Religion, humor, lifestyle, personality, all define who a person is, yet they do not define all of who a person is. The only way I can truly cogitate who I am is by recognizing the basic facts of my self, the fundamental features, analyzing those, seeing how they affect me, and then seeing how I affect those around me. No matter what level of detail I put into a description of myself though, it would be entirely possible for someone to analyze that information and still not know who I am. How do I explain the unexplainable parts of me? I believe the best way to achieve that level of communication without actual interaction is to simply say what I am feeling and thinking as I give this account. Again, however, that defies my natural character, for I am not someone who wants to explain his every thought and emotion to an audience. I live life not by the moment but by the instant, and I expect the rest of the world to do the same. That being stated I will now digress into the intricacies of my life and personality, and hopefully what I am about to share will make sense to someone other than the author.
*
Walt Whitman once wrote "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict my self. I am large, I contain multitudes". When I first read that I was struggling with some major issues in my life, to include failing out of Washington State University. My life has gotten much better since then. I am still struggling with major issues. To me this is quite a contradiction, and if this account has any basis in reality, you will find that it contains a plethora of such idiosyncrasies.
It would seem logical to begin this story at the beginning. I, however, am not going to follow that route, due to the fact that a chronological history of the events of my life would not only be extremely monotonous, but would also deprive my audience of the essence of my thought stream. Documenting my life in order, from as early as I can remember until the present, would not only leave my story full of holes, but it would most certainly allow me to make the mistake of excluding some major concept that didn’t necessarily enter my mind on any noticeable date.
So, rather than bore you with the dates and details, I will explain the things which I feel are important, give detail to the explanations which require it, and leave the rest to your imagination, praying that your imagination treats me kindly if not accurately. This method of conveying my thoughts should also lend a sense of anachronism to itself, which suits my purposes well, being that I have lived most of my life with a disrupted concept of time. Everything is gauged by time. Society values time above all else, and yet it is the one resource we cannot control. My thoughts on time seem to be the best way to introduce you to my mind.
*
Sitting here, staring at my computer, my mind wanders. I wonder about where I am going, and how I will get there, but those thoughts fade quickly. My mind is so centered on the present that any ideas about the future usually fade into obscurity within a very short period. My past sticks with me, but as more of a subconscious list of details than vivid thoughts. As much as I feel that this sense of the present is one of my defining factors, I ask myself if I can really accept that I am merely an instantaneous wink of existence. That concept makes me feel infinitely smaller than any starry night sky, or thoughts of an ever-expanding universe.
If I accept this idea of being only an instant, then I can realize that I am not who I was two years ago, 2 months ago, or even 2 seconds ago. This provides me with a vast potential for change and improvement, but it also renders any past deeds meaningless. By this line of reasoning anything that I do will fall into the past as soon as I do it, therefore implying that it was done by my past self, hence allowing for me to escape any responsibility. I do not believe that I live my life in a knowingly irresponsible manner, but I also don’t believe that being nailed to one’s personal history is a particularly healthy way to live.
While I am on this subject of how I view life, it seems only natural to mention religion. My religion is something very unique, and the one thing that I have never allowed to be tarnished by conformity. Before I delve into a vivid description of my personal beliefs it is important that you know how I view the other religions of the world, and how I came to viewing them in such a colorful manner. Before I can do that, however, I should probably make a distinction between the populations that I refer to as “religious people” and “religious nuts”.
Religious people are for the most part normal. You might not even notice a religious person at a crowded party, other than for the fact that they might be drinking soda instead of beer, and they might not take the Lord’s name in vain. These are the people who live normal lives, and choose to devote their souls and Sundays to God.
Religious nuts are of the same breed, but they are horribly mutated. Back in the crowded party scenario, a religious nut would not only be drinking soda instead of “the Devil’s brew”, but he would insist you do the same for the sake of your immortal soul. A religious nut would probably be wearing a cross on a chain around his neck, which he would touch, rub, and adjust frequently. He would make frequent references to the “Word” and may even feel the need to check himself with the copy of the New Testament that he keeps in his pocket at all times. If someone should casually let a profanity slip their tongue the nut would wince as though an ice pick had just been jammed into his ear. He would then find the most public method of “correcting” the sinner, which often implies an annoyingly loud and obnoxious speech pertaining to blasphemy, the Lord’s wrath, and the flaming pools of blood to which all sinners are damned.
