Five Pieces of Solace: Psychedelic, Philosophy, Plumbing, Prophecy and Peacemaking

By Alexander Cristini

During the nineties, young people were encouraged by their movie and music idols to follow their dreams. It was a time when grunge-loving kids replaced corduroy pants and plaid shirts with baggy pants and bandanas. Nintindos were replaced by Xbox and PlayStation systems. Big dial televisions and box computers were swapped for laptops and flat-screen plasmas. As millennials grew up, they would become the last generation to live free of dependence on technology. Alexander Cristini was one of those millennials.

In a unique memoir, Alexander intertwines the five pieces of his inner self—Psychedelic, Philosophy, Plumbing, Prophecy, and Peacemaker—to recapture an era through the eyes of a child. As Alexander brings others back in time, he shares interesting historical facts accompanied by personal anecdotes that reveal his experience taking magic mushrooms at age twelve and discovering a new way of looking at life and nature; his philosophies about health, the influence of rap music, and the wise individuals who became part of his thought processes; and his views about spirituality as both a child and man.

Five Pieces of Solace combines historical facts with personal stories to call out to a generation of people to question, examine, and contemplate their own lives and purposes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532062933

Alexander Cristini

Alexander Cristini is a millennial whose unconventional journey through life has been shaped by curiosity and a constant thirst for knowledge and spiritual growth. The plumber and activist is now on a quest to awaken the same curiosity in his fellow millennials. Alexander currently resides with his wife and two children in Markham, Ontario.

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Copyright © 2018 Alexander Cristini.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-5320-6294-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-6293-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018914612

iUniverse rev. date:  12/17/2018

Contents

Introduction

Psychedelic

1. Out the Window

2. The Writing Is on the Wall

3. Watching Time Grow

Philosophy

4. The Doors of Perception and Beyond

5. Sons of Man

6. The Spark and the Flame

Plumbing

7. Plumbers

8. Work and Love

Prophecy

9. Prophets

10. Why Prophecy?

Peacemaker

11. If We Try

Dedicated to Elijah and Aveyah.

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Alexander Cristini, is a millennial who’s unconventional journey through life, has been shaped by curiosity and his constant thirst for knowledge and spiritual growth. The married plumber activist and father of 2 from Markham, Ontario is on a quest to awaken the same curiosity in his fellow millennials, who are set to inherit the earth. Leading the charge to have them question their own accounts of truth and the possibility that lay outside of our self-imposed comforts.

Introduction

1986–98

First Twelve Years

From as early as I can remember, I’ve always associated the release of Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction with the year I was born. When I look back at it now, it may as well have been 1976, compared to life as we know it now in 2018. Guns N’ Roses, Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince were memorable names for kids who grew up in the early ’90s.

Depending on where you lived and how you were raised—and if you were lucky enough to grow up with cool enough parents, who were not overly strict—you would have been there when alternative grunge rock, which I loved at the time and still do in parts, seemed to come to a certain end. With the death of Kurt Cobain came the rise of the new dominating American sound: gangsta rap. This was a time when middle-class, self-loathing, grunge-loving kids went from wearing corduroy pants and plaid shirts to wearing baggy pants and bandannas.

Here in Canada, before it became more accepted by bigger retailers, we had to go out of our way to get good rap music by artists and record labels such as Tupac, Wu Tang, Bad Boy, DMX, No Limit, and Cash Money Millionaires. Kids from the suburbs would take the subway downtown from either Finch Station or Scarborough town center to Play de Record and listen to new tracks that had come from the States. I compare the experience to how the British reacted when the early blues came in from America’s South and, later on, how America felt about English rock and roll, which had a huge impact on music in the 1960s and ’70s. It goes to show how each generation follows the same cycle as the last. It’s also the same with the cycle of life but less noticeably with music.

The first twelve years of my childhood, from 1986 to ’98, were filled with any kind of entertainment you could imagine. In this short time, as we neared the end of the second millennium, we went from easygoing movies like Stand by Me and The Breakfast Club to movies like GoodFellas and Casino and ended with blockbuster films like Independence Day, Armageddon, and Titanic. When it came to game consoles, which became very popular at this time, we went from the original Nintendo to systems like Xbox and PlayStation. We went from big-box dial TVs and box computers to laptops and flat-screen plasmas. The only thing that didn’t change as drastically was, strangely enough, the cell phone. This was the last full generation of people to live free of dependence on technology as we do today. We had no clue about the digital advances that loomed around the corner.

It’s amazing that most of us have the ability to store memories of our pasts; if only we’d take the time to look inside. Try to look as far back as you possibly can and see what you can come back with. Something so simple may lead to more thoughts, as though it was always with you to help you to remember more good thoughts and strong past connections from long ago.

