i'm still trying so hard to get it all out on the table. for her sake, and also for mine, i've crashed through the boundaries of fear and guilt, but there are so many layers and angles to approach and break through. letting her know me and hoping to better understand myself is going to take a long time.
i want to start that i have never been treated this well or this honestly in my entire life. i have to admit that i probably brought a lot of my misfortune on myself, because i've never really been grateful for anything. BUT, on a lonely night like tonight, for the first time... i'm working on being thankful.
life has really taken a turn for the better. in the past i was successful at somehow anesthetizing any good moment coming my way with booze or drug, and therefore disfiguring it into some totem to the agony i faced growing up. "nothing is ever right" or "this always happens to me" or "i'll never be happy" always whined out and could only be forgotten with raging drink or careless living. maybe it has a lot to do with why i am so empty of words lately. i don't know the language of happiness. smiling is all i can do.
all that has been going on between us lately has brought about the realization that i can't be doing this just for her. i approached this relationship from the start with a calm acceptance that i would not try to control her, and that i'd rather break up and let her live free and happy than suffocate her freedom. maybe it's a defense mechanism, but i just don't want to abuse the love she gives so freely. it's something i have done in the past. but also, there's a side of me that is so fearful of getting hurt and fucked up over it that i'm so ready to cut loose if anything ever spins in the direction of pain or jealousy. wherever our story takes us, i don't want to get into some pattern of anger or control. she got that from Phil, and I've been that typical mold of an asshole in the past. no one deserves it.
i have hurt women in the past because i chose to be weak and parasitic instead of strong and accepting. if i am ever going to be a worthy man i'll have to develop some better solidarity, and not just some haphazard luck that carries me from one beneficial situation to another. it is true that i have done many things in my life, but i typically am not a good closer. i never really left anything on my own terms. something was alway skewed and short-changed. i'm trying to grow into a position where i can define my own identity. hopefully the love i have for this girl and a good directed sense of what i want to do will help me keep her along for the ride with me. either way, whether in love or just loving me... i need to at least keep this woman in the stands cheering for me. doing anything that would make her proud is a great motivation.
but anyways, back to the happiness at hand... i love this beautiful woman, Kaitlyn Ubaldini (a last name she dared me to guess the first time i met her with the promise of her getting naked if i got it right [haha!!!]). and though i hate trying to sleep without her by my side, i need these moments to get my head right. i need to be able to pull back and see how she loves me for who i am, despite my failings as a person. i need some time to see that i am only inventing the current chaos and drama for myself, in my mind, to be worried for the sake of worrying. it's all i've ever been programmed to do. and though the nights spent alone are sometimes tough, i'm glad it's re-affirming that i'm growing, and moving in the right direction. maybe not all hope is lost on me.
Kaitlyn, what can i say? you were right. there's more to me than the partyboy surface. maybe there's a success story to be had in all of this. and i thought i was just a wandering drunk doomed to stumble about the Earth. believe me, i am glad i dragged you up those stairs and pushed you up against that wall. i'm glad you call me your's. i'm glad you wait for these malformed words to come out, and that you're dying to read them. Just know that I love you so much, even as I am trying to define that sometimes overused, four-letter word. I can't wait to have you back in my arms and hold you while you sleep. I hope these words somehow find you while you dream.
I Love You,
Johnny
Friday, December 26, 2008
homage to eloquent resplendence
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
by: T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question....
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . . . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the doors of silent seas.
. . . . . . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers.
Stretched on on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all."
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the
floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."
. . . . . . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
by: T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question....
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . . . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the doors of silent seas.
. . . . . . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers.
Stretched on on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all."
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the
floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."
. . . . . . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Suicide is what Murder does.
I can't trust my eyes. I definitely can't trust a text message anymore.
“I can't wait 2 c u”, she texts me.
I am drinking at a bar for the first time in 6 months. A bar handpicked for the dysfunctional quality of its patrons. I walked in here quickly scanning the people inside, and seeing no one I knew sat down. It has been years since I walked into this bar, but the skinny crack-whore bartender still remembers my drink order. She leans into a beer cooler and bends her tiny frame revealing a whole set of bad tattoos. Chinese symbols, black ink flowers, ass crack tattoo, low budget Celtic/tribal shit. No fucking class or ingenuity, just a bunch of tats chosen from the local ink shop's display wall.
She places a cold Miller and a shot of Yukon down in front of me, and I drop a single, low-denomination bill to cover two drinks. I won't need what's left in my wallet. I spent most of what I had left paying back those final bills, and making sure I overspent on the last Christmas gifts I would buy for these people who claimed to love me.
I feel the burn of the shot as it goes down and wash it away with a pull from my beer bottle. It has been so long, but it still goes down easily and smooth. But, I really don't know why I am here. This was an unnecessary stop in my night. I don't need to be numbed further, because there is nothing left that can hurt me. All I can remember is my mistakes, but I'll blame it on her.
Last night I finally cried my final tears for her. It took so much to realize how I have tried to control her, and I can only try to make excuses as to why. In my past I spent many nights in a barstool trying to numb some distant, but exaggerated pain that I let consume my being until it was my life. I have only ever known how to be selfish and ridiculously self-absorbed. I have made my pain to be the only pain that matters, and I force it to matter more than any love or faith a well-adjusted, good-natured person can have for me. I am unloved because I haven't cared enough to let another person matter to me. I have contemplated suicide over and over because of that same selfishness, but my foolhardy belief in self-preservation has never let me hold a loaded weapon to my own head. Instead, I just drink, my failing liver and poor mentality blacking out and drowning until I come up breathing again in the morning. I understand now that I won't feel the tomorrow’s morning.
She helped bring me out of that insanity. I had found a girl that was special enough to lay myself down for, and to try and be a better person. In the beginning it was easy to say to her, “You make me want to be a better man”, and really mean it. I stopped drinking, but then wondered if the insanity of my life past had some how caught up to me. Maybe I was cursed to hurt her, and I wasn't sure exactly how, but I felt some pain inflicted by me would surely come. That pain came and went, but soon I won't have to live with the remembrance.
I started to wonder if I had contracted some STD, and while getting to know her I found out she had lost an aunt to the big one, HIV. I have had a few nights out fucking with the wrong kinds of women. The types that would do anything for a little blow or a few free drinks. I knew I wasn't the only person in the world trying to get fucked up enough to fuck anything available, and I took advantage of any woman who showed weakness and the slight interest in a good fuck. I'd fuck friend's ex-girlfriends, ex-friend's current girlfriends, and anything in-between. Now deep inside I wondered if it was the disease's turn to fuck me for the rest of my life, and when I watched her while she slept I could only dread the silent killer sent for me would take her down in the crossfire. I lost much more than sleep while trying to attain my sobriety.
Now I am back in the Devil's playground. Any watering hole in the world is designed for one thing: getting people disoriented enough to fuck. As I finish off my first drink another beer and shot hit the bar to replace it. This place has its claws dug into me again. It seems I can't find a lover without being in these places first. I'm one-dimensional when it comes to love, though my few friends claim I am one of the smartest people they know, and I cannot understand it. Love has nothing to do with logic, but it is probably the greatest political battle being fought. In so many ways love is demonstrated in a violent dictatorship, or a subversive communism, or maybe some self-deprecating, selfless socialism. I don't believe any system is right, wrong, or complete, but I give in to it for no reason at all other than a promise I have heard that love is the most amazing thing in the world... to live without it is not to live. So I submitted, but love let me go.
The strings of one-night stands and submitting to “friends with benefits” situations are part of the reason I'm here. I've gone out with four different women in the past two months, but all the while I was only thinking of her. Sure, you could say they were more “my type”, and no one can deny that they were all hot for a fuck, but those things didn't matter. They didn't matter while we were together either, but I couldn't do enough to make her trust me. I had too much in my past. Now I cannot hold a conversation with pure intentions with any woman. They smell the piece of shit I am from the start, and unless they are as fucked up in the head as I am, there is no connection that will ever be made. But I can't even find a socially and sexually distorted freak to hear me out anymore. I am purely alone, but that loneliness ends tonight.
No woman will touch me now. I still have the same past with its regrets, and I understand that I am absolutely poor at romancing a woman. I can't even look at an interested woman without being focused on my shame and probably the million reasons she has to leave me before she's even met me. My past loves would somehow find me and happen so naturally, or better yet accidentally... going back, I don't think I ever deserved one woman, but she was the one.
You could meet her once and know how I fell in love with her. She was so pretty it now hurts me to look at her. She had an amazing laugh, one that instantly made you feel like you had known her your whole life. She could put you at ease and make you feel better no matter how tough your day was with just a smile, and the way she wrapped herself around you when you held her in your arms made you feel like you were the one that would complete her life, always and forever.
That time is gone now. I haven't felt complete in a while. Before her I had lived a life of indignant solitude, but I was rabidly happy in it. I was a much more than dysfunctional in the way that serial rapist is more than a pervert. I drank seven nights a week if my wallet could afford it. I jumped from one person's spare bedroom to another person's living room couch until I had nowhere else to go but home to parents who just wouldn't let me sleep on the street. Even then I spent my nights doing coke in dirty bar bathrooms, swerving through ten blocks of traffic to get home from a bar, outrunning SEPTA trains at railroad crossings, and blocking my phone number to harass the few unfortunate women who gave me their phone numbers while piss drunk in the middle of the night.