By this comparison I hope I have illustrated that the main divisor between religious people and nuts is the degree with which they inflict their beliefs on the people around them. I am as open to religious debate as anyone, and more open than quite a few. The word debate, however, suggests the discussion of differences based on some level of reason, and intelligent interpretation. Someone shoving the glory of Christ down my throat does not count as debate, and I actually believe that such people can only succeed in damaging the reputation of their faith.
When I was younger my parents sent me to a private Presbyterian middle school, because they believed it would be a better education. While I was there I was forced to “accept” all of their beliefs, as part of my education. This, of course, did not sit well with me. I began studying other religions as well, simply to spite them. As I read the Koran and learned about Islam I began to realize how closely related all the western religions are. Then I studied Buddhism, and Zen and various eastern concepts, and I could see how they too were related to the religions I had already studied.
The Bahai Faith is something very new to me. I claim to be Bahai, not because I believe what they preach, but because they preach what I believe. I believe that many religions are true, and that they are all connected. I don’t understand how people can tolerate, much less believe in, a god who would only accept so few and who has not communicated with us since Biblical times. This is how I can accept that all religions are true, and that there have been more recent prophets, such as Baha’ullah the prophet who founded the Bahai faith. There are many things I do not yet know about the Bahai faith, but I do know I that I believe in the overlying theme of open-minded acceptance.
I often make fun of other organized religions. That is simply part of my non-conformist personality. It seems odd, though, that some of my best friends are devout Christians. Most of these friends get a worried look in their eye when I remind them that I have never been baptized, which certainly means that I will burn in hell no matter how virtuous a life I lead. It can also be annoying when their morals get in the way of doing something fun, like shooting my spud-zooka at an abandoned warehouse.
If you are unfamiliar with the sport of spudding I will explain. A spud-zooka looks a lot like a LAW (Light Anti-tank Weapon), or a bazooka (hence the name). It’s made mostly out of ABS sewage piping and a sparker from a butane/propane lantern. With the right propellant (spray can deodorant works well) a potato can be shot over 200 yards by this simple cannon. You might see where a goody-two-shoes would object to discharging such a weapon within city limits, especially when it is aimed at the window panes of an abandoned warehouse. Some of my Christian friends are fairly close to gaining their goody-two-shoes status, and they can sometimes deflate my fun with their morals, but they have always been some of my best buddies. I can’t really explain why I like them so much, but I think it is partially due to the contrast between our personalities and the fact that they are at least open to some of my hair-brained ideas.
*
To take another step beyond the subject of friends would be to step completely into the disgusting quagmire of “relationships”. To me relationships are a lot like learning to speak Spanish. I fail miserably at both. Although I have successfully tricked a few girls into dating me on a regular basis, everything has always ended in a confusing and painful manner. Someone once said, “When it comes to relationships, they either end badly, or they don’t end at all.” I would have to say that from my experience he was entirely correct. There was another man who said “It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.” I wish he was still alive so that I could kick him in the shins. Not that I am really more miserable, having failed at love, but I certainly don’t see my self as having a brighter outlook on life. If anything, I think I am becoming jaded, calloused from having my heart clawed out so many times. That may lead you to believe that I have placed way too much weight on my past relationships. I must convince you now though that I have not. I have not. Trust me. I would attempt to explain my past relationships but for the fact that it would be tediously long and far too close to a soap opera for me to feel comfortable typing it all out. All you really need to know is that for a while my girl-chasing motto was “Ready… aim… aim… aim… aim…” and then it switched to “Ready! Fire! Aim!” I don’t know what my motto is right now, but it probably isn’t worth copyrighting yet.
Describing my past relationships with great detail doesn’t fit into my concept of useful information that you need to know to understand who I am. After all, as I mentioned earlier, I believe that I exist for the most part in this instant, and that my past self may as well be an entirely different person. There is one item which is pertinent to this account however, a portrait.
One of my girlfriends was fairly artistic with photography, and she put together an amazing collage-style portrait of what she thought was my personality. To this day, to this instant, I still feel that it is the most accurate description of me ever to be printed. The picture is black and white, and the overlying pattern is a photograph of an old warehouse window frame. Some of the glass panes are broken (she may have gotten this window shot from the “Spudding” warehouse I mentioned before). In two of the intact panes she superimposed two other pictures of half-faces.
One of the halves is from the face of a man with wild hair and anger in his eye, who is screaming at the camera. This face obviously represents the angry parts of my personality. My inner chaos, the part of me that wants to yell at most people, the dark reserves of my personality that only come to the surface when there is no other alternative, these are all symbolized by the angry half-face.
