kind of real substance needed to see it through. As a young man, I was quite energetic and capable of doing almost any job that I was given a chance on, as far as general labor went, and I was quite motivated to prove that I was capable of earning my right to live my own life. While I was in high school, I had a few paper routes, and later when I was 16, I worked during the summer on a farm and then with a landscaping company. My main motivation was finding a regular job on which I could make enough money to get away from the house of my step-father, who was an alcoholic prone to violence. Wanting such an escape and actually realizing it were two very different things. It was much more difficult than I expected. After graduating from high school, I actually had greater ambitions, which included college and a future in science. But something went terribly wrong with that dream, which involved neglect by a nineth-grade algebra teacher and a lack of the necessary knowledge to do calculus and the kind of math every good scientist was required to do. I will not go into details, as it is quite a complex story, but it botched my whole future as a scientist. After I fully realized my shortcomings as a scientist during my first year in college, I was also suffering from a severe case of a broken heart and depression. This is the other very complex psychological problem which affected my life. In the spring of 1975, I began seeing a young girl named Lisa Avery. I saw her about 3 or 4 times, each time was a double-date thing that included her sister and my best friend, and although we never actually spent any time alone, nor did we even kiss, there was every indication that things were going in that direction, it was just a matter of time. The times we spent together were quite positive and it was obvious that she liked me as much as I liked her. But our relationship was abruptly severed after the school year ended and the summer vacation began when my mother insisted that I go away for the summer, to visit my older brother, who was in the Navy, and living with his wife and baby girl in Virginia. I didn't want to go, but mother was very insistent, and step-father, I knew, would put me through hell if I didn't. I was pressured by my parents to leave that summer, against my will, and lived in Virginia with my older brother and his family from late June to late August (2 months). I lost Lisa during that time and it was the worst summer of my life, even though I could never admit it to my brother and his wife, because they were very nice to me during my stay. I cannot put into words the heart-breaking emotional experience I went through after that. When I realized that I had lost Lisa and there was no way to get her back, it was too much for me. I guess that I was truly in love with her, but there was no way to communicate that love to her, not after that fateful summer. Leaving her like that was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made in my life and there simply was no way to undo it. It took me years to get over the heart-break. Those years of depression and careless abandon (76 - 85) included a motorcycle accident, a few near-death experiences, several very powerful out-of-body experiences, homelessness for 3 years (83 - 85) and the inability to hold a job. It was during my homeless experience in Southern California in 1985 that I finally got over the whole thing with Lisa. I actually got over it earlier, for the most part, but during the homeless period I was so completely without ambition or direction in life that I had absolutely no idea what to do to salvage it. I sat on the beach alone in 1985, somewhere around Santa Monica, and just stared at the sea and the setting sun for days. During that time, I began to contemplate swimming out and not turning back. I knew I would drown, but that was the idea. I had nothing to live for. Then I had a wonderful spiritual experience. As I rested my back against a rock and stared at the fluffy clouds in the blue sky over the sea, I began to feel disembodied, as if i were floating on one of those clouds. It was a very enlightening experience, in more ways than one. I felt like I had no weight, as if there were no gravity, and that the only thing keeping me was the direct connection I had to the stone and sand of the island I was floating on. Yes, it was more like an island than a cloud, and all the other clouds were like islands also, and I was not bound to the gravity of a planet, but floating within a higher dimension where there were a multitude of free-floating islands in space. Without any planetary gravity under me, I realized a much different perspective, a perspective which included a higher dimension and not being bound by the laws of gravity, it was a much different reality. I floated there on that island, as light as a feather in the wind, for perhaps hours before realizing that it would end. When it finally ended, I had realized a surge of confidence and a new-found purpose to continue my life. I decided I would give it another go and looked at the notebook in my bag. I had begun a science fiction story and realized that it was enough of a motive to continue. I told myself that I would continue my life and strive to get my work published. That ambition turned out to be just as much of a disappointment as all the others, but as I look back now, I realize that it was a motivation that carried me, nonetheless, through the years, and in that respect, it managed alright. It was enough, for example, to convince me to go to work again on a job that I really did not want to do, so that I could pay the rent and finance my fictional projects. In fact, the job i took working as a clerk in a department store in 1986 actually lasted until 1991. That 5 years on one steady full-time job was the longest I had ever had, and it only ended because the store