I don't know what to think as I reflect back on those days, but I'll sit here and take another pull off a cold Miller and fumble around for my smokes. I stick a butt in my mouth and attempt several times to spark up a lighter, but I catch my own eyes looking at me in the mirror across the back wall of the bar. My face looks so different than I remember it. I can't remember how long it has been since I smiled or cried or anything. My face has transformed into a ghost of myself. I look like someone who has lost everything, including the will to die. I am the logical explanation to the product of a man that has gone through this particular set of mistakes, all the while going through counseling and being psycho-medicated.
And now, I'm actually looking for someone to fuck while I float my misery in a bottle. I scan the bar again for easy targets, but my selection ranges from train station, skanky d'ebutantes to fall down drunk, divorced, upper class MILFs. There are at least 3 women in here that I could take home tonight, though a sober version of me would never want to, but looking back in the mirror I see a person I never wanted to be. I feel absolutely disgusted with myself, and even more so as I realize that I am giving the blankest expression at myself despite my anger. I see a few people reflections apparently looking right at me and giving me awful smiles with black eyes peering from within their skulls. I look around the room and no one seems to see me. A person only two seats to my right turns towards me but apparently peers straight through me. I gesture my hands in front of their face, but no emotion or any other distinct reaction comes of it. This is not a paradise, but a personal Hell Satan handpicked for me. I can't get away from what seems to be my destined eternity of Hell, but I can get out of this stool and leave. I have plans to fulfill, and tonight is my date with destiny…
…Opening the car door and placing the keys in the ignition I slump back into my seat. I close my eyes with my hand on the keys not turning the engine over. Instead I'm leaning my head on my forearm that is across the top of the wheel. When I parked I made sure I was within perfect sight of the stations schedule clock. Looking up to the clock I read, “10:13 - ON TIME”, and I have 5 minutes to go.
I fire up the engine on my old Chevy truck. No usual hesitation from the starter this time, and I pull out on to the street and prepare to spin the block. I turn off the radio in my truck, but I can still hear her laughing at me. That same laugh that I could hear from rooms away, the laughter that made me feel eternally part of her club, now churned up anger and bile from the pit of my stomach. Those eyes that used to shine peace into my life now glared at me without hope, and I cannot bear to be seen with those eyes, but it is better than not being seen at all. There is no faith or love stored up for me anywhere within the eyes of the people around me. After tonight I will never see hateful, unloving eyes look on me again. Oh they'll be looking down on me in a new way all right, but hopefully they can turn then their view on themselves. No one heard my screams in the past, but maybe they'll fully understand my silence.
I come to the stoplight at Broad and Main. I have one more turn still, but this terrible light is always red. I look around into all the cars stopped with me, but not one face turns to see me. People on cell phones talking with overly animated faces. There is a small Mexican child sleeping with her face pressed into the window. Some angry man listens to metal music while staring down the light to change, and revs his Dodge's engine. This light has never felt so long, and I have never had so much time to think here. I pull a cigarette out of the pack with my teeth, and just as I spark the flame red the signal changes. GREEN.
Taking a drag I shift and turn one last time. There's no traffic coming up behind, and surprisingly there's not an oncoming car in sight. Casualties could actually be low at this time, but this is the middle of town. As I pull down my final stretch they light up in front of me: two candy cane-striped bars flash and lower across my path. Now, there comes two alternating lights from the steel mass just coming into sight. I can faintly hear the groaning horn warn of it's advancing. I lock both doors and take a drag. I want to scream out to the loneliness that has put me here, but it is loneliness that will let me go without a whisper.
I push the gas go between the barriers. I feel two thuds beneath me, and stop. I kick the e-brake into the floor. The release lever broke almost a year ago, but I’d always just park in gear. I shift into neutral and the engine bogs nearly shutting off, but it saves itself. Leaving the vehicle on will surely bring a bigger blast, or at least I think so. The lights are approaching quickly.
A man in a station tower starts yelling out his window. He's looking down on me while screaming something over a walkie-talkie microphone. He looks me directly in my eyes and knows. His facial expressions acknowledge my intent, and I can see him mouth the words, “He's not moving, and I don’t think he will”. Running down the stairs to his outpost, he looks at the oncoming train. He scans the distance between the train, my truck, and himself while strafing away, increasing speed into a full sprint.
I can’t recall what happened inside my head at this point. Fear caused mental blackout, but it is sure that there was expression of solidarity on my face. Suicide never feels real until it’s being carried out. It is so strange how fast the idea of the process changes inside the instance of the process. Most of those who attempt suicide have never killed anyone, but instead feel dead to them self. Unknowingly, unless you have already killed someone else in cold blood, you’re going to get scared when you try to murder yourself. This grim realization never shows its face until it is eternally too late.
Instead, the supremacy of fear and self-destruction, suicide becomes a beautiful expression: the wildest statement of passion, the highly esteemed championing of death. But, being crushed by many tons of metal does not bring honor. The fact was I quit. The only decision I held strength to make was to destroy myself, and shatter the lives of so many people who would forever question the true meaning of my death. I wanted to hatefully destroy the peace in my small sphere of existence. I wanted to damage the people who had let me down and let me go. Molesting my remembrance into a scarred version of what I wanted it to be, I would perform my last rite. I would complete the cycle of misery and defeat. This felt like the only choice that I had left.
[reality sets in.]
This night never finished the way it started, and I came back to this story fantasizing that it would become a starting chapter to a novel about a lost man deciding to re-embark on the woeful journey of life, but fate has dealt me a greater story to tell. The background has to be mentioned first.
I had originally planned my own murder for the Eve of the New Year 2008. I had originally written this suicide story a few days after Turkey Day right about when my seasonal affective disorder chronically jumps into high gear. This snowballs various side-affects with being diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder (mixed-type), substance abuse, and alcoholism. My life cycle had repeated itself once again, leaving me jobless, girlfriendless, and with a very low estimation of my entire being. But this would be the year to end it all. My father died 13 years ago from a heart aneurysm on New Year’s Eve. We also shared the same birthday of January 27th. I had some base form of numerology dementia. I was now crazy enough to end it all. 13, 27, 31… part of my lottery number picks almost every week.
December 23rd, 2007. I realized I had had enough, but I was more afraid of, than prepared, for death. I admitted myself into a psychiatric hospital for the second time in my life. I didn’t know exactly what irked me most about the life I led, but I was definitely sick of living it in its current form. I needed a faster track to solve my psychiatric state with its medication woes. The current drug regimen just wasn’t working anymore, and I had abandoned or lost all real-world support that was getting me through. I needed counseling, and I needed lots of help; the help I didn’t even know how to ask for.
Unfortunately, in this period of healing, I let my ex snake her way back in as some miracle cure to my problems. Her care sustained me for the next couple of weeks, and it helped speed my hospital recovery to a mere six days, and still free to kill myself on the Eve of the New Year 2008. But suicide was no longer on my mind. What I needed was sex, and lots of it. I made sure she knew how much I appreciated her love (mainly the use of her body), and each night in the shadow of lust, I found solace in using a woman for base, primal sex.
Anyways, a few days after release from the hospital, I was headed with her to some cushy family plans for New Years Eve –something of the no-alcoholic, no suicidal risk blend. We were driving south on Walnut Street in Lansdale, PA. We were going straight past the scene of the imagined crime. Junction House Pub, on the corner of Main and Walnut Streets, a stone’s throw from Lansdale Train Station on the R5 line.
This is where my entire story was derailed. The very pub, the one who’s neon lights illuminated the dirty streets of this miserable town 24-7, 365, were off for the first time I can remember in my natural life. Just one day after I checked myself into my favorite loony bin, a fire ravage an apartment above Junction House, and crept its way down into the grimy watering hole below.
I cannot express the feelings that coerced on the drugged-up neural pathways of my mind. Even now, months later, I do not know how to explain the loss of ability to extinguish my shattered life.
Johnathan K. Johnson
c/o Helen Johnson
1060 Mearns Road
Warminster, Pa 18974
267-640-1815
267-980-2289
lyricalgraffiti@gmail.com
http://www.myspace.com/lyricalgraffiti
I would ask that my pen name be Johnny Darko or even more preferably JHNY_DRKO to grant me some anonymity due to my divulging medical history. I am a novice creative writing student. Please edit caringly to suit your needs.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Res Ipsa Loquitor
"Reality means you live until you die, the agent says. The real truth is nobody wants reality." -from SURVIVOR, by Chuck Palahniuk
It would seem more than a little obvious to most, that getting it all out there on the table in the beginning would be the most obvious way to get to know someone... but aside from the blatant truth of blatant honesty, relationships, at least for me, don't ever start out that way. Mentally, verbally, or even lyrically I am guarded and cold... and maybe the people I find attractive or find attraction to me are too much of the same, or too accepting of those traits in me. It is who I am and have been for far too long. This frustrates me to speechlessness, but maybe I'm too old to learn new tricks, and maybe it is time to accept who I am.