The other pane contains half of the face of a small boy. He looks somewhat shy, but not sad because he has a hint of a smile curling the corners of his mouth. He is happy, peaceful, a bit timid but not so much as to prevent him from exploring new things. He is cushioned by the blissfulness of youth. To me he symbolizes so much of what I see in myself, so much of what I see when I look at my childhood, and so much of what I aspire to. I do not wish to return to that bliss by denying the reality that I have experienced since my childhood, but by embracing it and finding comfort in certain truths. This picture of half of a little boy’s face is a picture of peace to me, of inner harmony.
An interesting detail about this picture is that the little boy's face is a bit bigger than the angry man's. I don't know if she, my girlfriend, the artist, meant to make it that way or not, but I think that it fits her description of me. My inner happiness has always been the larger part of me.
As a matter of fact the only other thing I have to say about relationships has more to do with ending them than actively participating in one. I have this cluster of thoughts and emotions which I could write tomes about, but which the reader might never understand. I believe the key lies in reading between the lines, in blurring your eyes and looking at what I write as a whole.
Vestiges
Never thought it could be so rough,
Just getting out of bed.
I never knew it could be so tough,
Just to lift my head.
I lie and listen,
To the falling rain,
My open eyes glisten,
Something must relieve this pain.
The weight of confusion,
Holds me down,
My heart's contusion,
Makes me frown.
Can't you see?
I care so much,
I just can't be,
The one you touch.
Had I known before,
That my heart was too small,
I am too poor,
I wouldn't fall.
You would still smile,
The way you did,
That innocent style,
With eyes of a kid.
I cannot return,
To that sweet bliss,
I have been burned,
By the truth that is.
I apologize,
For being blind,
My heart, my eyes,
Cannot find.
Never thought it could be so rough,
Just getting out of bed.
I never knew it could be so tough,
Just to lift my head.
But I find a way,
To carry on,
I wish I could stay,
But my heart is gone.
*
After all of this talk of love and relationships, I think I should focus on a happier topic for a while. Music comes to mind first. I love music, and many different types of music, except for country, which doesn’t really count as music anyways. For me music is all about messages that cannot be simply expressed with normal language. Music requires one to read between the lines, but it also facilitates that reading with underlying beats and harmonies.
My favorite bands all fall into the alternative genre. System of a Down and Tool are probably my top two, and they both have socially/politically oriented lyrics. I cannot emphasize enough how much I love their lyrics. The lead singer and songwriter for System of a Down is an Armenian man named Serj Tankian, and he has published a book of his poetry and prose entitled “Cool Gardens”. I bought this book the instant I heard about it. As I have read through this small collection many times, one poem in particular has tickled my brain on many occasions.
Businessman vs. Homeless
The wheel and deal for a meal man,
Versus the organized, courteous homeless.
One lies and cheats to secure his possessions,
The other lives the truth of man’s post industrial reality.
One forecloses, fires, and finagles,
While the other relieves suffering by human courtesies.
One lives in a regal palace with all the luxuries,
The other on a chair in the alley,
With the rain as his partner.
One travels across time zones,
The other travels through time,
And leaves everything virtually untouched.
One furnishes complements,
The other insight.
One flies lobsters in from Maine,
The other flies through the glass window of a seafood restaurant,
His main offense, touching the lobsters.
Both may be lovers of music,
But only the latter listens,
For only he has the time to be,
Rather than be on time.
I have always wanted to learn to play the guitar. I have friends, who could teach me, and I have enough money to buy a decent guitar, but I don’t know if I will ever have the time to put into it. That is probably why I need a guitar. Maybe a guitar will teach me to budget my time and learn to enjoy relaxing. Maybe that is too much credit to give to a guitar. The odds are I will either forget I own it within a couple of months, or end up spending way too much time playing the guitar and blow away the rest of my life. I think I can wait to get a guitar. In the meantime though, I write a lot of lyrics, and I listen to a lot of music, and I continue to dream about one day playing the guitar.
