24 on the 24th

Hi. It's my birthday :)

That's right: 24 revolutions around the sun ago, I was born. At 3:30 AM, no less, which perhaps explains why my blog entries are always posted in the wee hours of the night. I was a night owl from day 0.

Mum used to tell me that I was a "white-knuckled baby," having entered the world the most reluctantly out of her four children. I like to think that I was making a dramatic pause before my grand entrance. The more likely truth is that my big head had to triangulate the exact physics of just exactly how it was going to navigate those tempestuous moments through bone and sinew, that delicate dance all babies do on their way to the world. And man was my head big.

I am happy to say that I am glad I made it. Life, all of it, has been crazy and good.

There were a couple of awkward moments I could've done without. If you ever see my sophomore picture from high school (which you never will, and if you do I will interrogate you and find out who showed it to you so I can persuade them that their remaining fingers would be best kept out of their yearbook (this means you, Calland!)), you would know exactly which years I am referring to and why.

This is the first birthday where I am truly okay with the thought of getting older. I don't really feel any different than I did when I was 22. I feel a little stronger, a little more confident. I have fewer questions about myself and what I believe, which is something I used to fear but now realize is an act of mercy, a reward for surviving adolescence. The people in my life who I love are still here, and I've added a couple more to the list. I drive a better car, own nicer shirts, live in a new place, and have better sex. Things have changed, but largely for the better. So many new experiences and beautiful places seen...

I started a journal when I was a child. I think I was 8, and I had a tiny little notebook, no bigger than my palm, in which I scrawled my secrets and my stories. In it, I made a list of things I wanted to do in my lifetime. Mom had suggested the exercise, and her flowing script on the faded pages reminds me of the winter evening we sat on the couch and wrote down them down. Some of them are wonderfully dreamy: Fly an airplane. Have a big train-set. Own an old-fashioned car. It's so neat to hear old priorities read aloud, made alive again.

[I truly did desperately want an old-fashioned car. There was a 1926 Buick 8 parked outside a dusty mechanic's shop where I grew up, and I remember staring at it every time we drove by. I don't really remember what it represented to me. I only knew that it was old, and that it had been beautiful once.

One day, to my great delight, we stopped there and my parents asked if I could sit in it. I can still remember the hazy smell, the coarse fibers of the seat fabric, the big numbers inside round gauges, the cold metal of the steering wheel...]

Other dreams seem oddly precocious. One of the things I wanted to do was see Victor Borge in concert. Most people my age have never even heard of him, but when I was 8 I was already a fan. I remember my grandparents watching a special of his in our living room, and I thought he was some kind of magician. He died in December 2004, but not before I saw him in concert in September, my birthday present from Dad when I turned 22. What a night! I felt like a child in his presence, the way he held the audience, the way he mastered the piano.

So, I'm 24 today. Which is one year less than half of 50. Yes, I am old. I can feel it in my knees. I can see it on my scalp. But I also feel stronger in other places, physically and spiritually. Maybe that's what the game of life is, our weaknesses the furniture in a big living room that we move around as we get older, adjusting for the shifting sunlight. Maybe all my little questions have condensed like water on a glass of cold milk into one big question, THE big question: Why? Why am I here? What is it I was sent here to do? I want so much to be able to answer the question without selecting E)All of the above. Peace about that question would be an awesome birthday present. No fucking certificates, Universe. I want it wrapped with a bow. And a funny card.

The dodgeball championship is tonight. This is for all the marbles. Mark, Mat and I had a great warm-up session earlier. As silly as it sounds, my experience with Dodgeball in many ways reflects my life. When I started, I was reluctant and afraid. I didn't think I could do it. I would drop easy catches, I couldn't throw worth shit - I came into it with white knuckles.

Now, though... now I salivate for it, can't wait to sweat for it. Every time I go out onto that little court in that little building in the big world, I become less and less afraid. Call it one revolution around the sun. Putting the couch in the corner. Turning the wheel on the Buick 8...

Yours always,
Martin

Give Me an I, K, or 8!

So, the iBook and the girlfriend are now sleeping dreamily in West Virginia. I'm typing to you on the equivalent of a typewriter, a 600MHz Celeron Dell Inspiron 3800 that used to be my sister's. Technically it still is hers, but I've got it on long-term loan.

