"if you want it...take it."

it's been a rough week (or two). every aspect of my life, from work to love to my house, has been challenging. but i'm not ready to give up now. i feel more determined than ever to create change. sometimes it's hard to be inspired when everything's just fine. we take shit for granted and we become bored and unhappy. my life seems to be crashing down on top of me but i am going to stand up and do something about it. here's a list in the spirit of this brilliant message (see title) from the fortune cookie at lunch today:

*write, write, write!
*create music
*self-educate (with others)
*read, read, read!
*appreciate the important people in my life
*dance!
*build new connections
*find empowering paid work
*sell shit
*cook food
*mix-tapes!
*try new things
*travel
*be assertive
*sleep well
*stay active
*be outspoken
*listen to others
*write letters
*bake goodies
*support friends
*push the limits

if you want it...

when i got out of work last night i told liz what happened with my boss. "sometimes i think about coming to visit you there," she told me. "but i don't want to see you like that. i want to see you dancing."

thanks for saving my life...again.

ambition (part IV) and communication

i was just laying around feeling like i had no direction in my life. freaking out.

then jen angel called.

they are looking for another person to join the clamor magazine management collective. i had expressed interest so this was an interview of sorts. it would be a pretty awesome experience. they are speaking with 10 other people so we'll see what happens...
*
i use this space to (ocassionally) express (some) things that are on my mind. i make a point to not provide too much information out of fear that it will replace mutual communication with people in my life that i care about. so, if you're reading this and we haven't met for lunch in a while or if i haven't seen you in a few months or we should probably talk on the phone then it would make me happy if we could do those things together. i probably miss you.

i'm just going to leave

there's too much to say. back at bard college for hannah's senior photography show. such an intense experience, as it always is returning to this place. there are still so many familiar faces; some that make me smile and others that make me want to look away. there's just so much history and social anxiety. but it was great to be back too. to see hannah (and her amazing photos) before she leaves this continent for good. to see the backdrop of the catskill mountains against the hudson river valley. those fucking mountains have so much meaning for me. i realized this today. seeing their beauty before the sun set and then again in a couple of hannah's photos. this is my personal psychogeography. this ridge etched into my consciousness like a dream from another world. or like the back of my left hand.

there's more to say. about my incredible adventure in new york city with liz. about vegetarian restaurants and subway lines and coffee. about diy music and seeing good friends and starting over. about sleeping on floors and busrides and cooking food. and how tragic love is when nothing seems to work out right.

sorry but i can't call you before i leave in the morning.
i just can't do this anymore.

one year later

another thanksgiving has come and gone. it was the first time in three years that i've been in the northeast. i was able to return to the national day of mourning in plymouth. it was really powerful going there with sailor this time since she grew up on the west coast. it gave me a fresh perspective on the whole thing especially after cruising by plimouth plantation and all the rich white people spending their holiday there trying to maintain the mythology.

sometime, as amanda lewis once pointed out, it helps to consult the archives...

here's to another year.

happy motherf-ing birthday, and don't forget i love you.

another bus journey back to cape cod. this time to celebrate both my sister's and mother's birthdays. yes, both scorpios. friday morning we met sarah at the court house in hyannis we she pleaded not guilty to a speeding ticket from the national seashore in april. she still had to pay $100 buy they dropped the fines for not showing up to court after the notice was mailed to her old address. happy birthday, indeed. then we went out for breakfast just before the hearth n' kettle began serving lunch. she listened to the mixtape i made her on the way up to boston that night.

that night jared and i saw the new film about johnny cash, "i walk the line." i enjoyed it. he was expecting the man in black to be a little more wild and crazy and not just the standard drug-addicted rockstar that it portrayed. it was definitely well done. later on we ended up at the sea dog for kareoke night with a few other friends. so fucking weird. after a dozen oldies tunes sung by local oldies i got up there and rocked the house with "99 luftballoons." hell yeah. we moved on to rick's afterward where various nauset high school grads were wasting away. probably spent about a hundred seconds in there. so uncomfortable. i couldn't deal with being there all the time, navigating the cultural emptiness of the cod.

i spent saturday with my mom which was nice. made gramps' special pancakes for breakfast, went to the beach with the dog, made some amazing vegetarian lasagne, and watch part II of "no direction home" the new bob dylan documentary. i felt bad for leaving the morning of her birthday but i had to work at my shitty job. so yeah, i still felt bad but it was really good to spend time with her and i think she was just psyched to have me home.

now i'm back in northampton for a few days then i'll be going to the national day of mourning ceremonies in playmouth thursday before returning to the cape again.