I may just be a bastard born from broken dreams, but I can't help but feel fine through the lies of the dying fantasies I live through each day. I cherish simple things. I treasure the few moments of uncontrollable honesty I find scattered about as time unmercifully passes by. Today, I'm sitting in the apartment of one incredible girl sipping my morning coffee while feeling amazing and refreshed, but I can't deny how much of all this is luck... I just don't deserve to be so happy.
Tomorrow is a different plague, a different self-examination. Schoolwork has its own set of demands for me, and passing a mid-term is paramount to my future and life. Seems everything is questioning me lately. The scariest thing about that is each day that passes I have less and less answers. Of all my perfervid posturing, of all my fancy words... these answers are seemingly growing more empty.
So as I sit here and type, fighting off the effects of a handful of sleeping pills taken down in a blinking LED Cuervo shotglass; drowning out the noises of screaming roommates, and letting Ray LaMontagne prophesy that "love is a poor man's food..."; all while chain-smoking my Marlboro Menthol Lights, I am comforted by only one thing... There isn't a single person alive that isn't trying to make up for lost time in some way, shape, or form.
///begin tangent.///
[woman:] Excuse me.
[man:] Excuse me.
[woman:]
Hey. Could we do that again? I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant, you know? I mean, it's like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continuously on ant auto-pilot with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient polite manner. "Here's your change." "Paper or plastic?" "Credit or debit?" "You want ketchup with that?" I don't want a straw, I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be an ant, you know?
[man:]
Yeah. Yeah, no. I don't want to be an ant either. Heh. Yeah, thanks for kind of jostling me there. I've been kind of on zombie auto-pilot lately, I don't feel like an ant in my head, but I guess I probably look like one. It's kind of like D.H. Lawrence had this idea of two people meeting on a road. And instead of just passing and glancing away, they decide to accept what he calls "the confrontation between their souls." It's like, um, freeing the brave reckless gods within us all.
[woman:]
Then it's like we have met.
///from Chapter 14 of the movie "Waking Life"///
So I am in a ranting mood. I've been living like a ghost lost in a fog, but some amazing stuff has happened to me. Met a wonderful girl, and I haven't been so content in so long a time. I was randomly violated with an anonymous gift of $100 sent via snail mail in an unmarked envelope [don't worry, it was clear of anthrax, or atleast contained an amount so trace that I haven't died from it just yet]. I have come to the knowledge that I could be going to a college to nurture my god-given talent to be a writer for less than half the price of the school I am attending, and yet graduate in the same timeline I care to spend here at DeVry. I've become aware of the level of love people have for me. I've acquired a few dedicated readers and a re-kindled spirit to quench their appetites. But... I've been comatose, confused, and quelled. I'm more unsure of my desire to succeed as a writer, but finally ready to face some impending possibility of failing as a writer.
I am tired. I have tried too long to fight these sleeping pills... but tell me what you feel about disconnected love and the distraction that life is placing in your lives. What in your life are you trying to catch up to? One more cig and it's curtains for me.
Carpe Noctum,
-J.
It would seem more than a little obvious to most, that getting it all out there on the table in the beginning would be the most obvious way to get to know someone... but aside from the blatant truth of blatant honesty, relationships, at least for me, don't ever start out that way. Mentally, verbally, or even lyrically I am guarded and cold... and maybe the people I find attractive or find attraction to me are too much of the same, or too accepting of those traits in me. It is who I am and have been for far too long. This frustrates me to speechlessness, but maybe I'm too old to learn new tricks, and maybe it is time to accept who I am.
I may just be a bastard born from broken dreams, but I can't help but feel fine through the lies of the dying fantasies I live through each day. I cherish simple things. I treasure the few moments of uncontrollable honesty I find scattered about as time unmercifully passes by. Today, I'm sitting in the apartment of one incredible girl sipping my morning coffee while feeling amazing and refreshed, but I can't deny how much of all this is luck... I just don't deserve to be so happy.
Tomorrow is a different plague, a different self-examination. Schoolwork has its own set of demands for me, and passing a mid-term is paramount to my future and life. Seems everything is questioning me lately. The scariest thing about that is each day that passes I have less and less answers. Of all my perfervid posturing, of all my fancy words... these answers are seemingly growing more empty.
So as I sit here and type, fighting off the effects of a handful of sleeping pills taken down in a blinking LED Cuervo shotglass; drowning out the noises of screaming roommates, and letting Ray LaMontagne prophesy that "love is a poor man's food..."; all while chain-smoking my Marlboro Menthol Lights, I am comforted by only one thing... There isn't a single person alive that isn't trying to make up for lost time in some way, shape, or form.
///begin tangent.///
[woman:] Excuse me.
[man:] Excuse me.
[woman:]
Hey. Could we do that again? I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant, you know? I mean, it's like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continuously on ant auto-pilot with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient polite manner. "Here's your change." "Paper or plastic?" "Credit or debit?" "You want ketchup with that?" I don't want a straw, I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be an ant, you know?
[man:]
Yeah. Yeah, no. I don't want to be an ant either. Heh. Yeah, thanks for kind of jostling me there. I've been kind of on zombie auto-pilot lately, I don't feel like an ant in my head, but I guess I probably look like one. It's kind of like D.H. Lawrence had this idea of two people meeting on a road. And instead of just passing and glancing away, they decide to accept what he calls "the confrontation between their souls." It's like, um, freeing the brave reckless gods within us all.
[woman:]
Then it's like we have met.
///from Chapter 14 of the movie "Waking Life"///
So I am in a ranting mood. I've been living like a ghost lost in a fog, but some amazing stuff has happened to me. Met a wonderful girl, and I haven't been so content in so long a time. I was randomly violated with an anonymous gift of $100 sent via snail mail in an unmarked envelope [don't worry, it was clear of anthrax, or atleast contained an amount so trace that I haven't died from it just yet]. I have come to the knowledge that I could be going to a college to nurture my god-given talent to be a writer for less than half the price of the school I am attending, and yet graduate in the same timeline I care to spend here at DeVry. I've become aware of the level of love people have for me. I've acquired a few dedicated readers and a re-kindled spirit to quench their appetites. But... I've been comatose, confused, and quelled. I'm more unsure of my desire to succeed as a writer, but finally ready to face some impending possibility of failing as a writer.
I am tired. I have tried too long to fight these sleeping pills... but tell me what you feel about disconnected love and the distraction that life is placing in your lives. What in your life are you trying to catch up to? One more cig and it's curtains for me.
Carpe Noctum,
-J.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
a night with prescription pills
I'm sitting in a worn & restless twin bed trying to filter through the echoing sounds in this terrifying hospital. It's enough that I'm freezing underneath 3 blankets, but all day, and all night, horrid sounds bounce off the four empty walls of my foreign and empty room. The attempt to discern where, or how far, the sounds come from is almost impossible.
Two voices blather incessantly interjecting gurgled monotone chuckles into the dry hospital air. Shrilly laughter & shrieking cackles are coming from within the nurses' station. Squishy rubber sole wrapped feet squish squash their pathway down linoleum floors and seem to meander between the sound of pay phones ringing and the electrical hum reverberating in these halls. And if you listen just right, you can hear the tick of the hallway clock, and like a metronome it keeps time & pace of this psychotic symphony.
Two voices blather incessantly interjecting gurgled monotone chuckles into the dry hospital air. Shrilly laughter & shrieking cackles are coming from within the nurses' station. Squishy rubber sole wrapped feet squish squash their pathway down linoleum floors and seem to meander between the sound of pay phones ringing and the electrical hum reverberating in these halls. And if you listen just right, you can hear the tick of the hallway clock, and like a metronome it keeps time & pace of this psychotic symphony.
Monday, August 25, 2008
jolene...
[..play the song here..]
Cocaine flame in my bloodstream
Sold my coat when I hit Spokane
Bought myself a hard pack of cigarettes in the early morning rain
Lately my hands they don't feel like mine
My eyes been stung with dust, I'm blind
Held you in my arms one time
Lost you just the same
Jolene
I ain't about to go straight
It's too late
I found myself face down in the ditch
Booze on my hair
Blood on my lips
A picture of you, holding a picture of me
in the pocket of my blue jeans
Still don't know what love means
Still don't know what love means
Jolene
Ah, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene
Been so long since I seen your face
or felt a part of this human race
I've been living out of this here suitcase for way too long
A man needs something he can hold onto
A nine pound hammer or a woman like you
Either one of them things will do
Jolene
I ain't about to go straight
It's too late
I found myself face down in the ditch
Booze in my hair
Blood on my lips
A picture of you, holding a picture of me
In the pocket of my blue jeans
Still don't know what love means
Still don't know what love means
Jolene
La, La, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene
La, La, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene
Cocaine flame in my bloodstream
Sold my coat when I hit Spokane
Bought myself a hard pack of cigarettes in the early morning rain
Lately my hands they don't feel like mine
My eyes been stung with dust, I'm blind
Held you in my arms one time
Lost you just the same
Jolene
I ain't about to go straight
It's too late
I found myself face down in the ditch
Booze on my hair
Blood on my lips
A picture of you, holding a picture of me
in the pocket of my blue jeans
Still don't know what love means
Still don't know what love means
Jolene
Ah, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene
Been so long since I seen your face
or felt a part of this human race
I've been living out of this here suitcase for way too long
A man needs something he can hold onto
A nine pound hammer or a woman like you
Either one of them things will do
Jolene
I ain't about to go straight
It's too late
I found myself face down in the ditch
Booze in my hair
Blood on my lips
A picture of you, holding a picture of me
In the pocket of my blue jeans
Still don't know what love means
Still don't know what love means
Jolene
La, La, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene
La, La, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene
Monday, August 18, 2008
for lovers and dreamers...
this is a monologue from the movie WAKING LIFE, and if you love discussing the meaning of dreams you should definitely watch this movie. anyways, this is something that reminds me of the difficulty of words, and also the beauty of getting them just right...
"Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration. And this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like, you know, "water." We came up with a sound for that. Or "Saber-toothed tiger right behind you." We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting, I think, is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing. What is, like, frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say "love," the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this Byzantine conduit in their brain, you know, through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable. And yet, you know, when we communicate with one another, and we feel that we've connected, and we think that we're understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it's what we live for."
"Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration. And this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like, you know, "water." We came up with a sound for that. Or "Saber-toothed tiger right behind you." We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting, I think, is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing. What is, like, frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say "love," the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this Byzantine conduit in their brain, you know, through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable. And yet, you know, when we communicate with one another, and we feel that we've connected, and we think that we're understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it's what we live for."
Choose Me
Here are the answers to your essay questions replied to in my usual, helter-skelter method:
- I have often been told things about the DHC. You come off as a nefarious band of misfits prancing about trying to capture the soul of college fun and make sure everyone gets their bite. That being said, I am enthralled at the notion that I might join your ranks and commit pleasantries while conjuring up innocuous gatherings that will be the hearty stuffing of DeVry fables to come.
- I know the DHC has a varied purpose and basically assumes the position for whatever leftovers cannot be handled by clubs and organizations the school already has in place. The members of the DHC are a mythic gateway between the imaginative, dream-seeking student and the resources to make those very dreams come true. Those dreams may be many, but I hear the DHC focuses on fulfilling the fantasies of delicious meal plan dining, inspiring events, and providing ways to beat the status quo boredom running rampant throughout housing.
- I believe toppings are not necessary if you have the proper ice cream. Ben & Jerry's crème brulee is my personal fave.
- My talents are many but my favorite is my way with words. I use my wordsmith skills to psyche people up for the best of times, and I am also pretty good at balancing out different types of charismatic people to the point where people can get along. I am constantly falling in love with the romance of a moment. So, I just like making things fun and entertaining for the masses while trying to get people to have an intimate attachment with what is going on around them. Long live the memories.
- My friends are highly interested in the upcoming ski/snowboard trip, and I would like to work with prior members in making that better this year than it ever was before. I also envision DeVry & community (meaning to include neighboring schools) nightlife events (clubs/concerts/fine dining), gaming nights (possibly Dave & Buster's), cultural trips (Art Museum, First Friday's, Ben Franklin Museum) and things of that sort. I have seen how many ideas and events that have flopped, and I have only been here a short time. My way of pulling off a better success/fail ratio is paramount to why I should be retained as a member of DHC, but until selection that method remains my secret.
- This is the easiest question for me to answer out of them all. I have planned events and worked within the planning. I am great at getting people together, and that shouldn't be the trait/talent on trail here. The one thing I hope to develop as a member of the DHC is how to make this renegade, Party Boy behavior into a fine-honed, marketable skill.
I hope that this more than answers why you should choose me. Now all this and more can be yours for the simple membership selection into the almighty DHC.
Thankfully,
Johnathan K. Johnson
"If you're good at something, never do it for free…" –The Joker
Saturday, August 2, 2008
another whispered story
*** // www.jhny-drko.blogspot.com // ***
Jim sat on a coarse, wet curb of some back alley street with no name. The rain had just let up on this sleepless, worn out industrial town.
Pulling his last American Spirit cigarette from the pack, and folding open an old copper zippo, he rubbed the flint up the shin of his jeans and sparked a flame.
Peering through the orange-red flame and first cough of wispy, exhaled smoke he saw the faces of his six tiny soldiers. Being dangerously close to the line of molotov cocktails thrilled him. An unfortunate fall of hot ash would ignite him in a kamikaze blaze of death.
Playing with fire is what he did best. He did nine months in county with no furlough, the last three months an extension for punching some fag and breaking his nose.
He caught the fag (whom we will call Denny so I can stop using homophobic connotations such as queer, Nancy, or butt pirate) biting his lip while giving him longing, inviting glances and a quick nod & wink. Looking downward, a rule the straight inmates in prison would never be caught breaking in the showers, he saw Denny massaging a full, throbbing hard-on at a pace that mimicked slow, passionate love.
Raging, as suds burned in his eyes, he crossed the shower. Taking slow, deliberate steps across the tiled, grimy floor he went to Denny. The fag (sorry, had to do it) let go of his cock with the belief that his current fantasy was coming true. Denny stretched out his arms in hopeful embrace with his forbidden love. The six other inmates from gen. pop. now breaking from their 3 minute shower were making various convulsions of repulsion. Some even wanted to shout for the guard at either end of the shower to come and save them from the gay cowboy romance unfolding before their eyes.
Denny never saw the flash of the fist. The loud slap of crumpled flesh hitting the wet shower floor stung the eardrum. Sighs of relief and the stomping clap of guards' boots on wet tile rushed through the room.
Grappled simultaneously in full nelson and chokehold, the guards dragged Jim away. Looking back, he saw the fallen queer's body laying motionless in the corner. Blood leaked from Denny's nose onto the floor and pooled as if it were a gunshot.
The guards were hauling him off to the nearest seclusion room, and the only was Jim could gauge where he was while being dragged off was to feel what flooring slid beneath his ankles and heels. First, the tiled shower floor, then the rough concrete of an adjacent hallway into his calloused flesh. Finally, a fine polished concrete floor the inmates were responsible for waxing at least once a week. Various spheres of light reflected and overlapped on the floor. Halogen bulbs reflected up off the floor like distant orbs of flickering ball lightning cast their dim haze. This was the far side of the block reserved for the worst-tempered assholes of the prison, and being hauled through naked, openly paraded in his birthday suit, invited shouts and whistles of public humiliation. I said I'd try not to use them, so I'll just say that suddenly the cell block joined in assaulting Jim as the new gay in town. It was an archaic choir with people singing and overlapping their homophobic solos in operatic fashion.
As the door opened and Jim was pushed into the isolation cell he finally realized his own throbbing hard-on. To everyone, Jim was the latest queer to get dragged out of the showers.
(Thank you to my friend who I will refer to as Dean Martin. You're a crazy S.O.B. and we gotta chill again soon. I love hearing your tales, even if I make them way more twisted than they ever were. Try to stay out of trouble, and promise me you'll never torch a trash dumpster again, please.)
Jim sat on a coarse, wet curb of some back alley street with no name. The rain had just let up on this sleepless, worn out industrial town.
Pulling his last American Spirit cigarette from the pack, and folding open an old copper zippo, he rubbed the flint up the shin of his jeans and sparked a flame.
Peering through the orange-red flame and first cough of wispy, exhaled smoke he saw the faces of his six tiny soldiers. Being dangerously close to the line of molotov cocktails thrilled him. An unfortunate fall of hot ash would ignite him in a kamikaze blaze of death.
Playing with fire is what he did best. He did nine months in county with no furlough, the last three months an extension for punching some fag and breaking his nose.
He caught the fag (whom we will call Denny so I can stop using homophobic connotations such as queer, Nancy, or butt pirate) biting his lip while giving him longing, inviting glances and a quick nod & wink. Looking downward, a rule the straight inmates in prison would never be caught breaking in the showers, he saw Denny massaging a full, throbbing hard-on at a pace that mimicked slow, passionate love.
Raging, as suds burned in his eyes, he crossed the shower. Taking slow, deliberate steps across the tiled, grimy floor he went to Denny. The fag (sorry, had to do it) let go of his cock with the belief that his current fantasy was coming true. Denny stretched out his arms in hopeful embrace with his forbidden love. The six other inmates from gen. pop. now breaking from their 3 minute shower were making various convulsions of repulsion. Some even wanted to shout for the guard at either end of the shower to come and save them from the gay cowboy romance unfolding before their eyes.
Denny never saw the flash of the fist. The loud slap of crumpled flesh hitting the wet shower floor stung the eardrum. Sighs of relief and the stomping clap of guards' boots on wet tile rushed through the room.
Grappled simultaneously in full nelson and chokehold, the guards dragged Jim away. Looking back, he saw the fallen queer's body laying motionless in the corner. Blood leaked from Denny's nose onto the floor and pooled as if it were a gunshot.