Aside from a tiny 12" screen and 10GB hard drive (snazzy!), the only thing that's really kept me from using it is that this past April, in what can only be explained by supernatural phenomena, the K, I, and 8 keys ceased to work. At all. It seemed like something related to the sperm-killing temperatures: the laptop would get hot, K, I, and 8 ceased to exist, and then I'd turn it off and the next day it would be fine again. Until, of course, it wasn't fine and those letters/number didn't return.

At first I thought I could get by without them. I mean, really, how often do you use the number 8? I figured I could get around 'K' by spelling things with a 'C' and people would think I was linguistically dangerous and, therefore, virile. What really killed me, though, was 'I.' Metaphysical blow-your-mind philosophizing aside, this little letter is a bitch to go without. There were eleven I's in that last sentence alone, so there went any chance of working on the novel. The main character's name is Nione, so everytime I would write "Nione said," I would have to copy-and-paste 2 I's from things I'd already written before the Breaking of the Keyboard.

So, I thought the little laptop was pretty much done. I had the iBook over the summer to keep my fingers warm, never considering that this night would come, when the two things that made me smile the most over the summer would be sleeping sweetly two hours away. Enter the Inspiron. I dug it out of storage, fired her up, and lo and behold there are 26 letters in my alphabet again. Rock it, bitches. K, I, 8. It sounds like a spy agency or something.

So, long story short, I can write to you again. Sure, I know the two-night break probably scared most of you, but I is back. Literally.

In other news, I smoked my first and last cigarette last night. My friend Bill is in town from Philadelphia, taking a break from his gallavanting while his wife attends the family reunion in Ukraine, and frankly he is a terrible influence. He's a classical pianist, a damn good one, and an old friend. He's back for the week, so I invited him out last night to see my new place. The night air was cool, the windows were open, he was smoking like a tool, so instead of yelling at him I just asked for one, he lit it, and I puffed and coughed my way down West Liberty Ave.

Now the scary part, the part I didn't expect, the part that I'll share here in the privacy of the internet, is that contrary to everything I ever thought I would feel, I actually *liked* smoking. Sure, it dried out my mouth and felt like breathing in car exhaust, but I was holding fire, BREATHING fire. I felt like a dragon. I *was* fire. Because there's smoke in your lungs instead of oxygen, your whole body mellows out, softens up, finds a comfy chair, and now the road is less bumpy and the air feels good on the hairs of your arm and you just want to sit and not think and feel the blood flow through to your fingers and back. I can see why smoking makes people pensive, reflective, calm. I can see why they do it in bed after sex. I still don't understand why they want to do it in restaurants, but to each his own air.

Tonight ended with a Soul Caliber III romp with Luke, Mat, Margaret, and Thomas. We then followed it up with what is quite possibly the funniest two hours of television I've ever seen: The Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner. We seriously laughed the entire time. If you don't believe me, perhaps this will change your mind: Betty White ('Rose' from the Golden Girls) was one of the roasters, and the things that came out of her mouth would make a dead nun blush. Find it. Watch it. Love it.

Also, Monday is half-price Margaret day, so if you have $5, a plow penis, and you like Jason Mraz, give her a call.

A beautiful night. The air is cool and clean on my skin. Lovely for sleeping.

-M

Long Day

Today began at 6:45 AM, waking up next to Jess at the apartment in Squirrel Hill. I could get used to seeing her first thing in the morning - having a warm arm wrapped around you as you drift into consciousness is a lovely way to enter a day.

We had offered to babysit for my sister on Thursday night so she and her husband could have a few hours to themselves. I don't get to help her much, so when Jessie volunteered us, I was happy to have a chance to help. It turns out my little niece was really sick and couldn't go to daycare today, so Anna asked after babysitting on Thursday if Jess would come back at 7:30 AM and babysit this morning. Not wanting her to be there alone, I came along (okay, she threatened violence if I didn't), and we had another adventure with my 11-month-old niece, Mariah.



