Hello.

And welcome to the mouse-car moment.

My name is Ryan Matera and I am an author residing on the eastern brink of the Allegheny Plateau in the Kanawha River Valley of central West Virginia.

This is my substack.

What’s inside.

The mouse-car moment is a blend of personal essays, journalism and cultural reviews, and fiction from an author who has lived many lives in his twenty-six years.

My goal here, and with all my writing, is to put prose to the very particular concoction that is the contemporary mind. We live in a surprising moment, a chaotic and fascinating moment, one where it is a constant struggle to determine what is real and important and what will dissipate at the first slight breeze.

Our art is scattered, our values are shifting and our science is unintuitive, is increasingly driving wedges between what seems right and what is actually true.

This is my attempt to put it to words.

Enjoy.