The guards were hauling him off to the nearest seclusion room, and the only was Jim could gauge where he was while being dragged off was to feel what flooring slid beneath his ankles and heels. First, the tiled shower floor, then the rough concrete of an adjacent hallway into his calloused flesh. Finally, a fine polished concrete floor the inmates were responsible for waxing at least once a week. Various spheres of light reflected and overlapped on the floor. Halogen bulbs reflected up off the floor like distant orbs of flickering ball lightning cast their dim haze. This was the far side of the block reserved for the worst-tempered assholes of the prison, and being hauled through naked, openly paraded in his birthday suit, invited shouts and whistles of public humiliation. I said I'd try not to use them, so I'll just say that suddenly the cell block joined in assaulting Jim as the new gay in town. It was an archaic choir with people singing and overlapping their homophobic solos in operatic fashion.
As the door opened and Jim was pushed into the isolation cell he finally realized his own throbbing hard-on. To everyone, Jim was the latest queer to get dragged out of the showers.
(Thank you to my friend who I will refer to as Dean Martin. You're a crazy S.O.B. and we gotta chill again soon. I love hearing your tales, even if I make them way more twisted than they ever were. Try to stay out of trouble, and promise me you'll never torch a trash dumpster again, please.)
Friday, August 1, 2008
buy the ticket, take the ride
***// www.jhny-drko.blogspot.com //***
"You could have all the money in the world the world, and not be able to afford moments like these." -Romeo Crennel, after winning a Superbowl as an assitant coach of the New England Patriots
I have needed time to think. These past few months have brought about many decisions that I choose to make in deep secrecy, but like any writer I beg and push you to break through the code. Crack the cipher. Read these words. Enjoy a smile.
I have been enjoying a grateful audience lately, and the gaping mouths and shocked faces have given me all the absolution I have found to be necessary to continue. Maybe... just maybe, I've been holding on to all the words you've been dying to read.
Life has been pushing on in its usual, unforgiving way. I have been in a state of blind reality mixed with drunken nights and poured over rocks. My pill bottles are still shaking silent and empty. There's always more than one thought boiling in my head as I sit on the banister of my balcony smoking cigarettes. Among today's thoughts are grim realizations that I have no model examples to follow; I draw most of my self-loathing not from a jealousy of you, but from a faded spark de vie of a former John E. that I cannot reclaim; and finally a calm acceptance that even someone as pissed off and jaded as me can use a little love everyone once in a while.
Maybe I need a sunrise. I'm tired of the sunset. I've been having these Chasing Amy moments lately and I mean that in a way that has to do nothing with my supreme love and adoration for lesbians. I think that makes sense. But it's that cipher I'm laying out for you again. Good luck.
I am in need of a change of style. Maybe that, or maybe just a shift towards a reliving former version of me. I can't be stuck on some idealistic vision of perfection. I have found it. I have hunted it and there is a trophy case of mine that would make you drool and ponder one EPIC WTF. But instead I am back on the hunt for that 1 billionth percent difference in you (whoever you are) that makes you perfect to me. I'm out to break equations. Solve for johnny = r-h, if h = hopeless and r = romantic. Who says math can't be romantic? (Thank You Kumar Patel)
Anyways, time to turn in my angsty/love sucks ballads. Time to race the sun to rising at the shore. Time for that solace in sadness feeling to end. H.S.T. said to take the fucking ride. So the romantic is on board and ready to storm his newest warpath. Find me sleeping on a Jersey shoreline. I'll be dreaming while the ocean whispers me benediction to laugh and wear a fine smile on my face. The ocean will whisper to me that you are happy and to let me know I'm not forgotten. I will kiss that salty Atlantic breeze and you will know that I have never forgotten you.
I raise a toast to myself. It's healthy, for real. "To Johnny Johnson: this juice is definitely worth the squeeze."
"You could have all the money in the world the world, and not be able to afford moments like these." -Romeo Crennel, after winning a Superbowl as an assitant coach of the New England Patriots
I have needed time to think. These past few months have brought about many decisions that I choose to make in deep secrecy, but like any writer I beg and push you to break through the code. Crack the cipher. Read these words. Enjoy a smile.
I have been enjoying a grateful audience lately, and the gaping mouths and shocked faces have given me all the absolution I have found to be necessary to continue. Maybe... just maybe, I've been holding on to all the words you've been dying to read.
Life has been pushing on in its usual, unforgiving way. I have been in a state of blind reality mixed with drunken nights and poured over rocks. My pill bottles are still shaking silent and empty. There's always more than one thought boiling in my head as I sit on the banister of my balcony smoking cigarettes. Among today's thoughts are grim realizations that I have no model examples to follow; I draw most of my self-loathing not from a jealousy of you, but from a faded spark de vie of a former John E. that I cannot reclaim; and finally a calm acceptance that even someone as pissed off and jaded as me can use a little love everyone once in a while.
Maybe I need a sunrise. I'm tired of the sunset. I've been having these Chasing Amy moments lately and I mean that in a way that has to do nothing with my supreme love and adoration for lesbians. I think that makes sense. But it's that cipher I'm laying out for you again. Good luck.
I am in need of a change of style. Maybe that, or maybe just a shift towards a reliving former version of me. I can't be stuck on some idealistic vision of perfection. I have found it. I have hunted it and there is a trophy case of mine that would make you drool and ponder one EPIC WTF. But instead I am back on the hunt for that 1 billionth percent difference in you (whoever you are) that makes you perfect to me. I'm out to break equations. Solve for johnny = r-h, if h = hopeless and r = romantic. Who says math can't be romantic? (Thank You Kumar Patel)
Anyways, time to turn in my angsty/love sucks ballads. Time to race the sun to rising at the shore. Time for that solace in sadness feeling to end. H.S.T. said to take the fucking ride. So the romantic is on board and ready to storm his newest warpath. Find me sleeping on a Jersey shoreline. I'll be dreaming while the ocean whispers me benediction to laugh and wear a fine smile on my face. The ocean will whisper to me that you are happy and to let me know I'm not forgotten. I will kiss that salty Atlantic breeze and you will know that I have never forgotten you.
I raise a toast to myself. It's healthy, for real. "To Johnny Johnson: this juice is definitely worth the squeeze."
Monday, July 28, 2008
it starts with a title.
maybe it seemed that by being together, they could just forget themselves. it was more about feeling nothing than something, because too often... everything just hurt too much.
titles, it seems, are all we really have in the end.
titles, it seems, are all we really have in the end.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Epic Letdown Sky
I make wishes but am reminded that I can't honestly dream up moments that would be as priceless as the ones that happen. Tonight was miraculous despite the weather, and I had a great time surrounding myself with the people that i did.
Much love to everyone that was there tonight. Thanks for making this an amazing 4th. Thank you... now pass me the TP, and get me a drink. :P
-J.
Much love to everyone that was there tonight. Thanks for making this an amazing 4th. Thank you... now pass me the TP, and get me a drink. :P
-J.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Pharmaceutical Pains
Waking up on my apartment floor today. I'm reminded of peculiar times of first apartments and insanities forged into friendships. It is odd I know, but these are my friends... and I won't trade them for anything.
In spite of all this, I can't help but feel I'm a little outside of myself these days. The remnants of living life like that, in those drug-addled, shadowy times long past, is this body of flesh that remains scarred and tattered. I constantly challenge and test my life by the quality of my experiences and some mental lucidity to feel emotion and to remain present. It seems it takes a constant war to stay here, and wear this smile.
It is frightening feeling this detached from myself. Happiness and passion are the highs of addiction while macabre and mortality are the merely symptoms of withdrawal that I am left with when pill bottles shake silent and empty, and I am just stuck with the truth of being inhumane.
I'm just a robot. A paranoid android... still calculating incessantly, regardless how skewed the circuitry may be...
call it a cop out, but J.E.W. was on shuffle and repeat all last night, and I can't help believing this song had something to do with how I feel.
///////////////////////////////////////////////
JIMMY EAT WORLD LYRICS
"Pain"
I don't feel the way I've ever felt.
I know.
I'm gonna smile and not get worried.
I try but it shows.
Anyone can make what I have built.
And better now
Anyone can find the same white pills.
It takes my pain away.
[Chorus]
It's a lie. A kiss with open eyes
And she's not breathing back.
Anything but bother me.
(It takes my pain away)
Nevermind these are hurried times.
Oh oh oh
I can't let it bother me.
I never thought I'd walk away from you.
I did.
But it's a false sense of accomplishment.
Every time I quit
Anyone can see my every flaw.
It isn't hard.
Anyone can say they're above this all.
It takes my pain away.
[Chorus]
I can't let it bother me.
[Guitar Solo]
It takes my pain away.
[Chorus]
Takes my pain
Takes my pain
Takes my pain
Takes my pain away
In spite of all this, I can't help but feel I'm a little outside of myself these days. The remnants of living life like that, in those drug-addled, shadowy times long past, is this body of flesh that remains scarred and tattered. I constantly challenge and test my life by the quality of my experiences and some mental lucidity to feel emotion and to remain present. It seems it takes a constant war to stay here, and wear this smile.
It is frightening feeling this detached from myself. Happiness and passion are the highs of addiction while macabre and mortality are the merely symptoms of withdrawal that I am left with when pill bottles shake silent and empty, and I am just stuck with the truth of being inhumane.
I'm just a robot. A paranoid android... still calculating incessantly, regardless how skewed the circuitry may be...
call it a cop out, but J.E.W. was on shuffle and repeat all last night, and I can't help believing this song had something to do with how I feel.
