Burning Masks

Yesterday someone called me "Little Mr. Emo" and informed me thats what I'm known as too other people around the Theatre department. First off, I was thinking "I'm 6'2", relatively well built, and I've been around the block a couple times. I'm not that little. But it was emo that stung.

Emo is a term used to describe black make-up clad mother fuckers who can't express themselves beyond painting sad looks on their faces. They don't know true emotion, but feel they have to convince everyone that they're sad through black eye-liner. They want everyone to know they're sad simply for the fact that they want people to think they're in distress. FRAK THAT!!!

Yes, I do appear dark and moody and I tend to brood. I'm aware of that. There are reasons and I can express them without KOHL around my eyes. The worst part about having a darkness inside of me is that I can't explain it very well. I have no drastic reason to be unhappy. My father didn't get drunk and beat me as a child and no one sexually violated me. I had a the average unhappy childhood, the worst thing being my favorite action figures breaking, othe rkids teasing me about my zits, and being socially awkward. Big fucking deal...No! I used to take all the "punishment" so seriously. That kid is dead.

The darkness in me is the animal craving to get out. Aside from my closest friends, I always acted like a moron to make people laugh, even at my own expense, for the sake of trying to make people happy. Its sadistic and wrong, but it helped. Even when people would say, "oh, don't let him do that, he's an idiot," I didn't care because I knew it was untrue. Today, people wonder why I'm so down and dark and not upbeat and jumping off walls. Well, its because Its gotten harder to keep the animal contained, its gotten harder to not tell people what I really think of them, its gotten harder pretending to be an imbecile, its gotten harder to not be me...but my friends don't like the real me. They think I'm arrogant and selfish for wanting to experience my life from my own perspective and not from behind a gods damned mask.
My darkness is my joy, and it hurts those around me. I'm not happy because my happiness hurts people. It is human nature to disappoint and betray those around you. No matter how good and happy and people pleasing we try to be, theres always someone within a close circle that we can't make happy, and in turn we disappoint them, which then divides circles of friends, and then no one is happy. forgive me if I just tell the truth, the real truth, and make you unhappy in order for you to see that this is life and you need to suck it up. Forgive for being that person, but maybe its good for you.

For all I know this darkness is just another mask to wear. It could be, nothing is certain. But for the time being, it is my face. Maybe before trying to burn my mask off...you should make sure you're not wearing one too. Goodnight.

I Am Jack's True Face

Revelations, Adventurers, and Half Full Bottles of Guiness

"Who has not in his great grief felt a longing to look upon the outward features of the universal Mother; to lie on the mountains and watch the clouds drive across the sky and hear the rollers break in thunder on the shore, to let his poor struggling life mingle for a while in her life; to feel the slow beat of her eternal heart, and to forget his woes . . ."
-Allan Quartermain

When looking through the tinted glass of one of my many in-progress Guinesses, I see a possible metaphor for my world. The bland animal in me wants to go simple with light and dark, good and evil, life and death. But the poet in me has much more to say.
The bottle is half full (optimism) of the tasty black liquid, which has become such a constant in my life I damn near depend on it for sanity. Its a life force. But that also means the bottle is half-empty (pessimism, but you knew that already) which makes me think of the emptiness in my life. I crave adventure, danger, retribution, high speed winds, fresh powder, good poetry, a finished(fully composed) song that isn't crap, love, romance (especially), and I feel trapped inside a half empty bottle slowly sucking away at the dregs of dark wheat-fermentation that flood the bottom and expecting buried treasure when I meet the glass.
My revelation is to get out of this glass cage. No, not to stop drinking, wrong metaphor. I enjoy the comradery that comes with drinking. Honestly, I think the boys and I are so high strung and angry with everything at this point in our lives that alcohol helps us feel normal, or feel like we did when we were 7. It gives us the high we got out of playing in the sandbox or nap time in kindergarten.How am I doing Ithil, am I on track?
No, my revelation today is to get out of here. To get out my safety net. I want to discover whats missing from my life, or perhaps have it thrust in my face that I have everything I need.
Who knows. I'm a person who works things out on the move, on the road, or even a casual walk to 7-11, (Those are especially good for long distance calls, don't ask why...or do). I feel un-threatened here, at the Rising Sun, by the safety net, though it may strangle me in my sleep. I need an adventure. This is my solemn promise that one day, soon, or even if I have to wait until I toss my graduation cap...that I will get out in the world, I will leave my safety net behind, get my hands dirtier with more than just grime, and I will break the glass bottle that binds me.

"Old tigers, sensing their end are at their most fierce."

I Am Jack's Inner Allan Quatermain

Asked Bobby Dylan, asked the Beatles, asked Timothy Leary...he couldn't help me either

The majority of my two decades in existence, I have fallen in and out of love. All kinds of love. True love
Lust-filled love
Sad Love
Best Friend Love
Comrade Love
Fake Love
Damaged Love
Young Love
One Sided Love
U2 Love

Not a single time has something ended with a happiness other than "she'll be more happy with him than me" or "she'll be happier now that I'm not holding her back." Little things to make me feel better while the pain eats at me like a slow burning acid. I am in fact the kind of man who falls in love, some kind of love, with every woman that has ever shared an intimate moment with me.
The relationship can survive eight months, on and off for several years, one night stands, and even passers by on the street when our eyes meet for an eternal moment as our opposite, paralleling paths meet perpendicular standing point. No matter how long or short the length and the depth and shallow points of the deepest parts of our interactions, there is always an impression left on my body by her. Some retain pieces of my heart, others leave scars and scratches that I will notice at a glance and then suffer through flashes of rage and love as it projects images across the inside of my skull, as if the brain is watching a private screening.
The most common scar is left on the ears, for all of them leave this impression whether or not they affect my heart or weak human flesh. All of them have a song, some written by past musical poets, some from my own hand and ink. Today's reflection is the collection, the album, the anthology of my love life.