and my friend who was going out to the midwest this week is going in january instead so i'll be able to go see all my madison people then! get ready...

beyond the day to day

strive for something larger, something real for inspiration. bike across the country. fall in love with everyone. learn outside of academic institutions. fire your boss. cook your friends meals. watch the moon rise. send someone a letter. mean it. resist mediocrity. fight boredom. hug your enemies. kiss your friends. sing outloud. laugh. be impatient. make it happen...

runonrunonrun...

this town is too small for anything beyond a whisper and i can't get any time off around thanksgiving so a wisconsin reunion will not take place after all as my boss suggests that the midwest seems like a scary place for a liberal to be but i'm not a fucking liberal and she doesn't understand the radical tradition of participatory democracy in madison and other midwestern towns so i will just stay in the northeast and do my thing with friends and families and birthdays and days of mourning and radio stations and mixtapes and missing people and missed connections and tragic romance and turning over new leaves before the old ones turn on all of us and the meteorological training wheels begin to give way and we learn again what it truly means to be cold.

new era, new hopes

i find myself back in new hampshire where fall is beautiful and bright in its radiant colors. daylight savings and halloween pass and a new moon begins a new era. riding the bus, i read books about working on my day off. i know, i know.

there's a lot of good people in my life right now and things are beginning to make a little more sense again.

i think i'm going to the midwest the week of thanksgiving. perhaps i'll see you there...

live danceable ideas against work

the past week has been the story of live music and inspiring ideas and the ongoing dilemma of working in a capitalist society.

despite the commercial venue and uber-masculine crowd, seeing jello biafra with the melvins was a pretty awesome experience. they played a bunch of old dead kennedys songs and seeing him sing those songs that have been so important to me for the past ten years just made my life make more sense on some level. oh, and they did a wesley willis cover. i kid you not. it ruled.

the following night we had a lovely gathering at my house with food and live music and lots of great people. billed as the "gentle jamboree" it was a fun time for all including some friends that came from out of town for the occassion. that night i returned to pearl street with liz and pooja to see broken social scene play. they rocked the lion's ass. such a good day. and now i have an amazing new mix to listen to non-stop. things are good. :)

on tuesday i went with a couple co-workers to see author and activist jonathan kozol's devasting critque of the apartheid of the the american educational system. he is so passionate about this stuff. it inspired me more than chomsky or zinn the week before. his call for taking serious risks, shaking things up and truly acting out your convictions really struck a chord with me. after taking with kate and vina about how fucked up our work environment is these sentiments made me want to change things there. it was so important and refreshing to commiserate with my fellow workers about the cafe. i have just felt so isolated there and it's good to know that everyone else hates our boss and is dealing with similar stuff too.

last night i saw the glorious mountain goats rock northampton's iron horse hall. another powerful experience. that guy is just such an amazing songwriter. afterwards we biked around the dormant night city singing his songs before crashing the basement dance party. these are the times.

this weekend: salem, then new york. happy halloween!

but it's alright

things are closing in and i feel like there's more drama brewing right now than i have ever experienced before. i am becoming tangled up in the webs that i am weaving myself. but things are still pretty good. there's a lot of cool stuff happening here and it's keeping me going. just this month has seen: noam chomsky, howard zinn, jello biafra, the mountain goats, broken social scene, and others pass through this area.

and fun people visiting and walks through flooded pumpkin patches and farms and vineyards right in my back yard. and i'm excited about the potential for a radio show that i might do interview people from this community about following their passions in a capitalist society. and my bike is finally getting fixed. and halloween is soon. this is good.

7 weeks after the interview...

"Matt: thanks for taking the time to talk with us about the Online Organizer position at Free Press. After careful review of all of the applications for our Online Organizer position we have decided to re-advertise the position. We are seeking candidates with more directly relevant online community organizing work experience and, in particular, candidates who will help diversify our staff.

We wish you the best of luck in your search..."

---
so that's that.

it's more than money could ever buy

we write new birthdays songs to sing to our friends. this is the only present there is: the present.

browsing in a bookstore i learn that all that places i end up living in are considered "latte towns." coffeeshop class struggle every fucking morning. i am not new here, take your bread and leave. my grandmother asks when i will get a job, well, one that's not in a cafe. as if this is really what i want to be doing or that i am content with the wage/rent system that prevents so many of us from doing what we love to do. as if the reason that i don't like working at a cafe is because how it defines my status and how that reflects my family.

so & so he has a job
gets up at a certain time goes to a certain place
takes a lot of pride in his work
it's not what he would choose
just does it for the money...

would if we were all truly in control of our lives? would if we stopped following orders and started following our passions? let's fire our bosses and stop being spectators.