Writing, one of my favorite outlets, has always been something I enjoy. When I was younger I can remember always enjoying the creative writing homework assignments that other kids loathed. By the sixth grade I had created a character named Mad Matt (mad as in crazy, not angry). In the eighth grade I killed Mad Matt in the gruesome fashion of gangrenous infection following a polar bear attack and exposure to the extreme cold on an arctic ice shelf. It is important that you remember this was in a Presbyterian middle school full of goody-goodies. Reading that story in front of the class was probably one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life, even after I looked up from my paper to see every wide eye staring at me, and every mouth agape. The school didn’t have a psychologist but I spent the next couple of hours talking to the principal about whether or not I had fantasies about dying, and what she thought writer’s ethics were. I still laugh when I think about that. No, I do not fantasize about death. The death of Mad Matt simply seemed appropriate considering that was the last creative writing assignment I would have in middle school, and I wanted my hero to die in a blaze of glory. After all, isn’t it better to burn out than to fade away? I don’t know about real life, but I think that when it comes to fictional characters this rule has a definite application.
When I was in high school I wrote some poetry, I started a couple of short stories, and I had a couple more creative writing assignments, but for the most part my flow of creativity was staunched by the muck of public education. My teachers didn’t want anything new or exciting. They wanted me to regurgitate. Would they have me regurgitate some thing as delicious as Hemingway, Miller, Whitman, or Thoreau? No, because those authors were all deviants of some sort. Instead I was forced to choke on some lame textbook versions of Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar. When did Shakespeare become the only author worthy of mentioning in a classroom? When did the simplest concepts of rhyme and meter become high school level material? When did students forget how to read the parts of a play as a class, and where the hell did teachers learn to make Shakespeare such a boring experience? None of these questions were ever answered throughout the four years I spent in high school.
Since those dark days of repression my life has taken many turns, and I have written about a lot. Usually my writing comes in the form of a short narrative, or rhymed and metered in some type of poem. I could easily fill the rest of these pages with the dozens of poems I have written but I believe that only three will serve my purpose. One, of course, I have already shared. Here is another.
Thought Stream
Streaming rain,
Storm drain straining,
Leaves and trash caught,
Rotting clot next to the walk,
Dingy sock and plastic wrappers,
The street's our modern city's crapper,
Past the debris,
Free water flows,
Goes into the ground,
Brown it streams,
Cleaned slowly by the vegetation,
Hesitation, toxic juices,
Abuses of the land,
Sand and silt soak,
Choke but purify,
Defy man's pollution,
Solution being nature's role,
Goal of Gia is to live,
Give us life,
Strife is all we know,
Flows the water still,
Will soon join the ocean,
Motion of evaporation,
Stationary in the sky,
Crying down as rain,
Again touching me kindly,
Find it collecting in my heart,
A part that understands the rain,
Pain my brain cannot comprehend.
***
It seems funny to me, that of everything I have mentioned so far, I have neglected to write anything substantial about my parents. Certainly their tyrannical role in my jejune childhood has been a defining factor in my development. My parents are not really as bad as I make them sound, but I feel an unspoken obligation to make fun of them whenever possible. This could possibly be some side effect of being an only child, which has caused me to relate to my parents more as teammates than parents. To me, that is one of the most crucial things they have done for me. Or was it the cruelest thing they have done to me? Well I don’t think they intended for my singularity to be any sort of mean hoax, because they both came from large families. They probably didn’t think of how lonely I might be when I was a kid, especially since my dad was in the army, and we moved a couple of times.
New friends got harder to make as I approached high school, but even now, as I look back, I still wouldn’t want to make friends out of a lot of the people I went to school with. Where does that leave me though? At eighteen I had a girlfriend and a very few close friends, only one of whom was going to WSU with me. Remember the very beginning of this story? I mentioned failing out of WSU. Well, at eighteen I didn’t see it coming, but my whole life was about to blow up. I am reminded of the Homer Simpson quote, “Trying is the first step toward failure”. Homer was right on the money. I went to Washington State University and tried to get a degree in chemical engineering. I tried to have a long distance relationship with my girlfriend. I tried many new things that year, and almost all of them ended in failure. When I hit my ultimate low, when I questioned everything in my life including my life itself, that was when I stopped trying. I stopped trying and I started doing. Of course it was far too late in the game to salvage anything from my past life. Girlfriend? Gone. WSU? Gone. It was when I realized that I was utterly alone again that I wrote this next lyric.
Lost and Found
All along I have been lost.
I see others and wonder how they seem to know what they want.
I am lost.
Then I realized that many of those people who think they know where they are going are really just as lost as I am, they just don’t realize it.
Ignorance is bliss.
Later I came to realize that the rest of the people who never seemed lost really were.
Everyone is.
