for those who have arrived without a previous knowledge of uncle matt

well hmmm... this a bit complicated. as any human life is wouldnt you say? i could take two tragectories here. a simple chronology or a more complex meta-data approach. i think i will opt for the more simplistic approach this evening. meta-data can come later i suppose.

how did i come to the here and now:

in 1972 i was born. i was an unexpected 5th child who arrived after my mother had her tubes cut. they replaced themselves to their original positions and i was born when she was 40 years old. twenty years after my oldest brother. i was born in south philly but about 6 months after i was born my parents moved to snj. i grew up in williamstown. my older siblings thought i was a bit of a freek because i was way into dirt and animals and the woods, and they grew up in the middle of the catholic concrete of south philly. when i was a little boy i realized i wasnt normal. for a number of reasons. i was too sensitive for my own good. i saw God and beauty everywhere. to my own distraction. to the point that i was overwhelmed. on the flip side of this sensitivity coin i also experienced pain and suffering more intensely. a fair deal in the end i suppose? one thing that struck me quite early was that i was a boy and yet i liked men and i knew this didnt fit in. i did my best to deny it, and accomplished that feat until i was 21. when i was 21 i was in a russian orthodox seminary/monastery.

ironically - of all things- what is usually described as the super-traditional outlook of the eastern orthodox atmosphere allowed me to come out to myself. i was finally able to accept myself as a sexual being and to understand that God rarely - jesus never - talked about my sexual perdicament but constantly talked about compassion and mercy and not judging and forgiving. so i decided to try as much as possible to put into practice what he actually talked about and not worry so much what everyone else talked about instead.

i have been all over the place: california (santa cruz for an extended period of time) europe; luxemburg, germany, czechoslovakia (when it was still a single country) austria, italy, the netherlands, england, iceland and spain. each of those places has contributed to the soul that now types these words. i finally moved back into my fathers house (my mother died unexpectedly when i was 17 - but thats a whole other email) and he eventually became ill, as age is wont to do to a person. i took care of him for some time, several years, until he became to ill and suffered too much dementia too be left alone during the day, then we (me and my siblings) arranged for him to go into constant care at the VA nursing home in vineland. he died six months later. after that i stayed on at the old house for a while then sold it. moved from pitman, where i lived with my dad, to williamstown, where i had previously grown up until i was 18.

i bought a trailer and moved onto the back 3 acres of my brothers property. where i am still located today. i enjoy the quiet country atmosphere we have here on the very edge of the pine barrens and my semi-subsitance lifestyle. however, in the winter of 05 spring of 06 i suffered a sort of nervous breakdown. i had previously had some rather intense experiences with panic attacks and anxiety and they finally came to a head around this time. at the worst point i was unable to leave the house (trailer and surrounding yard) at all. i was about to go to the emergency room because i was convinced i was dying. but instead i called the mental health hotline in the phone book. interestingly enough they directed me properly and i have received appropriate attention and have been recovering from this sensory overload since around march of 06. happily, i am back to reality but still have some difficulties with too much social/sensory stimulation. i believe that 3000 years ago i might have been a respected shaman for having gone through this experience and resurfaced from the other side. instead in 2007 i am considered a semi-recovered mentally ill person. hows that for progress? in fact - i do not nescessarily know what the words mentally ii mean. i think some people are just more or less sensitive to their surroundings and experiences, feel them and experience them more or less fully - more or less filtered. without any filters whatsoever everyone would be completely insane. we are constantly filtering out things, sounds, sights, all sorts of sensations and experiences. some people's filters are more or less strict. in this day and age of disjointed techno solitude people who have less of a filter between themselves and the fullness of reality are considered disabled in some way. in the distant past they would have been considered super-able, at least i believe so.

at any rate, that is not how i would describe myself. if i needed to make an incomplete label for myself i would say i am a gen-x-semi-heretical-christian (needs to be defined)-of-the-eastern persuasion-homo-american-who-experiences-the-world- primarily-as-an-act-of-artistic-expression-and- wonderment-and-waits-and-prays-for-the-day-that-the- beast-of-consumerism-that-whore-of-babylon-passes- and-the-eternal-kingdom-finds-its-place-in-my-heart. i wonder if that makes any sense to you? i think it might. thats why i answered your message.

oh, wait, im not all goody two shoes mystico shaman. i worked a corporate cubicle jockey job for a couple years. i was involved in the adult industry (since child labor laws what industry isn't adult - but - that's beside the point) for a bit. i was an angry hedonist who hated God for a few years. i've inebriated myself with several different psycho-pharmo-active-substances. i dunno what else? have i scared you away yet? in addition to all of this my main hobbies are reading and researching various esoteric/spiritual/conspiritorial theories/facts, gardening and raising chickens from eggs in an incubator. what do you think? where and what are you right now? most sincerely, matty

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post script - this was written some time ago - since then i no longer live in a place that is conducive to raising baby chicks, and my panic and agoraphobia has eased off a bit - sort of plateaued last year some time. other than that most is still accurate :)