steal a pumpkin from a pumpkin patch.
make someone a mixtape.

may all the old ways die

another month has begun and i find myself, once again, in a new apartment for the fourth time since i moved here in june. this should be more long-term though seeing that the lease runs through may and i have my own room with a door and everything!

so that's good.

a new month presents new possibilites. this is desperately important for me since things have not going so well lately. i need a spark, a new inspiration to get me going again. i just started playing music with some friends so that will be really good. it's amazing how many times music has saved my life. from mixtapes to shows it has the ability to help me transcend the bullshit of everyday life.

as i'm washing dishes at work i have a song in my head that makes me think of you...

the vulnerability of autumn

after much time and effort i finally finished my article for toward freedom about you and the antiwar movement! read it...here.

the seasons are changing and everyone is freaking out. there is a unique vulernability abound when it starts to get colder. we have to equip ourselves with new, warmer clothes that haven't been worn in months. we add extra blankets or maybe find someone to cuddle with. if you don't have a car then all sorts of new challenges arise when you want to go anywhere. this is what it's all about, these urgent moments of transition when you are more aware of your basic needs.

there's more to say but now is not the time. i hope everyone is hanging in there.

a weekend of adventure

i'm tired after an amazing four day adventure. if i had stayed here i would have endured an unremarkable weekend of working--days like any other, emptied into the dustbin of my history. instead...i went down to dc for the national antiwar march there on saturday. before that i surprised various friends in new york city and a fun time there before heading to dc. friday night ben and i took the chinatown bus to baltimore, a city that i had passed through dozens of times but had never set foot in. we stayed there with a friend of ben's that was writing an article about the protest with him for the new standard. we drove right into dc the next morning and met up with tens of thousands people from all over the country to oppose the occupation of iraq. it was pretty awesome.

i left that night with some students from bard college. we got back there around 4 am and then i took a bus back to northampton yesterday just in time to see erik petersen rock out at the flywheel. so many moments packed into one weekend. if i wasn't so tired i would go into it more now, but basically it was really amazing.

the suspension of everyday life

Dear Rebecca Solnit,

How are you? We met in Madison earlier this year before our unsucessful
attempt to meet up around the SF Anarchist Bookfair. Perhaps another time...(If you are curious about my project that I wanted to interview you for check out my weblog)

I'm writing you now to tell you how much I have enjoyed reading you're new book "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" and to ask you if you have published anything about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. I began reading the book a couple days before the hurricane hit. A week before there was a brief, minor power outage in downtown Northampton, MA (where I am currently living) which inspired a conversation with a friend about these moments when our daily routines are interrupted. Naturally, I brought up your talk in Madison about crises and the suspension of everyday life and how, given the opportunity, humans will cooperate and get along fine without the
imposition of authority. One inspiring example of this, among the many you cited, was the blackout a few years in New York City. My friend commented that that's what anarchy is (not the "anarchy" the New York Times employs to describe chaos of recent events).

Then the hurricane hit and, at least in the media, we saw a very different situation. But I'm sure in between the cracks, outside the radar of the media industrial complex there have been countless stories of inspiration and hope in humanity to overcome such tragedy. This catastrophe is also obviously related to "A Field Guide..." with thousands of people from the Gulf Coast being displaced.

I'm very curious to hear your reflections about these events. If you have already written something on the subject could please send me a link or attachment? Thank you!

Best,
Matt
----
im on a foreign keyboard--but look at the harper's website for my initial commentary.

thanks for writing,

r


The Uses of Disaster
Notes on bad weather and good government

Posted on Friday, September 9, 2005. This essay on the relationship between disasters, authority, and our understanding of human nature went to press as Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. The excerpt below is followed by a postscript, available only on the Web, that specifically addresses the disaster in New Orleans. Originally from a forthcoming issue of Harper's Magazine, October 2005. By Rebecca Solnit.

posters and uncertainty

writing from the smith college campus center, i feel more conscious of my gender now that the fall semester has begun. walking around campus i wonder if some students think i may be f to m. probably not.

as i walked down the stairs to where the computers are i was bombarded with a college poster sale spectacle. this makes me think about what my life would be like if i was travelling around the us of a right now selling posters to college students as i thought about doing for a while. all expenses paid and you get to scam tips off students who think you are a starving poster-salesman.

i'm happy where i am now, despite persistent uncertainty. i know where i'm living and working for the rest of the month but then it's up in the air. i've been thinking about what it would be like to feel really committed to a community and have a really secure situation somewhere. i think that's what i want now but i'm really up for anything.