They had merely accepted it along with the fact that there is no way to tell where life will take them.
Zen.
Life is a journey through a thunderstorm on a moonless night.
Occasionally, there is a lightning bolt that illuminates our path for an instant.
For the most part all we can do is grope in the dark,
And hold on to our friends so as not to die in the cold wet that is constantly pouring down upon us.
Sometimes the lightning shows us that our friends are not who we thought they were.
Are they still our friends?
They kept us warm all this time.
They kept us alive.
Ignorance is bliss.
Sometimes the lightning illuminates someone very special,
But we are soon lost again in the dark.
Flailing in the night, struggling to find one person, will only cause suffering.
All you can do is have faith that in your wanderings you will find each other.
There are many forces in the night that can pull friends apart,
Even the closest of friends.
Without them we are a little colder,
A little more exposed to the piercing rain.
After my tragedy at WSU I came home, and looked for what I really wanted to do in life. I found computer science. With a degree in computer science I will be able to get a job playing with some company’s high tech toys, and better yet, I will be paid insane amounts of money to do it. Not that money can buy happiness, but it would be nice not to have to worry about cash flow. Computer science does involve a lot of math, which can be tough, but it is all of a certain problem-solving nature that I find oddly engaging.
The creative side of programming is also very attractive to me. One obviously creative field would be in programming games. There are so many possible team positions involving storyline, GUI (graphical user interface), and other game features that I could definitely enjoy doing that for a living. Another very creative field of programming would be along the lines of web-based applications, and web design. These would be things such as interactive menus, and online games, and animations.
There is always the possibility that I may get a job that is far more technical than creatively artistic. A lot of modern programming jobs involve maintaining old code for all sorts boring business applications. That is alright however, because it is still problem solving, which I am addicted to, it will still likely pay well, I can still have my fun in my spare time, but most importantly it is not construction.
A couple of years ago I worked for my girlfriend’s father’s reconstruction firm as a carpenter’s aide. If you ever consider doing something like this, please take note of what I am about to tell you. Don’t do it! First of all, being the owner’s daughter’s boyfriend automatically put me in an awkward position with my fellow employees. They knew I was getting paid well, and getting some preferential treatment. I am not one of those guys who enjoys the benefits of nepotism. So in order to make up for it, I thought I had to work harder and longer than anyone else. Most of the guys on my crew noticed this and lightened up on me, but there were definitely a couple who felt I was trying to show them up. Would an eighteen-year-old carpenter’s aide try to compete with some hardened ex-con of a construction worker? I think the only reason this made sense to some of those guys was because they lacked any post-pubescent logic skills. The only good things to come of that job were the money, and the realization that I do not want to be a construction worker when I grow up.
Ok, I lied. There was one other good outcome from my stint in the construction industry. It gave me the skills that I later used to remodel my condominium, which I now live in. When my parents first helped me buy this place it was the cheapest dump in any decent part of town. The carpets were rotting from moisture and filth. The linoleum floors in the kitchen and bathrooms were equally as dirty, bubbling, and curling at the edges. The walls, which had never been painted after the original primer, were stained with nicotine, dust and grime. There were also many large nail holes and scuffmarks which seriously scarred all of the walls in the main rooms. All of the kitchen appliances were broken beyond repair. The bathrooms were disgusting in such a manner that I don’t want to write about, for fear that a woman or child may come across this paper someday. My parents handed me this infested box of a home and said “Fix it and it is yours.” That was at the beginning of this last summer. I moved in only a week or so before the summer quarter was over. I spent everyday tearing something out, hauling something to the dump, buying supplies, patching holes, retexturing walls, painting walls, retexturing ceilings, painting ceilings, planning tile patterns, laying tile, grouting, buying appliances, assembling cabinets, installing light fixtures, replacing heaters, repairing plumbing, and building a new shower stall. The carpet we decided to have done professionally. Everything else was left to me, armed only with my own devices, and a minimal budget. Needless to say, I am proud of my home, and when anyone wants to talk about how my parents give me everything on a silver platter, I laugh.
I have described for you, my friends, my family, my religion, my home, and my life. Have I described who I am? Or what I am? Do you now know why I am the way I am? I hope so, but then again it is all really up to the way you interpret my life. You may know more about me than my friends do, simply from reading about how I interpret my own life. Or this account could be another inhibiting miasma preventing anyone from knowing the real Matt. Then again, how well do you really know anyone? Faith is all that matters.
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