27 Reasons I Am Surely 26

Pop the Cialis. Inform the AARP.

I actually heard my woman say the words "at your age" tonight. As in, "Martin, at your age, you can't really expect to get toys at Christmas."

I replied eloquently. Respectfully. Insightfully.

"What the hell did you just say?" I said.

But it was true. Her guns were stuck to. And in front of my father and his wife, no less, who are visiting from Pittsburgh and so far have seemed to enjoy how stable and welcoming and warm my highly adult life is. They were commenting on how we will be getting "couples" gifts from now on. A coffeemaker, for instance. His-and-Hers socks.

"How about an urn?" I wanted to say, biting my tongue. "Should I draw up a will while we're at it?"

You see, I deliberately did not extinguish my individual candle at the wedding. Jessie did not extinguish hers, either. A wind blew up at that point in the ceremony and whisked what little flames we had enkindled up into an airy smoke that set off to join the Clouds of Time, but that doesn't mean I stopped existing as my own person. "Couples gifts." "At your age..." Bah. Judge me by my age, do you?

Of course you do. I'm 26. At my age, my grandfather had saved the world from Nazis and fathered three children. 7 may be the Age of Reason and 18 the Age of Unreasonableness, but 26 is when you should Have a Fucking Clue About Your Life. 26 is the age at which I thought my sisters should Know Better and Be Adults. They had garages for Christ sake. They were grown-ups.

And now, dear Reader, I fear that I, too, have grown up. Or at least have been asked to dress like a grown-up and be willing to not get toys for Christmas. I worry about what I write on here because what if somebody reads it and thinks I'm not as put-together as I should be? What if someone goes, "Someone his age shouldn't be writing like this" or, worse, "Isn't he too old for this?"

So I've decided to compile a list of 27 signs that I am actually 26. I'm including a bonus one in case one of them is stupid, which is likely considering I'm writing this in my pajamas on a work night (take that, adulthood!)

The 27 Signs You, Martin, Are Indeed 26

1. There is hair on your butt.
2. You were born before "Return of the Jedi" came out. That was before the Original Trilogy was finished and 16 years before George Lucas ruined Star Wars with "The Phantom Menace."
3. You are older than the Super Mario Bros. (Mercifully, you are still younger than the "Pong" paddles.)
4. You take more than two pills at night.
   
5. You remember Michael Jackson actually being a sex symbol. For women.
   
6. Advertisers no longer covet your disposable income.
   
7. You were 2 years old when Apple aired their landmark "1984" ad. You think that ad is retro? You are older than it.
   
8. There is a symphony of popping sounds in your knees when you kneel down and stand up. (It's syncopated, thank God.)
   
9. One of your favorite toys growing up was a Fisher Price record player. That played records (Michael Jackson's "Beat It" on 45rpm? Anyone?)
10. Jesus, you know what a 45rpm record is.
11. I mean, seriously, I should just stop this list right there.
    
12. You remember when computer screens had two colors: Orange, and Not Orange.
13. That CD you made a year ago? When you were born, CDs hadn't even been invented yet.
14. Your favorite shows on Saturday morning were "Garfield and Friends," "Muppet Babies," and "Heathcliff."
    
15. You remember Mister Donut and still resent Dunkin' Donuts for wiping it out. Bitches. America runs on MY FIST.
    
16. You didn't have Cable TV until 1988, at which point your family watched "Perfect Strangers" and "Step By Step" and "Who's the Boss."
    
17. You know who Jaleel White is and you still get excited at the prospect of "Double Dare" reruns.
18. You actually have pains you would describe as "aches."
    
19. The theme song from "Doug" is constantly playing in your head somewhere. Doo doo doo, do do do dooo do dooo do do... doo doo doooo, doo doo doo do, doooo, doo, dee doo... Dammit.
20. Your favorite stuffed animal as a child was a giant blue Smurf.
    
21. You know what the word "baud" means, and you existed before word processors knew how to "word wrap."
    
22. You are older than eBay and Amazon.com combined. In fact, you are older than any website. Ever. (the first appeared in 1991)
    
23. You don't understand Bratz Dolls (a.k.a. "Hooker Barbie"), Hannah Montana (I'll tap me some of th... wait she's how old?!?), or any other manufactured musical demon spawn of Disney. Bring back Alan Menken.
    
24. You still cry at the end of "Pee Wee's Playhouse."
25. Did I mention that you are older than the World Wide Web? Oh, also, and you remember when anyone actually called it that?
    
26. You get most of the ridiculously obscure references in "Family Guy."
27. It took a list this long to make fun of how old you are.

