actualizing dreams

another month is almost over and it struck me that i haven't written in a while. writing keeps me accountable to my dreams. it keeps me honest. a lot has happened. a lot is happening. a lot is going to happen, with summer afoot...

last month i turned 29 years old. i don't believe that life ends when you're 30--i'm actually excited about it and am trying to embrace the process of getting older. for me, the final year of my 20's is about checking in with all of the things i have talked about doing and trying to make some of them happen. i want take advantage of that urgency to get shit done. then i can have some serious momentum when i enter my 30's next year. i will be unstoppable!

this is a 3-day weekend that just began. on cape cod and other tourist destinations, this marks the beginning of the summer season and the influx of outsiders. all that it means for me this year is that i have one extra day off (paid) from the drudgery of my wage job. returning to work next week will begin the final month of dealing with customers and pastries. my job as i have experienced it for the past 9 months will end on july 2nd. i will celebrate by going up to maine for my family's annual reunion/vacation on the beach, only to return to do odd jobs around the college.

the summer should be better as i hope to work on projects both on and off the clock. but it's the fall that i am getting most excited about. in september i will quit my job and actualize my dreams.

the initial breaths of spring

i have this theory that after such an extreme, debilitating winter, when spring reaches philadelphia it will be twice as amazing as usual. people will feel free and inspired once again as the air warms and the days grow longer. anything--everything--will become possible.

this week has been a little preview of such exciting things to come. one of my new favorite bands, on tour from new orleans, played a house show in my neighborhood wednesday night. i hosted a lively event on art and social transformation thursday and i'm eagerly anticipating another great event at the shoe tomorrow evening. last night was the first of a monthly series of salons in fishtown coinciding with the city's first friday art festivities. lots of good people and good music.

and even though it's still unbelievable that it's happening so soon, i'm getting psyched about our trip out to portland next week! friends, aid & abet meeting, and good times are promised. along with green trees, green grass and mountains...things i haven't seen in many months.

returning to philadelphia the following week, spring will be gearing up for real. new possibilities are on the horizon...

current top ten: beyond invincible winter

the winter is finally starting to get to me. after surviving the most snowfall on record in philadelphia i began to feel it today. the cold air, the ice, the grey sky and dirty snow piled up everywhere, crawling under my skin.

so, i want to try to stay positive. here's my current top 10, or things that have distracted me from the nasty, nasty mid-atlantic winterdom:

-Hurray for the Riff Raff: seeing them live in new orleans last month. listening to their new cd "young blood blues" nonstop since i've been back.

-New Orleans: secretly wishing i was still there. weirdly inspiring me to pay attention to football and routing for their saints in the superbowl. hope you're enjoying mardi gras liz!

-Wooden Shoe Books: the radical nerve center of philly. i'm inspired by everyone i've met there and the events we've been able to put on in our beautiful new space.

-Andrew Jackson Jihad: fresh folk-punk anthems from arizona. one day, i hope to see them play on the subway...

-Dancin' in the Streets! Anarchists, Iwws, Surrealists, Situationists & Provos in the 1960s as recorded in the pages of The Rebel Worker & Heatwave

-Sharing a beautiful apartment with LaVange, an amazing and caring sweetheart.

-Running into my old friend Katy Otto at coffeeshop in my neighborhood and learning that she moved to Philly at the beginning of the year! Vote for her All-Ages Movement Project to get money for their vital projects.

-Revolt on Goose Island: The Chicago Factory Takeover, and What it Says About the Economic Crisis by Kari Lydersen

-Do Make Say Think: epic. instrumental. rock. their newest album "other truths" is the perfect winter soundtrack.

-Aid & Abet: we have a gorgeous new website designed by derek hogue (g7 welcoming committee/winnipeg). we have a couple of new awesome collective members and next month we're all meeting up in green, snow-less portland, oregon. that will help me get through the rest of the winter...

Remembering Howard Zinn

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction..."
-Howard Zinn

My Junior year in high school, we used A People's History of the United States to put Christopher Columbus on trial for genocide. That book blew my mind. Instead of reciting the version of history fed to us through the lens of the rich and powerful, through their experience as oppressor, Zinn's classic work opened up a whole new world: history from below. The book tells the inspiring, though often brutal, stories of everyday people struggling to create a better society. I would never be the same.