///////////////////////////////////////////////
JIMMY EAT WORLD LYRICS
"Pain"
I don't feel the way I've ever felt.
I know.
I'm gonna smile and not get worried.
I try but it shows.
Anyone can make what I have built.
And better now
Anyone can find the same white pills.
It takes my pain away.
[Chorus]
It's a lie. A kiss with open eyes
And she's not breathing back.
Anything but bother me.
(It takes my pain away)
Nevermind these are hurried times.
Oh oh oh
I can't let it bother me.
I never thought I'd walk away from you.
I did.
But it's a false sense of accomplishment.
Every time I quit
Anyone can see my every flaw.
It isn't hard.
Anyone can say they're above this all.
It takes my pain away.
[Chorus]
I can't let it bother me.
[Guitar Solo]
It takes my pain away.
[Chorus]
Takes my pain
Takes my pain
Takes my pain
Takes my pain away
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
things that can't go unsaid.
you provided me with some great times and you are a person that i wish i had the right to dig into the very core of. maybe that feeling isn't reciprocal... but i just want to let you know that at the core of it all i have no wrath or guilt towards you. i'm here if you need a friend, and i'm here if you need an ear, but i know where the line is drawn, and i'm always going to be behind my side of it.
call it running away... call it distant admiration. you know how to find me... i am just going to let it all linger on the notes of those songs that make up the soundtrack of life. mix, sample, and replay to your liking.
"five minutes, breasts."
-J
call it running away... call it distant admiration. you know how to find me... i am just going to let it all linger on the notes of those songs that make up the soundtrack of life. mix, sample, and replay to your liking.
"five minutes, breasts."
-J
Monday, June 23, 2008
in love with retribution
i think i fell in love with getting even right about the time the people around me started viewing me as nothing more than a tool.
i'm an apparatus or primitive device used to fill basic need then passed on.
i'm simply used and re-used.
i'm the bounce in a rebound.
fuck it. get even.
i'm an apparatus or primitive device used to fill basic need then passed on.
i'm simply used and re-used.
i'm the bounce in a rebound.
fuck it. get even.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Lover I Don't Have to Love
I picked you out of a crowd and talked to you
I said I liked your shoes
You said, "Thanks, can I follow you?"
So it's up the stairs and out of view
No prying eyes
I poured some wine
I asked your name, you asked the time
Now it's two o'clock
The club is closed
We're up the block
Your hands on me; Pressing hard against your jeans
Your tongue in my mouth, trying to keep the words from coming out
You didn't care to know who else may have been you before
I want a lover I don't have to love
I want a girl who's too sad to give a fuck
Where's the kid with the chemicals?
I thought he said to meet him here but I'm not sure
I've got the money if you've got the time
You said it feels good
I said, "I'll give it a try."
Then my mind went dark
We both forgot where your car was parked
Let's just take the train
I'll meet up with the band in the morning
Bad actors with bad habits
Some sad singers they just play tragic
And the phone's ringing and the van's leaving
Let's just keep touching; let's just keep... keep singing...
I want a lover I don't have to love
I want a boy who's so drunk he doesn't talk
Where's the kid with the chemicals?
I've got a hunger and I can't seem to get full
I need some meaning I can memorize
The kind I have always seems to slip my mind
But you, but you...
You write such pretty words
But life's no storybook
Love's an excuse to get hurt
And to hurt.
Do you like to hurt?
I do, I do
Then hurt me... [x10]
by Bright Eyes
I said I liked your shoes
You said, "Thanks, can I follow you?"
So it's up the stairs and out of view
No prying eyes
I poured some wine
I asked your name, you asked the time
Now it's two o'clock
The club is closed
We're up the block
Your hands on me; Pressing hard against your jeans
Your tongue in my mouth, trying to keep the words from coming out
You didn't care to know who else may have been you before
I want a lover I don't have to love
I want a girl who's too sad to give a fuck
Where's the kid with the chemicals?
I thought he said to meet him here but I'm not sure
I've got the money if you've got the time
You said it feels good
I said, "I'll give it a try."
Then my mind went dark
We both forgot where your car was parked
Let's just take the train
I'll meet up with the band in the morning
Bad actors with bad habits
Some sad singers they just play tragic
And the phone's ringing and the van's leaving
Let's just keep touching; let's just keep... keep singing...
I want a lover I don't have to love
I want a boy who's so drunk he doesn't talk
Where's the kid with the chemicals?
I've got a hunger and I can't seem to get full
I need some meaning I can memorize
The kind I have always seems to slip my mind
But you, but you...
You write such pretty words
But life's no storybook
Love's an excuse to get hurt
And to hurt.
Do you like to hurt?
I do, I do
Then hurt me... [x10]
by Bright Eyes
"A Song" from the Driveby Profanities
From vanities that scream of the inconsistent
to the fear in your sweat
I'm engraving enemies
into flesh
Vanities lie
Honesty dies
there's just this song
Euthanasia's overdose
prescribed madness
from crib to coffin
there's just this song
We are all too kind and clever
too kind
to subdue the lies
we gotta lie
Too perfect
to cause no harm
to be a suicide
without a bomb.
Unto perfection
we exercise our charm
Vanities lie
Honesty dies
there's just this song
Euthanasia's overdose
prescribed madness
from crib to coffin
there's just this song
All around
in this life
people are dying
We avert our eyes
There can be no crying
every chance and pleasure
merely symptomatic of dying
we march along
in the fear of sweat
no matter how long the time-line
is it worth the trying?
to the fear in your sweat
I'm engraving enemies
into flesh
Vanities lie
Honesty dies
there's just this song
Euthanasia's overdose
prescribed madness
from crib to coffin
there's just this song
We are all too kind and clever
too kind
to subdue the lies
we gotta lie
Too perfect
to cause no harm
to be a suicide
without a bomb.
Unto perfection
we exercise our charm
Vanities lie
Honesty dies
there's just this song
Euthanasia's overdose
prescribed madness
from crib to coffin
there's just this song
All around
in this life
people are dying
We avert our eyes
There can be no crying
every chance and pleasure
merely symptomatic of dying
we march along
in the fear of sweat
no matter how long the time-line
is it worth the trying?
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Staring down the barrel...
It is a disaster for me to approach a coffin, but Saturday it happens again. I am absolutely terrified, but I know it can't be ignored. I can't even begin to explain how much gut-wrenching pain is churning up inside of me. I don't know where it all is coming from. Get ready for some amazing waterworks.
"unfortunately EASY has no idea what to do with love."
I want to
I want to be someone else or I'll explode
Floating upon this surface for the birds
The birds
The birds
You want me?
Fucking well come and find me
I'll be waiting
With a gun and a pack of sandwiches
And nothing
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing
You want me?
Well come on and break the door down
You want me?
Fucking come on and break the door down
I'm ready
I'm ready
I'm ready
I'm ready
I'm ready
I'm ready
"Talk Show Host" - Radiohead
I want to be someone else or I'll explode
Floating upon this surface for the birds
The birds
The birds
You want me?
Fucking well come and find me
I'll be waiting
With a gun and a pack of sandwiches
And nothing
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing
You want me?
Well come on and break the door down
You want me?
Fucking come on and break the door down
I'm ready
I'm ready
I'm ready
I'm ready
I'm ready
I'm ready
"Talk Show Host" - Radiohead
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Ethereal Dreams
This is the product that a few semi-normal, non-medically induced nights of sleep: quality dreams.
I love the hard-to-pin feature of most of my dreams. I love their ethereal aspect, and how through most mundane moments of my days I am constantly visited with memories of a more perfect life - a life lived fully in a world of dreams.
Last night's dream life was filled with great conversation with people I miss and those I see daily. Whispers from my slumber still visit me now, and I'm embracing it fully.
Medication is a cruel monster, and this illness I battle doesn't fight fairly. I miss losing myself in the insanity of romance. I miss... so much.
But, this insomnia has to end. I can't live like this forever. I don't like the choices laid out before me.
I love the hard-to-pin feature of most of my dreams. I love their ethereal aspect, and how through most mundane moments of my days I am constantly visited with memories of a more perfect life - a life lived fully in a world of dreams.
Last night's dream life was filled with great conversation with people I miss and those I see daily. Whispers from my slumber still visit me now, and I'm embracing it fully.
Medication is a cruel monster, and this illness I battle doesn't fight fairly. I miss losing myself in the insanity of romance. I miss... so much.
But, this insomnia has to end. I can't live like this forever. I don't like the choices laid out before me.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Fatherless Day
Somewhere in North Carolina my father's body eternally rests. One of those military cemeteries where all the headstones are simple and pure white. I haven't seen that grave site since I was 13, on the day he was buried. There is a part of me left there that I never went back to recover.
Invitation Only
It's another night ended with watching the sunrise. I stay awake through the meaningless moments that would usually be heavy with meaningful dreams. I write and read the limitless volumes of life's experience without being too sure of the importance of any of that...
Identity has been an evasive concept. I wonder where I belong. I obviously don't belong in a place where I can be left to my own devices. I obviously don't belong in a place where I matter at all.