Wow. That was edifying. And depressing as hell. Well, at my age, I suppose I shouldn't be making these lists. It'll be all "couples lists" from here on out.

But I'll be damned if I don't ask for toys for Christmas. Screw adulthood. I have the rest of my life to be all growed up...

Your,
Martin

26 on the 24th

Dear Reader,

It doesn't seem all that long ago that this post was entitled "24 on the 24th." I've been trying to make some sense of the rapid acceleration that seems to have overtaken the gas pedal on my life, but so far my only theory is that time flies when you're having fun. If that's true, then I must be having a blast. Life is hurtling by.

I'm one of those people who largely exists in their head, and it is taking me a long time to accept that every thought, emotion, opinion, and revelation I have is not necessarily unique to me. I thought I was a "special snowflake," but you live long enough and you realize that that belief was the ego-centric fantasy of a younger you who desperately needed to feel original and somehow set apart. I still feel that need. Don't take my cognizance of the need as diluting my desire for it. Some of my least favorite words are aptly applied to my life right now: grown-up, stable, comfy. It is taking a remarkable amount of willpower to not resist the intense inertia I'm feeling in my Good Life. Perhaps that's the definition of responsibility: Not upending a good thing just to feel like you're moving forward.

People have been yelling at me, perhaps rightly so, about my grumbling over turning 26. It's not a spectacular age. It doesn't have the wide-mouthed flare of 18, the newfound power of the raucous 21, or the sober, trenchant 30. It's a middling year, one of those great gray expanses between wayposts where one continues to put on the new outfit of adulthood. I'm struggling somewhat to know how to act, defining myself from the outside in as I do. What does a 26-year-old look like? How do they think and act? I feel like a child playing dress-up in front of a mirror. "Here is me at 18. Here is me at 26. Here is me at 40." What's really changing?

If anything, the blessing of getting older is that congealed feeling I have on the inside. Readers of this blog know that I've been liquid for a long time, desperately seeking to become solid. And I can feel that happening, piece by piece. It's not a hardening, though that temptation exists. How many adults do you know who mistake solid for hard? I look at those people, the ones who are cynical and sour and brittle, and I try to be anything but what they are. I am convinced you can grow older without totally smothering your inner-child.

In my music, actually, I am trying to get back to a place of innocence. We start out, as children, creating with no sense of the outcome. We just create because the joy is in the creation. Who cares if it is good? Who cares if it makes sense or doesn't make sense? The outcome isn't the point. The point is the act of creation.

But then we go to school, and we learn how things "should" and "should not" be done. We learn that there are others who might be "better" or "worse" than us. We learn critical-thinking skills and hew a keen critical eye. We are evaluated on how well we critique our own work and the work of others.

And in the process, we forget that you cannot create with a critical mind any more than you can be critical with a creative mind. We focus so much on the quality of the outcome, which is the domain of the critical mind, that we almost become afraid to create. What if it doesn't come out perfect? What if it isn't good? Would that mean I am not good? What if I'm not as good as I used to be? What if I'll never create anything better?

When I was a child, between the ages of 12 and 16, I wrote 42 pieces of ragtime music. From age 16 to now, I've written 2. That's a 95% reduction in pieces over twice as much time. What really changed? My ability to compose? Not likely. Did the pieces get better? I'd like to think so. But in the process of learning how to be critical, I forgot what it was just create for the joy of it.

So, now that I'm 26, I am going to relearn how to think like a child. I find that devilishly ironic. We spend all that time learning how to grow up, only to realize that what we truly need is to think young.

26. I suppose it's up to me to make it a good year. Perhaps by focusing on what is special and unique to me, I'll be able to feel that all-important sense of "progress," of moving forward.

Your,
Martin

Sunset

Dear Reader,

It is nearly Fall, and with the shorter days and cooler nights comes, like clockwork, a deep, restless yearning for a spiritual life. I know it's coming, because my dreams change. This week brought some of the most intense dreams I've had, ever. One night I dreamt I climbed Jacob's Ladder, and Heaven was a thundercloud that billowed up into the universe. The next night I was in a hospital, where I learned that I had imagined everyone I loved in my life. One by one they left me, taking their warmth and love with them, like seeing your life before your eyes only in reverse, and everyone who entered is now leaving. Even Jessie's loving face, the only constant in the dream, faded into the amorphous face of a nurse I didn't know, and I awoke in terror and grasped for Jessie's warm flesh. "She is real," I yelled silently. "She is real. They. Are. All. Real."