I know, she's painfully cute. Don't look too long or your eyes will start to go mushy. She makes the best facial expressions, too - she has eyes that really look at things. Sounds funny to say it that way, but you can almost watch the billions of synapses fire as she learns how to work the world. The only stressful thing was that, as a sick baby, she was nigh inconsolable all night and much of the morning, so her usually happy disposition was sadly missing. When you're sick, nobody but mom will do - it was traumatic trying to be the surrogates. I've gotten a lot better with kids in the past couple of years but babies still scare the shit out of me. I'm so afraid I'm going to do something wrong, miss some crucial signal. I wouldn't want to babysit alone. Thank goodness Jess was there - she's been babysitting since 6th-grade, so she had a measured calm about it that was reassuring. The cutest moment ever was when she sang Mariah to sleep. It was one of those perfect moments: soft, pink light through the windowblinds, the subtle wind from a fan, her beautiful, lilting voice. I found myself swaying back and forth, my eyelids heavy, my breathing slowed. If I had a blanket, I might just have zonked out, too. Lullaby's are serious magic.

The most fun, of course, was trying to give Mariah her medicine when she woke up. I'm about as clumsy as it gets with a syringe. I have ragtime thumbs, i.e. it either all squirts out or none of it. Poor Mariah - it took a couple of tries and a lot of tag-team holding to get her to swallow a tsp. of Motrin. I think the experience gave me a chance to taste parenthood, and I'm definitely a decade away from kids of my own. It's strange, though - I find myself thinking about things like, "I want my parents to be alive to know my kids," and "I don't want to be old when they're young." You really do change in your mid-20s. Weird.

I went with Jess' fam up to the West End Overlook, an incredible vantage of Pittsburgh. It was evening. A low, purple dusk set upon the skyscrapers, their distant lights twinkling in the waning summer air. We were there for some free concert, but we missed most of it, so instead I enjoyed the view. We then took a car tour of the southwest of Pittsburgh, through Crafton/Ingram where my Aunt Irene lives, down to the infamous Broadhead Manor apartments where lots of people got murdered in the 70s and 80s. I didn't know that Pittsburgh had Projects - that was an unwelcome revelation. So many dark corners of the world.

Sleep well, loves. Catch you soon.

-M

Just My $.95

Yup. That's what I have in the world right now. $.95. Oh, little decimal, what a difference though doth maketh. I spent my last five dollars on Sunday at the Shadyside Arts Festival, where I bought what was in reality a gallon of frozen lemonade. Much like lighting off fireworks, there's nothing quite as intangible as consuming your own cash. It's like how death and mortality is what truly gives anything value - and when you spend the last of it, the moments should be savored.

The lemonade was terrible, of course. I don't know why I always buy lemonade at festivals expecting it to be good. I might as well buy some sugar cubes, spit on them, and then grind them up with ice. This would probably be my advice to high school seniors, if someone were ever to ask me someday, just three little words that would inalterably change the course of young lives: Make your own.

My dad remarked today how he'd never been golfing with someone who only had $.95, to which I replied that I was usually the child taking him places he never thought he'd go: a ragtime festival in Missouri, the ER in Winter Park, FL, the dance floor at Donna's wedding. I think it was a kind of watershed moment in our relationship; I realized that even when I had absolutely nothing, I had everything I would ever need.

Jess is leaving on Sunday, which is a sentence that is weighing down all the other ones on this page. To commemorate, we spent the evening chowing down on italian ice and reading old e-mails to each other. She read hers out loud, and I would read my reply. It was even more fun when we acted out old IM conversations - it read something like a taut screenplay for a successful romantic comedy. I was Billy, she was Meg. It was strange to hear our new voices giving bodies to the old ones. These are mostly e-mails from 2000 and 2001, so the whole evening had the air of a mad scientist's experiment, a wormhole bursting open on her parents' couch and cramming the entirety of the time-space continuum of our experience together into one thin moment.

Me love you long time, crazy girl. This one-line paragraph is for you.

I'm going through laptop withdrawal. I don't know what I'm going to do when it heads home for the Springs. How will I write to you from my bed? How will I surf eBay and Amazon and Apple forums from the comfort of the sheets? I don't believe in wireless keyboards or meeces because of the quarter-second delay between intention and the screen. You know what I mean, that little, tiny moment between thought and word. It's like watching a video where the voice is out of sync with the mouth - I was born to perceive the subtlety, hard-wired to know the discrepancy, and it is maddening and I just want to poke at the screen with sharp things until it goes away.

Ditto with the wireless keyboard. Maybe I can do some case-study, submit my body for the betterment of my computing situation. I wonder how much silicon I'm really worth. The new Core 2 Duo is salacious...