Its an interesting whirlwind of emotions... this life presents so many questions and nothing but vacuum silence instead of complete answers.
This is the true meaning of watching a rising sun... It's when you don't belong in your own life. It's when you're afraid of dreaming. It's when solitude and destruction are your truest friends.
Identity has been an evasive concept. I wonder where I belong. I obviously don't belong in a place where I can be left to my own devices. I obviously don't belong in a place where I matter at all.
Its an interesting whirlwind of emotions... this life presents so many questions and nothing but vacuum silence instead of complete answers.
This is the true meaning of watching a rising sun... It's when you don't belong in your own life. It's when you're afraid of dreaming. It's when solitude and destruction are your truest friends.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Confession Criteria
It's tough to understand the way people really feel about you without putting it all out on the line.
It's tough to act human when you're stuck in a hurricane cloud of desire.
It's impossible to act correctly when you shy away from the truth in a storm.
It's tough to act human when you're stuck in a hurricane cloud of desire.
It's impossible to act correctly when you shy away from the truth in a storm.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Bloody Towels and Razorblades...
I'm going to be a naked guy wearing socks for a while. Black socks that don't show blood stains. i just need to get away from all this and go...
...into the bathroom with a locked door.
...into the bathroom with a locked door.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Tanning Was Never So Easy.
I have been in a weird funk lately, though most can hardly tell. There is a general sense of upheaval around campus, and it betrays my sense of happiness and wonder that I sought out by coming to student housing. This particular volatile state brought about by the questions of changing semesters has been a little peculiar and I feel a certain sense of numbness as I try to pass through yet another gauntlet unscathed. Mentally, I have been been preparing and working for emotional and financial stability, but it concerns and hurts me to see so many people around me going through some painful motions and the uncertainty of what lies ahead for them. I yearn to see good things happen to the people around me, and that all these wishes & lessons, big or small, would just conjure themselves into existence.
This brings me back to a mindset that I swore I would adopt, but my preconditioned mind keeps trying to sway me away from. I have learned and understood that Life just is... It cannot be practiced for, and no set of rules will ever carry you through without adaptation. But, I have always been a mysteriously calculating person, often nervous and non-conformist. I don't like accepting things with the risk entailed, and I always try to do the things that improve my shot with every hand I get dealt in life. Often though, I get stuck in some state where I live a life of inaction, because I just won't risk a thing on the gamble/crap shot odds of anything that is available to me. Sitting inside my head, I often condemn myself to the "situational laboratory" of life where I freak out about all the impending doom life seems to hold for us all... some kind of inevitable personal Hell that leaves us trapped with the worst of our fears.
This is more a cry for me to just live it. Fuck uncertainty! fuck my head and its uncontrollable periods of indifference and insanity. I've bought and punched my ticket... time to take the ride. I'm just calling myself out here. I need to get out there into my own wild carnival of life.
-J.
gotta cut loses while they're simple and low.
This brings me back to a mindset that I swore I would adopt, but my preconditioned mind keeps trying to sway me away from. I have learned and understood that Life just is... It cannot be practiced for, and no set of rules will ever carry you through without adaptation. But, I have always been a mysteriously calculating person, often nervous and non-conformist. I don't like accepting things with the risk entailed, and I always try to do the things that improve my shot with every hand I get dealt in life. Often though, I get stuck in some state where I live a life of inaction, because I just won't risk a thing on the gamble/crap shot odds of anything that is available to me. Sitting inside my head, I often condemn myself to the "situational laboratory" of life where I freak out about all the impending doom life seems to hold for us all... some kind of inevitable personal Hell that leaves us trapped with the worst of our fears.
This is more a cry for me to just live it. Fuck uncertainty! fuck my head and its uncontrollable periods of indifference and insanity. I've bought and punched my ticket... time to take the ride. I'm just calling myself out here. I need to get out there into my own wild carnival of life.
-J.
gotta cut loses while they're simple and low.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Horoscopes by Adam Sandler
Aquarius (Jan 23 - Feb 22) - You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive. You lie a great deal. You make the same mistakes repeatedly because you are stupid. Everyone thinks you are a fucking jerk.
Pisces (Feb 23 - Mar 22) - You are a pioneer type and think most people are dickheads. You are quick to reprimand, impatient, and full of advice. You do nothing but piss-off everyone you come in contact with. You are a prick.
Aries (Mar 23 - April 22) - You have a wild imagination and often think you are being followed by the FBI or CIA. You have minor influence on your friends and people resent you for flaunting your power. You lack confidence and are a general dipshit.
Taurus (April 23 - May 22) - You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged determination and work like hell. Most people think you are stubborn and bullheaded. You are nothing but a goddamned communist.
Gemini (May 23 - June 22) - You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you because you are bisexual. You are inclined to expect too much for too little. This means you are a cheap bastard. Geminis are notorious for thriving on incest.
Cancer (June 23 - July 22) - You are sympathetic and understanding of other peoples problems, which makes you a sucker. You are always putting things off. That is why you will always be on welfare and wont be worth a shit. Everyone in prison is a Cancer.
Leo (July 23 - Aug 22) - You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you are an idiot. Most Leos are bullies. You are vain and cannot tolerate criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people are thieving motherfuckers and enjoy masturbation more than sex.
Virgo (Aug 23 - Sept 22) - You are the logical type and hate disorder. Your shit-picking attitude is sickening to your friends and co-workers. You are cold and unemotional and often fall asleep while fucking. Virgos make good bus drivers and pimps.
Libra (Sept 23 - Oct 22) - You are the artistic type and have a difficult time dealing with reality. Chances for employment and monetary gain are nil. Most Libra women are whores. All Libras die of venereal disease.
Scorpio (Oct 23 - Nov 22) - You are the worst of the lot. You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You shall achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of ethics. You are the perfect son-of-a-bitch. Most Scorpios are murdered.
Sagittarius (Nov 23 - Dec 22) - You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless tendency to rely on your luck since you have no talent. You are a worthless piece of shit.
Capricorn (Dec 23 - Jan 22) - You are conservative and afraid of taking risks. You are basically chickenshit. There has never been a Capricorn of any importance.
Pisces (Feb 23 - Mar 22) - You are a pioneer type and think most people are dickheads. You are quick to reprimand, impatient, and full of advice. You do nothing but piss-off everyone you come in contact with. You are a prick.
Aries (Mar 23 - April 22) - You have a wild imagination and often think you are being followed by the FBI or CIA. You have minor influence on your friends and people resent you for flaunting your power. You lack confidence and are a general dipshit.
Taurus (April 23 - May 22) - You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged determination and work like hell. Most people think you are stubborn and bullheaded. You are nothing but a goddamned communist.
Gemini (May 23 - June 22) - You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you because you are bisexual. You are inclined to expect too much for too little. This means you are a cheap bastard. Geminis are notorious for thriving on incest.
Cancer (June 23 - July 22) - You are sympathetic and understanding of other peoples problems, which makes you a sucker. You are always putting things off. That is why you will always be on welfare and wont be worth a shit. Everyone in prison is a Cancer.
Leo (July 23 - Aug 22) - You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you are an idiot. Most Leos are bullies. You are vain and cannot tolerate criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people are thieving motherfuckers and enjoy masturbation more than sex.
Virgo (Aug 23 - Sept 22) - You are the logical type and hate disorder. Your shit-picking attitude is sickening to your friends and co-workers. You are cold and unemotional and often fall asleep while fucking. Virgos make good bus drivers and pimps.
Libra (Sept 23 - Oct 22) - You are the artistic type and have a difficult time dealing with reality. Chances for employment and monetary gain are nil. Most Libra women are whores. All Libras die of venereal disease.
Scorpio (Oct 23 - Nov 22) - You are the worst of the lot. You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You shall achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of ethics. You are the perfect son-of-a-bitch. Most Scorpios are murdered.
Sagittarius (Nov 23 - Dec 22) - You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless tendency to rely on your luck since you have no talent. You are a worthless piece of shit.
Capricorn (Dec 23 - Jan 22) - You are conservative and afraid of taking risks. You are basically chickenshit. There has never been a Capricorn of any importance.
Monday, June 2, 2008
The Fear of Fleeting Moments.
I have been in a weird state of mind lately. I don't know how much of the way I act is me...
I have always been cursed with nervousness and the inability to say what I feel. Call it closed off alpha male syndrome. Call it unbalanced love for communication in text... I just feel better when writing or even on the phone. I've always been this way, but I still make actions that paint me as a driven person who gets what he wants. I have a sense of feeling cunning or heartless, because I just don't know how to express myself up front. I fear that kind of openness. It hardly comes out unless I have my eyes closed on a therapist's couch, and even then honesty gets replaced by comfort and instead it is two friends dancing around on the shallow surface of truth, never digging in for the big kill.
I don't know what makes me into so many people/identities and so uncomfortable at the same time. I don't understand why I systematically downplay the importance of everything until it reaches a state where nothing can hurt me. The thing I forget most is nothing is ever really gained without chance. I just expect that moment where everything runs into a brick wall and communication and feeling disappear. This is all effed.
Honestly. No one is reading this except... and I don't know if that makes it matter or worthless.