The following summer, I was working as a breakfast and lunch cook at The Flying Fish Cafe in Wellfleet, MA. On one particularly slow mid-week July afternoon my boss, local musician and educator Lisa Brown, came into the kitchen and said to me, "Matt, there's someone in the bakery I want you to meet." I followed her through the restaurant and into the adjacent bakery to see a tall, lanky grey-haired man. "Matt, this is Howard Zinn. Howard, this is Matt." Smiling with glee, I shook his hand and talked to him about my Junior paper which compared his friend and comrade Noam Chomsky with his (and my) historical hero(ine), anarchist-feminist Emma Goldman. He thought that was pretty cool and said that he would mention it to Noam!

Life changing moment. Check.

Lisa joined the teaching faculty that September at Nauset Regional High School and during the first week back to school invited Howard to speak one evening to the students in the School Within a School program. He was still on the Cape with his wife Roslyn who spent each summer in Wellfleet, where their son Jeff directed a local theater company.

It was such an honor seeing him speak about his life in my high school auditorium. He spoke about how his experiences as a bombardier in WWII opened his eyes to the inherent horror of war, his solidarity with black students during the civil rights struggle, and his belief in people's power to change the world.

I raised my hand and asked what young people who want to make a difference can learn from the past. He said that we need to find other people who want the same thing and work together, that we can't make as much of an impact alone. It has been organized movements, he explained, that have changed the course of history, not single figures like our history books pretend.

Over the years I had the great privilege to see Howard speak several times. I also rang up his groceries once, and shook his and Roslyn's hands in their driveway while walking around their neighborhood with my college friend Nick, who's parents lived down the street.

But most importantly, I continued to be inspired by his writing and tireless struggle against war and oppression, his contribution to social justice and a better society.

So, needless to say I was saddened by today's news that Howard Zinn died at the impressive age of 87.

Even though he is not with us anymore his work will live on forever...

"And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

Rest in peace, Howard.

letter to an ex-lover

dear northampton,
it's been one year since i left you. just wanted to say hello and see how you've been. although it's hard to admit, i'm a lot happier without you. i have changed and i know you have too. i was so young when we first met and back then, you made a lot of sense to me. but this is a whole new era now. i met someone new and they're really amazing. even though it's nice to see you every now and then, to catch up, we both need to move on and embrace the future. i hope you have a fun new year's. i hope your ball successfully rises and that you're not too cold. i will be with my new love. i will be smiling, excited about what lies ahead for 2010.

sincerely,
matt

i woke up this morning and then...(part 3)

i guess there's nothing inherently wrong with having one of those blogs where you talk about what you did all day, if what you're doing is interesting...

today i biked through a violent early morning rain storm to get to my job on time. in the dark. the sun will rise later every single day until next week's solstice. i was drenched by the time i made it to work. luckily i brought a dry set of clothes to wear...wait. this shit is getting boring now.

when i'm at work i think of all the things i want to do, all the projects i want to start. but lately, when i get home all i can think about is not being at work anymore. more on that to come...

today, however, i got home from work--socks still damp--and did interviews with 3 different folks who are interested in joining our aid & abet collective. we have 2 more tomorrow! phew.

i feel like things are brewing right now and the potential for 2010 is already starting to explode. i like it.

half a decade later

it's been 5 years since i started writing here. at that time i was living in madison, wisconsin and spent my first thanksgiving alone, away from family. now i am living in philadelphia with a really amazing woman that i love a lot. yesterday we cooked all afternoon with her good friends who are visiting from out of town and appreciated being here and not in transit. i thought about plymouth and the national day of mourning, where i used to go each year. it was nice to speak to my family on the phone and i look forward to seeing them all in one month when i will have almost 2 weeks off of work. today i'm trying to refocus on the work that my full-time job as been distracting me from. there's a list goals for the month of november hanging on our fridge. just a few more days to get it all done!

breaking guitar strings and writing words again

shit. i'm not sure how i went the entire month of october without writing a single word here. i could simplisticly attribute it to this full-time job lifestyle, but there has to be more. i have to take responsibility too. writing is important; it's vital to my mental health. i don't think i can attribute my written silence to an unreliable internet connection either--at least not completely.

there was something about today. it felt like the beginning of a new era, a forging of that balance between self-confidence and self-critique. there was a heightened awareness of where i'm going and what i'm doing. this week, month, year, and beyond.

and now here i am, writing again. hello. it's nice to be back...

the final days of summer

september accelerates. i've developed this new existence where i wake up with the sun each morning and ride my bike into the world of wage labour, alongside cars that still have their headlights on. there's such an unusual comfort in cultivating a daily routine. alarm clocks, endless commentary about the weather, in bed before 11:00 pm. repeat. repeat again...

