Chaz. Larkin Street Youth Services.

As Chaz and I talk, his friends at Larkin Street toss around stage names for his music career, including suggestions like ‘Satan’ and Arabic words. Chaz shakes his head at each one. He wants his name to capture the essence of energy, of renewal.

Chaz’s memories of his childhood in Los Angeles are not rose-tinted. “I had a freakin’ crappy childhood,” he says. Chaz’s dad was incarcerated when Chaz was four years old. After serving a ten-year sentence, he was released. Three months later, he had a heart attack and passed away. Chaz’s mom suffers from bipolar disease and, after sustaining a bullet to her head at age 22, had many of her cognitive abilities compromised.

“Her love was the most contradictory love I’ve ever been through,” Chaz explains.

Despite this, his mom worked two jobs, leaving Chaz by himself for most days and most nights. “The only time I would see her was between midnight and…” he pauses and ruminates, “I didn’t see my mom.” When Chaz and his mom did have time together, it was often unhappy. She was emotionally volatile, taking her frustrations about work, relationships, life, out on him. Chaz felt like “her beating bag.” She alternated between showering him with insults, punches — and gifts. “Her love was the most contradictory love I’ve ever been through,” Chaz explains. “That’s all I wanted, was love.” Eventually, Chaz realized that her love was not real love – it didn’t feel genuine, it didn’t feel unconditional. Instead, the love that she gave him “was material things.”

Looking back, he acknowledges that his difficult relationship with his mom was “because she’s just a little kid inside.” His relationship with his extended family was likewise strained. Jehovah Witnesses, they “ridiculed me for practicing something different…I was called an idiot, stupid…” He trails off and looks away, “Luckily for me, I forgive. I’m not holding any grudges cause it’s not going to help me.” He’s come to terms with — even to appreciate — his past. “I’ve learned to accept it because I can’t change it, nor do I want to.” Always undaunted, Chaz believes that he’s learned a lot — about acceptance, about humanity — from his upbringing. After all, he muses, “life is 90% how you react” to the trials and tribulations that come your way. “Mistakes are lessons to be learned,” he says, “let’s be human.”

In seeking love as a teenager, Chaz found himself doing drugs, smoking cigarettes, and “steal[ing] shit.” It was his way of proving that he was “down for anything.”

“I just wanted to be accepted by my friends. I didn’t want to be a loser that didn’t have any friends and shit. Let me go and do what I need to be cool and be fucking popular. And it didn’t even work out that well anyway. I was a semi-popular kid, that kid that everyone knew, but didn’t hang out with.”

When he was 18, he and his friends attempted to rob a CVS. “We wanted alcohol, that’s all. And I was young and stupid. That’s what fun was to us, just drinking and cigarettes and drugs and women.” They were caught and Chaz went to prison. Earlier that year, he had been charged with grand theft auto. With two violations to his name, Chaz was sentenced to 30-days of prison time in December of 2012. He tells me that, in jail, “the only thing you do…is sit there and read and write.” He cites George Orwell, David Ike, Nikola Tesla, among admired figures and authors, and books on philosophy and spirituality, as sources of knowledge and inspiration. This solitude was the first step toward where he is today.

In jail, “the only thing you do…is sit there and read and write.” He cites George Orwell, David Ike, Nikola Tesla, among admired figures and authors, and books on philosophy and spirituality, as sources of knowledge and inspiration.

In 2013, his mom became unemployed and subsequently reliant on disability. Chaz was sent to live with his grandmother May of that year. “A few days” turned into months. Although his new neighborhood was home to “gang kids,” instead of slipping back into who he had been before, Chaz spent his time trying to be himself.

The turning point in his life was his encounter with a woman humming to herself while walking down the street. As he approached her, he realized that she was chanting. Chaz stopped her and their conversation introduced him to the Hail Krishna Movement and Hinduism. He learned about the yogi way of life. He learned to become conscious – truly conscious – and to spend his time reflecting and observing.

Before 2013 dawned, he’d returned to live with his mother. He had already begun to ask himself, what about who I am, where I want to go? He began to feel a need to understand who he was, rather than live life “to satisfy someone else.”

“I chose to be homeless so that I could experience life in a different way, to find what I was looking for.”

To answer these questions, Chaz left on August 8th, 2014, first by bus, then by train, San Francisco-bound. He spent two weeks homeless on the streets of San Francisco before he found Larkin Street and G House, a transitional living space. “I chose to be homeless so that I could experience life in a different way, to find what I was looking for.”

Today, Chaz knows who he is. “I am a mystic. I don’t really follow any type of religion.” Instead, he believes in returning to nature and following your heart. “All of what we know is already inside of us – from earth, from Gaia.” He explains that humans do too much thinking with their heads – “the average human bases his life on his mind” – but “life isn’t what it seems. It’s all perception; it’s all how you look at things. Realize that you’re free, if you let yourself be.” He pauses and smiles. “I think that’s the gift.”

Now, Chaz has found himself at a place where, “I don’t have to sag my pants because I think it’s cool. Fuck that. I don’t even have a group. This whole world is my group. I just care about where I’m going in life.”

Chaz is focusing on his career as a rapper. He has released songs on SoundCloud, attended open mics throughout the city, and continues to create.

“I’m so excited for life!” Chaz exclaims, “…to create great music, to travel the world…” he looks at me, “you need to know who you are and where you want to go.”