If I close my eyes, I can envision random thoughts. I can remember riding my skateboard on a hot summer day down the same old street to the convenience store to buy a slushy and some Gummy Bears and possibly a bag of chips. Then I would take my newly acquired goods to the back of the plaza, which was a perfect place for kids to hide in plain sight. Tucked away just enough to feel like an alleyway, it had shade to provide relief on a hot summer’s day. This was the type of place where kids would go to hang out. It would be spots like this where young kids would smoke their first cigarette or cause mischief, breaking bottles or whatever it took to fulfill the desire to break imaginary rules and give a young boy relief and a sense of excitement. This type of place would be a doorway to the back-alley lifestyle through time.

I went back to this same spot many times throughout my adolescence, a little older with each visit. Over time, the skateboard was replaced by a group of like-minded mischief makers, headed back to the alley to get high and feel cool, hanging out and being loud and obnoxious. We were never the type to look for real trouble, nor were we the type to back down from trouble either; we didn’t mind a little confrontation every now and then. We were still good kids who came from good families and a nice environment.

We spent our summer afternoons in the park or the forest, and in the evenings, we were parked in front of the TV, watching television shows like The Simpsons, GI Joe, Transformers, and The Smurfs. If you were a little older, you’d watch shows like 90210 and Melrose Place. There was an endless list of sitcoms throughout the 1990s that gave the TV Guide much purpose.

We had shows like Cheers, Friends, and Seinfeld, which I never found very funny but left me in a good mood after watching them nonetheless. Then there were the family shows that everyone watched, like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Full House, Family Matters, and Roseanne.

If you were a real big shot, you could afford the benefits of satellite television and were proud to have the massive satellite dish displayed in your yard. Despite not having the endless options we have today, everyone had their favorite shows and knew the schedules. These shows meant so much to us viewers; it was as if they were designed to appeal to our individual personalities as a means of keeping us occupied, although the suggestion of this as their true purpose likely would have been denied by most people at the time.

The 1990s was a naive decade, lost to the fantasy of cinematic experience and thoughts of false realities that caused us to take life less seriously than we probably should have, considering that 9/11 was only three years after 1998.

When we all watched the twin towers fall, the familiar cinematic experience became all too real. A collective chill ran down the spines of all who witnessed the scene. The world as we knew it slipped further away from that point forward. There’s no point in saying that we should have done things differently, or maybe if we pity ourselves for being so naive, it will make us feel better. We should accept the things that we cannot change. We can look to the future with a better understanding of reality without being overly absorbed by television, as we were in this time.

One of the movies that left a lasting impression on my young mind and that led to my first out-of-body experience was Dazed and Confused—I emulated the shenanigans of the lead characters at school the next day. Kids like the movie’s protagonist hung out by the picnic benches at the park. They were more like 1990s heavy metal rock fans than ’70s hippie kids but were up to similar things all the same.

Another film worth mentioning is Friday, starring the rapper Ice Cube and comedian Chris Tucker, which defiantly instilled humor in a young man. This movie inadvertently taught me how to roll a joint when I imitated the setup of the character Smokey. I put the top of a shoebox in a paper bag, along with a small pair of scissors and an awkward-sized dime bag—I think the bag originally held the extra buttons from a new suit—and filled the bag with oregano. Later on, I replaced the oregano with dried hemp I picked in the forest.

Because I was young, it’s unlikely that I smoked the hemp or oregano, but I knew it might make me seem cool if I showed it to the same rocker kids who hung out in the park. One afternoon I built up the courage to walk over to a group of guys—they must have been four or five years older than I was. One of them watched me approach them and seemed to notice the brown paper bag I was holding. I believe he actually thought that a 10-year-old kid was about to bust out some weed or a joint.

Hey, what you got there? he yelled to me.

I pulled out the dime bag from the paper bag so he could give it a sniff, but he determined it was just a bag with oregano. Then he showed it to his friends, while trying not to laugh. Then one of the guys reached into his pocket and pulled out a Ziploc bag. It was the first time my innocent eyes had seen marijuana.

Late one evening I watched a movie on TV, but I pretended I was sleeping so that my parents wouldn’t know I was watching. The movie was named Above the Rim, starring starred Marlon Wayans and the one and only Tupac Shakur, who played a goon named Birdie. His character’s signature weapon was a razor blade that he carried in his mouth. He would later use the weapon to slice up Bernie Mac’s character. He carried the razor in his mouth and brandished it by gracefully spitting it out with his tongue. I don’t remember why I found this move appealing, but I once