i struggled to accomodate my bulging to-do-list with this new lifestyle. home by 3:00 each day, but there's a conflict between the lazy desire for relaxation, for post-work leisure with a burning passion to get shit done.

last night i closed all the windows in our beautiful new apartment for the first time. fall creeps in and with it, the urgency to create and live hard.

on a move

today is the first day of september and everything feels different. the air has shifted, a glimpse into cool autumn nights and new beginnings. today, lavange and i are moving in together. when she gets out of work this afternoon we're gonna pick up a moving truck which we'll have for 4 hours. by 7:00 pm tonight we'll be settled in our new apartment. i'm looking forward to the potential of this new space and starting a new chapter here in philly.

a paradise built in hell

the most mundane is always the most existential. what we do each day/what we are doing with our lives. a lyric from a song is scribbled in sharpie on the bathroom wall: "daily life is shit." we are forced to read that over and over again as we, well, shit. hmmm...where is this going?

where are we going? what are we doing?

it's always in the most desperate, seemingly hopeless moments that we reach our most brilliant and life-affirming revelations. disaster brings out the very best in human nature. crisis as a glimpse of utopia...i can't do this anymore. let's pursue what truly matters with reckless abandon, together.

(re)visiting northampton

by the time sunday afternoon arrived i was practically crawling out of my skin, beyond ready to leave. i had seen everyone that i wanted to see. done everything i wanted to do. but i had a couple more hours before meeting my ride. i went under cover at the cafe where nobody else would be. at least nobody that would recognize me, or vice versa. i sipped coffee and hid behind the gorgeous words of valencia, michelle tea's memoir about her early years in san francisco's 1990's dyke underground--generously lent to me by liz diamond, my fabulous weekend host.

so, once we were on 91 heading south toward philly with the windows down and classic rock blaring on the speakers i felt relieved. but also full and content after a mostly lovely weekend in the town i called home for 3 and 1/2 years. every moment between thursday evening and that late afternoon sunday departure was a reminder of either why i stayed as long as i did, or why i'm glad i left. each one a manifestation of this ongoing love/hate relationship. with its culture, streets, buildings, and residents; this complex personal history with a town that's population has consistently remained 30,000 over the past 100 years.

the good and the bad. the paralyzing beauty and alluring ugliness. so much promise and potential. so many limitations and disappointments. i took it all in with a sweaty hug that lasted 3 days. all of it. in those final moments i realized that i had overstayed my welcome and relieved the awkwardness with a bike ride past the medows and the county fairground. i will keep returning, but maybe next time for just 2 days...

grad school revisited/returning to new england

so i've been thinking about grad school a lot lately. it's an idea i have played around with off and on the past 5 years, but i think this time is a little different. being back in school is a lot more appealing right now that working a shitty, just-barely-above-minimum wage job. it's been one week since i got fired from last one of those i had and the timing couldn't have been better. i basically have 4 months to research programs, study for and take standardized tests and apply. it would probably living in philly for the next year (in the apartment that lv and i are about to move into) and then relocate this time next year, probably to nyc. but we'll see!

i've also been thinking about, in the mean time, finding a new shitty (or maybe not so shitty) job and also about visiting northampton...which i'm doing this weekend! looking forward to seeing the good people that still live there and to be back in new england again before the end of the summer. who wants to go swimming?

take me back to the summertime...

growing up, i never wanted summer to end. it was always a magical season of infinite possibility and wonder. back then i didn't have to worry about mundane concerns like securing a wage job, navigating bureaucracies to access basic human needs, or the weight of losing everything. but that part of us never dies. it's what keeps us going; persevering through all the shit that the world offers up now and then.

many years later, there's part of me wants to just wake up on the last day of summer. all of my worries figured out. nothing but promise and potential ahead of me. but there is beauty in struggle. it makes us who we are and gives us appreciation for the good times.

i'm still a little kid. enjoying the summer.

the one thing that i couldn't live without

on the other hand, if i'm not on the lease, have no protection under the law, and the landlord responds to my propsal in a greedy, soul-less, um...oh, like a landlord, then this could end up being one of the worst weeks of my life.

one small victory did occur this morning when i tried to turn my stereo on...it totally works! i will now proceed to turn up the volume, lay on my floor staring at the damaged ceiling, and sing my lungs out to "this year" by the mountain goats.

but you're right. it won't kill me.

rent-free summer rainstorms

in addition to getting fired from my job, another significant event occurred this past week. early friday evening, the final day of july, a violent rainstorm pummeled philadephia while i was at work. by the time i was biking home the sky had cleared, the humidity disappearing into the sunset and puddles along my route home the only evidence of the monsoonesque explosion of just a few hours before.