I have always been cursed with nervousness and the inability to say what I feel. Call it closed off alpha male syndrome. Call it unbalanced love for communication in text... I just feel better when writing or even on the phone. I've always been this way, but I still make actions that paint me as a driven person who gets what he wants. I have a sense of feeling cunning or heartless, because I just don't know how to express myself up front. I fear that kind of openness. It hardly comes out unless I have my eyes closed on a therapist's couch, and even then honesty gets replaced by comfort and instead it is two friends dancing around on the shallow surface of truth, never digging in for the big kill.
I don't know what makes me into so many people/identities and so uncomfortable at the same time. I don't understand why I systematically downplay the importance of everything until it reaches a state where nothing can hurt me. The thing I forget most is nothing is ever really gained without chance. I just expect that moment where everything runs into a brick wall and communication and feeling disappear. This is all effed.
Honestly. No one is reading this except... and I don't know if that makes it matter or worthless.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
intro to manuscript submission
If it can be said that you have already heard this spiel before…
Then it can be known that you never got sick in hearing it.
I have lived a sick & depraved life, but am blessed by grace in times of misfortune. Which is to say, I just won’t fucking die.
I have recently spent some longer than usual stays in psychiatric hospitals, and in spite of all the so-called therapy I still want nothing more than to be heard, and stop hearing all the “answers”. I didn’t request answers. I merely want to display my criminal narcissism. If you’ll only hear me out, I’ll paint the images that make up the disfigured galleries to the various sides of me.
I have been on both sides of the coin, physical, sexual, pharmaceutical, and metaphysic assault. I have been to both jail and biblical seminary. From faking my way into Honors classes to selling ecstasy to those yuppie fucks @ highway robbery price.
I’ve been to Tijuana bars and brothels, fucking my way to a cold Corona I never found. I’ve sung praise songs to church youth groups while having sex with ministers’ daughters & getting high on Puerto Rican beaches during mission trips. I have slain virgin daughters, pinning them against bathroom mirrors, displaying a lust they will never forget. And, I’ve had the shit beaten out of me for drunkenly forcing myself into forbidden situations.
I know exactly what it’s like to blow a quarter mil inheritance and have nothing to show. I’ve been used and a user, doing anything money can. My most vivid dreams, mostly nightmares of the debauchery of those times, are my remaining possessions, and I will never give them up cheaply.
True, there may be nothing new under the sun, but @ 27 years old, I have most things completed on Life’s Checklist. And now, @ 27, I’ve had it all stripped away. Once again, I have nothing to show. Progress a little further my possessions are these: Whiskey-rotted teeth with a halitosis breath, deceptively charming looks and demeanor, lost loves abandoned quickly as prescribed in the evacuation plan, and the smarts afforded me by these half-empty pill bottles and attending a handful of classes high.
So, if you’re willing to lend an ear, and a health plan that can afford me cheap replacements for these half-empty bottles of pills… If you’re able to help me sort through these words with a style that mimics Kundera’s sight for the underlying, base importance, and help me find my one hundred-millionth difference from you, from them… maybe something can mean anything out of this.
Then you can maybe help me receive the stage I am worthy of to parade my true, inner-imposter. I’m the shattered mosaic portrait of Dorian Grey; so let me make that clear. I am proof you can be the whole host of villainous people and not be able to afford the rite to die. If you’ll only let me whisper my tale, and you watch to see which ears prick up to hear my Seroquel-enhanced speech. Or, if you could see how the eyes of strangers will dart around behind pages to see if my life has pinpointed them guilty of likewise deception. If you only knew who was out there fucking your neighborhood daughters. Then maybe the book I made will be one that everyone purchases, but cannot bear the strength demanded to read.
I want to hear Stevenson words echo into this time.
“I barely finished it, it nearly finished me.”
I want to shake the floors of mine, and your, memory in the way a madman shakes a dead geranium. Lips seething with bile and drool, eyes vicious and flesh haggard. I want to shake this will to die, and speak about the many things you should never want to do with life.
Then it can be known that you never got sick in hearing it.
I have lived a sick & depraved life, but am blessed by grace in times of misfortune. Which is to say, I just won’t fucking die.
I have recently spent some longer than usual stays in psychiatric hospitals, and in spite of all the so-called therapy I still want nothing more than to be heard, and stop hearing all the “answers”. I didn’t request answers. I merely want to display my criminal narcissism. If you’ll only hear me out, I’ll paint the images that make up the disfigured galleries to the various sides of me.
I have been on both sides of the coin, physical, sexual, pharmaceutical, and metaphysic assault. I have been to both jail and biblical seminary. From faking my way into Honors classes to selling ecstasy to those yuppie fucks @ highway robbery price.
I’ve been to Tijuana bars and brothels, fucking my way to a cold Corona I never found. I’ve sung praise songs to church youth groups while having sex with ministers’ daughters & getting high on Puerto Rican beaches during mission trips. I have slain virgin daughters, pinning them against bathroom mirrors, displaying a lust they will never forget. And, I’ve had the shit beaten out of me for drunkenly forcing myself into forbidden situations.
I know exactly what it’s like to blow a quarter mil inheritance and have nothing to show. I’ve been used and a user, doing anything money can. My most vivid dreams, mostly nightmares of the debauchery of those times, are my remaining possessions, and I will never give them up cheaply.
True, there may be nothing new under the sun, but @ 27 years old, I have most things completed on Life’s Checklist. And now, @ 27, I’ve had it all stripped away. Once again, I have nothing to show. Progress a little further my possessions are these: Whiskey-rotted teeth with a halitosis breath, deceptively charming looks and demeanor, lost loves abandoned quickly as prescribed in the evacuation plan, and the smarts afforded me by these half-empty pill bottles and attending a handful of classes high.
So, if you’re willing to lend an ear, and a health plan that can afford me cheap replacements for these half-empty bottles of pills… If you’re able to help me sort through these words with a style that mimics Kundera’s sight for the underlying, base importance, and help me find my one hundred-millionth difference from you, from them… maybe something can mean anything out of this.
Then you can maybe help me receive the stage I am worthy of to parade my true, inner-imposter. I’m the shattered mosaic portrait of Dorian Grey; so let me make that clear. I am proof you can be the whole host of villainous people and not be able to afford the rite to die. If you’ll only let me whisper my tale, and you watch to see which ears prick up to hear my Seroquel-enhanced speech. Or, if you could see how the eyes of strangers will dart around behind pages to see if my life has pinpointed them guilty of likewise deception. If you only knew who was out there fucking your neighborhood daughters. Then maybe the book I made will be one that everyone purchases, but cannot bear the strength demanded to read.
I want to hear Stevenson words echo into this time.
“I barely finished it, it nearly finished me.”
I want to shake the floors of mine, and your, memory in the way a madman shakes a dead geranium. Lips seething with bile and drool, eyes vicious and flesh haggard. I want to shake this will to die, and speak about the many things you should never want to do with life.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Trying to hide yourself...
"No matter where you go, you are what you are player
And you can try to change but that's just the top layer
Man, you was who you was 'fore you got here"
-Jay-Z Public Service Announcement
I feel more and more that I cannot change myself. I suffer that condition that is me.
screaming in silence this world is full of pain and destruction.
I want to die.
(p.s. I dunno why, but someone typed in that last sentence and posted it thinking it would be fun... either that or my medication coma really got to me last night and I typed it myself. Funny how I can't distinguish the two.)
And you can try to change but that's just the top layer
Man, you was who you was 'fore you got here"
-Jay-Z Public Service Announcement
I feel more and more that I cannot change myself. I suffer that condition that is me.
screaming in silence this world is full of pain and destruction.
I want to die.
(p.s. I dunno why, but someone typed in that last sentence and posted it thinking it would be fun... either that or my medication coma really got to me last night and I typed it myself. Funny how I can't distinguish the two.)
sometimes it is better not to have it.
this is fiction intertwined with fantasized reality
arousal is demanded
this is hair-pulling rough sex
pressed up & reflected back from
against the mirror
this is the night I learned that
love during sex
was a lie.
I don’t know much about the precursor steps to this affair. Most men forget the foreground to foreplay as often as they forget the foreplay. I do remember deep kisses & the clawing. Tilted her chin back to tongue and kiss behind her ear. Deft hands moved underneath clothes tearing garment from body.
Like any good many I rose to the occasion, but these neuroleptics acted more like ecstasy than the bipolar meds they were prescribed as.
I forced her hands back behind her, and she knew I was fuelled for a fuck. She looked back, almost hatefully, baring her teeth, coercing me to penetrate her. Pushing inside her, eyes rolled back to close. Like being injected with heroine – this was her drug, not me.
Putting myself back in this place leaves the taste of bile in my throat.
Her breaths and hushed moans between whispered demands for me to hurt her, desperately deceiving me fro the truth – in her youth she had been raped & molested. Some “damaged goods” complex needed misery to ebb the tides of her lust.
Muted grey light shone in through the window. Shadows of succubus & dreamer danced upon the wall. Demonic war was being waged, and no lyricist I had ever heard had warned me of this. This night should have never been, as with many others like it. Giving in to lust with her and the others has had a lasting affect on what kind of lover I can now be. She stole me from myself, and some things can never be reclaimed.
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