Speaking of sex, I've been bummed recently because my documentary filmmaking class has been cancelled for the fall. No word yet as to why, but I'm really disappointed. I've had the feeling for a couple of months now that something, something big, was coming in the Fall that was going to re-angle my life, change its trajectory (the scary thing is I just totally Freuded on "trajectory" and initially spelled it "tragectory," which is of course my fear that the change will be painful). I was hoping it was the documentary class - come on, Universe, your poker face is too good.

I have a deck of tarot cards. You probably think different of me now after knowing that, but that's okay. I haven't dealt them out in awhile - sometimes the blinders are comforting - but I'm thinking I should find them and ask a few quick questions. Just two or three steps ahead, that's all I really need. They've never been wrong. They can't be wrong because they reveal what's within you; what you see in the images is what you are, so to speak. Nothing magical about it, just art eliciting reality, windows and soul and all that jazz. I'll let you know what they say.

In the meantime, stay classy, and if you read, friggin' comment. I'm off to my computer-less bed, wishing you all were in my lap.

Lurve,
M

Happy Birthday, Jessie!

Yay! August 5th, and Jess is 24 years old!!! Happy Birthday, baby :)

Festivities began tonight at the Monterey Bay Fish Grotto on Mount Washington, a beautiful restaurant with a grand view of the city (they actually call all the restaurants up there the "Grand View" restaurants, and truly, if you come to Pittsburgh, it shouldn't be missed). It was a deliciously-spent $99 and a lovely meal... I had the sockeye salmon and Jess had the Naigari Marlin - delish. They also have, to date, the world's best french onion soup. Highly recommended.

Later today we're heading out with her family for another dinner, and then Sunday it's a pool party with the peeps over at Tara and Ben's.

I've been drama lately. Had a bit of a crisis today in that I am totally adrift, steerless, rudderless, washing up against the shores of interest and wondering whether the sand is sturdy enough to set foot. Translation: What the fuck am I supposed to do here on this planet? We saw Superman Returns today, and I left the theater enthralled, entranced, and utterly depressed at reality. When I watch a movie, I give myself totally to the experience. I invite it in, hang its coat on my wall, and let it take me where it shall. That's why I can't watch scary movies - for those few moments, what is up there is real. I can't distinguish between the waking world and the screen, and when I leave my world is forever altered. It's a small price to pay for the truly transcendant moments, and it is why I love movies, but it is exhausting.

I'm still in the twin bed at mom's house. It's amazing the number of reasons one can find to put off moving. It would be easier if Jess were not here, if the apartment had internet access, but Saturday night is the night. THE night. I need to find the sheets for the bed, finish building the computer desk, and go.

I was in Cleveland on Thursday for a job. We were at Key Tower, the headquarters for Key Bank, a lavishly decorated temple to the dollar: gorgeous mahogany on every wall, windows so towering that one can see for miles and miles over Cleveland. While we were there, on the 56th floor, a thunderstorm raged through the city, and the clouds were passing by us at eye-level, curling around the building, dark and creeping. I felt like I could have opened the window and let in the storm. It's amazing the places you'll go with a video camera and a microphone.

I've been looking into the Writing for Stage and Screen masters program at Northwestern University. It seems like an amazing mix of education and opportunity. You write, among other things, a play, a screenplay, a thesis, and you get $5000 to produce your thesis. I'm sure it's very competitive, and they evaluate you based on a 10-page writing sample. Your words, naked in front of a stranger, in the context of thousands of others stories that are also 10 pages... the odds of navigating this asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to... yeah. It's a longshot. But it would be a new adventure in a new city, studying with professionals who've made something of themselves. So many of the people I interact with are in the same boat, all looking at each other for directions on how to row, and what I think I need is to consult people who've had their sea legs for a while longer, find out the strokes that best use the oar.

That's what I really want, I guess; to go to bed at night having meaningfully displaced a little water.

The night air outside my window has a taste of magic on it, like somewhere nearby, in the trees in front of my house, a few of the old songs are still being sung. I find myself wanting to sleep outside, curled up in the grass, blanketed by night. It's rare now to hear the old melodies, to get a chance to dance to the old rhythms. I desire very much to hear them more often. They are soft and quiet and very much alive.

Yours,
Martin

Holy Wow

I am in love:



I am so learning it this way. That is all.

Martin