It has been this way for eight years, ever since I turned 18 and bought my first book on Witchcraft out of a deep, primordial, beyond-words desire for a living spirituality. Every year the power takes on a new expression: a deck of tarot cards, scholarly books about Jesus, the Tao Te Ching, astrology, telekinesis, you name it. Without fail, it possesses me, as though this particular change of seasons shifts something within me that needs to exist deeper than I currently am.

I've had an idea for this blog for some time now where I read and comment on a passage from the Tao Te Ching for each post. It's a text that I found particularly inspiring. It's also a ridiculously fun candidate for some clever wordplay and high-minded, low-brow discussions about just how applicable woodsman Lao's text really is. I think we should go for it. It should be fun. And it won't be every post. It won't be this post.

Today at 4 PM, my grandfather called an ambulance for himself. By the time they arrived, he wasn't able to tell them what medicines he was taking. He wasn't able to make words, no matter how hard he tried. The words weren't coming. He managed to call my aunt before the ambulance arrived. She was at work, and didn't take the call, but she had a powerful feeling that something was wrong, so she left work unannounced and went over to the house to find him sitting in a chair, unable to speak anything but gibberish. Twenty minutes later he was at a hospital in Wooster, OH, who told my aunt they didn't have the necessary expertise at their little hospital to give him the emergency care he required, so he was transferred to a hospital in Akron, OH. We're still awaiting the results of the tests.

Mom called me as Jess and I were driving home. The call came as all calls like this come, like lightning from a clear sky, and I regaled her with questions about his condition, whether he would improve. As my mind raced and the tears flowed, I was caught by one of the greatest sunsets I had ever seen in Pennsylvania. The sun, a fiery, rebellious orange, burned brightly in a lavender sky. Clouds tried to pass in front of it, but it singed their edges with blinding light. As it lowered it lit the horizon, and halfway hidden and partially obscured, it torched the sky with a deep palette of brilliant reds and blues and purples. The sunset had burned so brilliant that night never truly came, not the whole way home. I could still see the deep blue, still warm from the raging sunset, as if night could not overtake the memory of the sun that burned so bright. I felt a tiny tinge of peace.

Please pray for my grandpa. We don't know what happens next.

Martin

Why I Am Not a Dogwalker

I used to think I was a dog person. That is until I came into bed tonight - you know, my marriage bed, my sacred space, the fluffy thing into which I plop after a long day of asking the big questions - and there was a dog lying in my spot, growling at me like I was an intruder.

Granted, it's not my dog. It's Josie, Jessie's parent's dog, a Cocker Spaniel/Poodle half-breed with all the snootiness of a poodle and the stubbornness of a spaniel. Josie is the perfect example of how you can drive just about any living thing crazy by picking on it. She's got a hair-trigger, can bite you while wagging her tail, and is OCD about... well... everything.

And she was sitting in my bed, snarling, guarding a sleeping Jess from, you guessed it, me.

We're dogsitting this week while Jess' parents galavant around the West Coast. We didn't exactly volunteer to dog-sit, either. The dog-thing arrived with Tooch this past Thursday when she came down for one of her interviews, and I couldn't convince her to take it back (she already has a dog). I quickly came to realize that Jess saw a golden opportunity to test out my parenting capabilities which, safe to say, are in shoddy disrepair and I like it that way, thank you very much. I'm at a stage in my life when I don't want any other living thing counting on me save for me. Myself. Moi. And maybe my wife, when she's good. We've killed all our plants save for the bamboo, and even that is yellowed at the edges. God help any creature who wanders into our apartment - we've got so many poisonous baited traps set to kill any living thing that enters this Fortress of Doom, it's ridiculous. I haven't seen a spider in 8 months. Flies die a quick and painful death between the thunderclap of fists. And God help the cockroaches if they so much as stop to look in our window on their way down the street. Just keep walking, buddy. [cocks shotgun]

And then here comes this dog. And she needs walked. And pet. And have her poop picked up in plastic bags. And she stares at you when you eat. And she barks at goddamn everything.

Which was fine. I could deal with it. I'm a big boy, I can handle things that are not entirely fun and/or easy. Until she was lying in my bed, in my spot, on my pillows, next to my wife, snarling at me at 12:30 in the morning like I was the stranger, like I had intruded into her life. She barked, and woke up Jess, and the stream of invective I started shooting at this mutt would have made a microphone blush. The dog and I got into a growling fight (I do a wicked dog impression), and Jess awoke furious at me and then she shoved the dog off the bed. It snarled again at me, and I growled back, pushed it outside the bedroom, threw its fluffy bed at it, and slammed the door.

So. Yes. I used to think I was a dog person. Maybe when it's my dog, it'll be different, you know? But right now, I wish this mutt would go the way of the potted plants.

-Martin