Ceasefire

Dear Reader,

Well, I've been driving myself crazy. I spent 10 hours on Wednesday flipping between MSNBC, CNN, and FOX, and followed literally 600 minutes of "lipstick-on-a-pig" coverage until my soul leaked out of my ears. That night, I couldn't sleep. I couldn't think about anything else. My faith in humanity's ability to rise above its reptilian self fell to an all-time low.

And then, praise God for this one small blessing, today was September 11. And I forgot about politics for a day.

I've been watching because I care. Because I have a vested interest. Because the Christian American Moviegoer in me who saw "All Dogs Go to Heaven" wants to see the attack dogs who fight dirty get what's coming to 'em. Instead, I've been slowly dissolving and not, I might add, actually volunteering to do anything other than watch and react.

I know I'm lost in an existential quandary because I grew a beard.

Not an intentional beard, mind you. If you have never seen me with a beard, you're a lucky person. My face is the antithesis of my scalp when it comes to hair production, like "The Peanut Butter Solution" only the Senor is creepily after the boy's 5 o'clock shadow. I'm not dissing myself, it's really an unflattering beard. It adds 50lbs, makes me look mangy and downright scruffy (and not in a roguishly handsome Han Solo kind of way, more in a "hair on a hobbit's foot" way). It's black and curled and greasy and clings to my face like a dirty secret, and I only grow it when I'm feeling too overwhelmed by my thoughts to muster the strength to shave, to cleanse, to release my face from it.

My mom, upon whom experiments should be conducted because she is right more often than any human being should be able to be, told me once that "Disorder on the inside means disorder on the outside." I'm sure you've experienced this. You feel out of sorts and your room gets covered, the kitchen sink fills up, bills sit in unopened envelopes. There's a connection between you and the world, and however your world looks on the inside is what reality starts to look like around you.

This is precisely why I've started avoiding saying things like "That will never happen to me." Because, let's face it, the Universe is a smart ass, the penultimate jokester. She laughs blood and sex and sweat, and She will find a way to make your life ironic.

I remember once, when I was living in Florida, a girl who was a passenger in my car asked if I'd ever gotten a ticket. Now, I had an inkling at this point that the only reason I'd never gotten a ticket was because I had never vocalized the words, "No, I've never gotten a ticket." But this particular day I was feeling brazen. Maybe I wanted to strut a little stuff, put a spit-shine on the old Martin, you know? And so I said it. Out loud. "No, I've never gotten a ticket."

The next day, it's raining. I'm on my way back from class, sitting at a red light, when a cop pulls up behind me. No big deal, I'm not doing anything wrong. The light turns green, I start to go, and he follows me through the light. In fact he follows me for an entire mile, and as I'm about to turn into my apartment complex his lights start flashing. I pull over hoping he'll pass me by like I'd seen people do in movies (how else was I supposed to know what to do?), but no, he was coming for me. Or rather, She was coming for me, because She had heard what I said, and She couldn't pass up the opportunity. Turns out my registration was expired. I didn't even know. The cop did a routine check on my license plate, saw that I was a few months out, and pulled me over.

I. Shit. You. Not.

$146 in fines later, I realized this one absolute truth: Saying something "never will happen" is the same thing as saying "this absolutely must happen." Don't give the Universe the pleasure of proving you wrong. She will do it often enough anyways without any help from you.

So that's what I'm reminding myself of as I sit here all mangy and gross, telling myself I'm going to shave in the morning. Existential questions gather on the idle soul, cling to soft skin and weight it down with the unanswerable. And if I want the world around me to be better, I should turn off the goddamn TV and start fixing the world inside me.

Your,
Martin