closed. The fact is, I have been a regular worker most of my life and have had a multitude of odd jobs all along. I have been a paper-deliverer, a farm-worker, a landscaper, grounds-keeper, janitorial worker, an electrical-assembler, a construction-worker, department-store clerk, and house-painter. I was also in the Air Force for a short spell in basic-training at Lackland, Texas, (1982) but that resulted in a discharge due to psycholgical problems after I experienced a psychotic episode due to sleep-deprivation. I had a severe case of insomnia and got no more than an hour of sleep each night. After 2 weeks of no more than one-hour of rest each night, I was experiencing random narcoleptic episodes in classroom settings. During the third week, I suddenly began to hallucinate that I was paralyzed during some kind of attack on the base and began yelling out loud in a terrible panic while laying frozen on my bunk while everyone else in the flight was asleep. I recall someone flashing a light in my face, some whsipers in the dark, and the fine pin-prick of a needle in my arm, shortly after which i fell asleep and had a vivid dream about a boy that took a flight on a large box-kite. The next day, the CO called me to his office and gave me orders to report to a base psychologist, and by the end of the day I was heading to casual to be discharged. Well, I hope these details help to dispel any doubts about my real situation. I mean to say, it's not like I was born into wealth and just decided to jerk-off all my life, it was nothing like that at all. I was born into poverty, raised in poverty, and to this day i still reside below the poverty-line. Writing fiction has been nothing more than a hobby that evolved into a non-profit investment, but it has also been therapeutic. In 1994, after I lost another job as a department-store clerk, I was looking at homelessness again. I was ready to leave everything and hit the road, without any clear direction, when my sister told me that I might qualify for social security insurance. I had tried to collect unemployment and failed, welfare turned me away also, and I really had no idea that social security insurance was available. I didn't know what else to do, so I went with her to the office one day and I was surprised to discover that i did qualify. There were two reasons why I qualified; one, I had worked enough and paid enough into the fund, and two, I had been diagnosed with a psychological disorder that explained exactly why I had a problem holding a steady job. When I went on social security insurance in the summer of 94, I did so with the idea that I finally could find some time to do the kind of work I wanted to do, rather than what I had to do. It was a bit like going to school to learn a skill on a government grant. That was something I had applied for after high school but was rejected. I was still somewhat of a dreamer though, and though I did my very best, I failed to realize that some things were simply not practical for a person of my class. What I did was I got a nice electric typewriter and got into small-publishing. Later, in 95, a good friend gave me a used computer and I got into desk-top publishing. I learned how to make books and magazines. I desk-top published 2 zines in the form of periodical digests. One was a science-fiction digest with short-stories (Ntzeon) and the other was a digest that promoted legalization of cannabis (Zineo-Madnest). Zineo-Madnest actually was quite popular, at least locally, in 1997, until some fascist young republicans began telling lies about it and about me and it was seriously marginalized. It was also censored at the post office when some fascists began intercepting and losing the orders for it that I began receiving in the mail. In essence, the fascists killed it and it never made it out of the little circle party of friends that i had made with it in 97. The lies and the censorship effectively killed it before it went anywhere. As a result, in the summer of 97, I decided to change directions. I left the little hell-hole that my room at the Northampton Lodge had become to get some peace of mind in the mountains. I camped out in the mountains until the end of October and stayed at the lodge again for the winter. Then I left for the mountains again in the spring and camped out again. But when I returned to civilization in October of 98, I moved back to Springfield, near the area I originally attended school in my youth. After 3 years there, my old computer crashed permenantly and I decided to use my credit to get a new one. I had as many word-files transferred to the new floppy software as possible and went to work with the most state-of-the-art programs. After 1 year of desk-top publishing that went nowhere, I got back into animation (I had tried that also while working as a clerk in the late 80s and early 90s). I believe that I have finally realized the most practical work I have ever done in my life with the animation project I have been working with now for over 2 years. It is a slow-going, time-consuming process, but it has also resulted in some of the best work I have ever done in my life. I believe it to be the most sound investment I have ever made and I hope that it eventually pays off. I think that anyone that understands where i have been and what I have been through should also realize that I have a fairly good understanding of the value of good peace-work and despite all my problems I have given this life my best effort. I will not complain or rant about the fact that I am still surviving below the poverty-line, however, I do have to admit that if this were not the case, the chances are good that my animation would receive more attention. After all, I don't know of any animators or sound-track producers that work for peanuts, do you? Nick Zentor, 6/11/07 |
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