yesterday i made sandwiches for kim gordon (of sonic youth fame) and jay mascis (from dinosaur jr.). this is such a strange town.

did i mention that i have my own bed now? ah....

labor day labor

labor day. a dusty artifact of american culture. a pseudo-holiday in a society which lacks a true class consciousness and understanding of labor history. a disneyfied may day devoid of any substance or radical tradition. but despite this, american laborers do get this day off from work...unless you are a retail or food industry wage-slave.

so on this first monday of september i, like millions of other working americans, went to work. happy labor day.

a customer asked my boss if we were all getting time and a half for our labor day labor. "shhhh!" she responded revealingly. "i heard that!" i replied from behind the sandwich-making station. $7.50 per hour>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

on top of all of this i started getting sick the night before and going into work was the last thing i wanted to do in the whole world. five minutes into my shift i was wiping the tables down with windex and a paper towel. i sprayed a table next to a woman who was reading and sipping a latte that found this action unacceptable to her comfort: "i am chemically sensitive so you shouldn't do that near me." i passively nodded my head and walked outside to check on the tables there. i should've just walked home.

i talked about making a t-shirt that read "i am working on labor day" with the back reading "your leisure is a product of my labor" but that probably wouldn't make people want to buy cupcakes. i sported alf instead (the sitcom puppet not the clandestine organization).

but this could be the last labor day i work. i had a job interview with free press today for an online organizer position. a living wage, benefits, and holidays (even the most ambiguous ones) off! cross your fingers kids...

staying...for now

i'm living my life on a month-to-month basis. after passing up an opportunity to travel across the country with an extraordinary stranger, i recently decided to stay in the pioneer valley through september. today is september 1st. for the next month i will be living in an apartment in northampton that i just moved all of my belongings into, working at woodstar cafe and finishing my internship with class action. i also want to start writing/playing music with people in the area, make lots of stencils, bike everywhere, and take part in all the fun events that will be happening now that the colleges are back in action.

but october 1st is still a big question mark.

i'd like to stay in this area, and i probably will, but i really don't know what my life will look like at that point. i have an interview with free press next week about the online organizer position i applied for, so perhaps i will get that and will be able to start paying back my fucking student loans. we'll see...

for now, i'm here. staying...for now.

frameworks labeled home: part II

when you work part-time, occasionally you get 5 days off in a row. it's important to take advantage of this opportunity. so when i saw that i was not scheduled to work all week i made plans to go down to cape cod to see family and friends, relax and to put the aging summer into perspective.

when you hold on to your college id two years after graduation you can still get student discounts. a one-way bus ticket from northampton to boston is then reduced from $30 to $20. i got to hyannis by noon and met my mom and sister for lunch. then we walked down the street, through the crowded public beach and across the boundary of the so-called private beach. we were stared at by the elite privateers who have never seen a frozen cape cod in the winter months or it's desolation and peacefulness. we pretended to sleep to avoid their snooty wrath.

i had a really nice week at home. it's always good to go back there and put my whole life into perspective. seeing people and street names from my past, along with photographs and other memorablia of my personal history.

toward the end of the week i met up with corinna at nickerson state park, one mile from the house i grew up in, where she spent the week camping and taking a break from class action. on thursday we ended up at the land ho, a local watering hole that serves as a seasonal high school reunion venue for multiple generations of nauset high school graduates. i warned her that we would inevitably run into random people and as we arrived at the entrance i stopped and took a deep breath in preparation. opening the door we were greeted by two men. i recognized the one on the left as chris collins, wearing a land ho t-shirt, while the one next to him appeared to be much older. they both recognized me however and upon second inspection i realized that the older looking one was indeed mike murphy--class of 2000 and current town of chatham police officer. hadn't seen either of them since the late 90's. so weird.

we ate fried onion rings that, despite the exorbitant price had definitely not been prepared on the premises (or this hemisphere) as a mediocre bar band played loud enough to make one's throat sore from speaking over them. sarah's ex-boyfriend appeared next to us and he was utterly surprised when i tapped him on the shoulder and shook his hand. he lamented about his job moving furniture and the fact that the land ho bartender serves him up "the usual" before he can even make it to the bar. his gun-to-the-head motions made me pretty uncomfortable, but the interaction made me feel lucky that i didn't stay on the cape after high school or move back there permanently after college.

on friday night we went up to provincetown to see east coast tremors rock the squealing pig with their infectious brand of psycho surf. it was one of the rare dream-like moments in which disconnected people from my life are all in one space and i'm bouncing back and forth between them like a pinball. i left with a euphoric sensation of just being lucky to have so many great people in my life--even though i have to travel to see most of them. it was good to be home.