arriving in my bedroom i was greeted with puddles of water around the open windows, but the windowsills themselves were mysteriously dry. i discovered that my ceiling had leaked directly above my stereo. over a dozen cd's were destroyed. the 5 disc changer that i had possessed since my senior year of college had been murdered by the house's structural damage. the meaning of this incident soon turned itself on its head when i realized the opportunity it presented me. the value of these personal items lost in the storm was about equal to the check i would have soon written towards rent.

instead i wrote a letter to the landlord explaining the situation and, interestingly enough, the day i lost my job he stopped by the house to pick up one less rent check and my letter which he scanned and left on the dining room table. today i plan on mailing it to him. now that i have returned to the financial insecurity of unemployment i feel weirdly grateful for the summer rainstorm and the improperly repaired ceiling for helping to keep me afloat an extra month.

rejoining the unemployed masses, a tragedy in 3 parts

i should be at work right now. instead, i'm at the neighborhood coffeeshop sipping ice coffee. shorts, flip flops, air conditioning, seat by the window. i did bike the 5 miles to my job earlier this afternoon. after clocking in at 12:59 i found myself sitting down next to my boss as he explained to me that he would have to "let me go." what?! fuck.

last week he mentioned that the owner of the store would be coming back to town soon and that i needed to increase the production level of the sandwiches since they're the "pet project" of the big bossman. over the next 3 days i did so, "producing" more sandwiches than i previously had been. when i left sunday, before my 2 days off, the sandwich case was filled to the brim, overflowing.

something else happened sunday that contributed to my termination...as i was wrapping up the sandwiches that afternoon my boss was getting ready to leave, complaining to the other kitchen manager about how stressed out he was. i decided it was clearly a bad time to ask him about taking a few days off at the end of the summer. i left an hour later and just went ahead and wrote in the days i would be out of town on the kitchen staff's calendar. apparently this was a big mistake: "you've already taken time off and the way it works here is that after you've worked for a year you're eligible for a week off." wow. i wish i knew that before i got hired.

oh, and he mentioned the recession a few times.

so obviously there's a lot more to say, but that's what happened today. ironically, i just started working on an article for wiretap about my experiences job-hunting (and eventually getting hired for a low-wage job) in the context of the economic crisis. now i have another chapter to add. hopefully something positive will come out of this.

over the past month...

i have:

-gone on a loooong bike ride with lv...50 miles north to quakertown. then back the next day.

-surprised my sister by showing up to her open studio show at the school of visual arts in nyc. thank you $5 megab*s ticket!

-enjoyed another visit to philly by jen angel.

-taken advantage of my 2 days in a row off. most notably by squeezing in a trip to maine during part of my family's vacation week there. chinatown bus to nyc, then another to boston; followed by the train to old orchard beach. arrived 1:26 am monday, departed at 2:50 pm tuesday. totally worth it.

-continued to work, pay bills.

-celebrated lv's 30th birthday!

-read more than i had been: finally finished "passionate mistakes and intricate corruption of one girl in america" by michelle tea! currently: "where we stand: class matters" by bell hooks.

-volunteered a bunch at the wooden shoe. getting ready for the big move.

-and thought a lot about writing and work for aid & abet. finally getting around to doing it NOW!

first half/second half

today is the last day of june. the final day of the first half of the year. what can i say about these past 6 months? in some ways, it seems like just yesterday that i moved to philadelphia. at the same time it has been a long droning period of struggle with unemployment and lack of direction. and now, all of that is over. this is a new beginning. the rest of the year is ahead of me...

after less than 2 weeks at my new job i received my discount card--20% off everything in the store! i'm starting to get paid too as the anchor slowly drops in the deep ocean of debt and neglected adult responsibilities. soon it will stick and i will be able to move forward, beyond merely catching up.

and i exhale, thinking about tomorrow's opening day of a certain chocolate-themed restaurant chain at 15th and walnut that i will not be working. tomorrow is the first day of the second half of the year. it's my day off and i plan on making the most of it, to start this new era.

double week

yesterday i did a double shift. at essene i felt at home with the smell of natural and organic food and tattooed, smiling co-workers. then over to mb for my final training for a job i will never actually work. leaving the building i confessed to the one person that i liked from the barista crew that it was my last night and that i found another job. this morning i called the bar manager and gave him the bad news. he was surprisingly peppy and just told me to bring my uniform back, which i did after my second training shift at essene. what a strange week. the summer is now about to begin.