KSJ= I've Just Seen A Face - The Beatles
CAL= Heartbreaker - Led Zeppelin
IRA= Nice Guys Finish Last - Green Day
KG= Day Tripper - The Beatles
SH= Billie Jean - Chris Cornell
MLC= Strange and Beautiful - Aqualung
Handsome Devil - Working Class Rebels
Time Of Your Life - Green Day
KH= Girls Got Rhythm - AC/DC
I Will Possess Your Heart - Death Cab for Cutie
Irish Red - Working Class Rebels
Helter Skelter - The Beatles
CL= All Because of You - U2
One - U2
I Hate Everything About You - Three Days Grace
Dust Under My Boots - Working Class Rebels
JN= This Night - Black Lab
RS= Instant Karma - John Lennon
CA= The Little Things Give You Away - Linking Park
ERG= Hey, What'd Do You Say - Kenny Wayne Shepherd
DD= Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses - U2
SB= Hold On Loosely - 38 Special
LS= Wasting Love - Iron Maiden
HG= Starlight - Muse
The Seeker - The Who
MLS= Animal I Have Become - Three Days Grace
MC= Let It Die - Three Days Grace

There is a house, in en-ci-no, they call the rising sun...its been the ruin, of many a poor boy
God, I know, I'm one

I'm sorry if the initials of the various women throughout my life confuse you, I doubt even those that know me after hanging me over the edge of a volcano could interpret all the identities. No, not even Shan Yu could figure all of them out. Hell, I doubt I could.
The purpose of today's masochistic revival of my past is to prove that love is filled with pain, and some scars never heal. It is painfully true. One particular scar was stitched badly and never quite stopped bleeding, even after three years. My strength poured onto the floor every time my heart beat I lost drops of the love cursed blood that pounds from my various pulses. Even now, after regaining that same love after 36 months of silence I feel pain because 3000 miles of tainted purple mountain and drugged plain stand in my way of her warm touch but not her intoxicating scent. Making the journey now would only cause me to reap my badly planted seeds as they spring from the soil premature to the harvest. It would be putting a beautiful animal like love into a cage and waiting for the warmth to disappear into the icy bars. I can contain my loving, wild animal...but I am still bleeding.
True love can only be discovered and tamed by the strong of heart, mind, soul, and especially the will. Not only must it be found and caught, but it requires care to keep it...not a cage. Cage an animal like love, and all that come of it are scars.
Good Night.

I Am Jack's Iron Will

coming soon...who watches the Watchmen?

Das Dicke Ende Kommt Noch

I have been searching my vocabulary for a good way to start this project, perhaps with a good story about a crucial element of my past or short summary of my life. In the last five minutes i decided against that, for the whole point of this online journal, this auto-biography, this escapade into the deepest cracks of my psyche is to learn more about me and what I want to accomplish before my personal doomsday clock strikes midnight. If I reveal that in the first post...all purpose is lost. I will begin with poetry.

The Absolute monster in the room,
you feel it here disrupting harmony
you must
But of course, you don't talk about it
you don't think about it
But it must change the way that you walk
it must change the way that you talk
And it must change the shape of your day
In some tiny, tiny little way
The thoughts in back of our heads

What needs to happen
to make your thoughts an action
Why can't we see
what it needs to be
All the bloody distraction
its blinding you and me

Come fight for your last breath
or wait patiently for death
Dictators of our nations
think d'struction breeds creation
Absolute monster has cometh
brings about the Revelations

Why don't we talk about it?
Why don't we think about it?
What needs to happen?
To make those thoughts an action?
Don't push it back 'n drown it
Broken bird in water flappin'

I wrote this flash of enlightenment during a time of my life filled with anger and confusion, which was a deadly combination. At the time I was completely unaware as to why I was angry aside from the usual young men angst combined with the adrenaline of hormones pulsing through my veins. Looking back I think it was anger about the war in Iraq and the thousands of young Americans having their lives taken too early or forced to live limbless and in pain and no one was trying hard enough to put a stop to it. It filled me with rage.
As I typed "The Thoughts in Back of Our Heads" into this entry, I realized what I am angry about. I am angry because I feel that my generation is living in such a way that all our lives have a path already cut for them, and not an easy path at that. We have no choice as to were we walk for the path has been roughly placed before us, but it is cluttered with broken bottles under children's feet, the ripples of a riverbed that once flowed with blood but is now dried red dirt having no effect on the eyes of the blind who stumble it, bodies piled high with glaring empty eye sockets. The path has been cut and left in a terrible wake. My generation is in charge of the cleanup, but we haven't been allowed to start and no one is fighting hard enough to pull the starting pistol's trigger. No wants to let us talk about the red dirt that was dyed by the blood of young men and women. No one wants to let us think about the past or the present, only the future. I am angry, but the worst has yet to come (das dicke ende kommt noch) and the strength my anger gives me will be required on a different day, on a different battlefield.

I started this tonight after recently reading a lot of the blog of my friend and mentor, Ithil Mori. It made me shake as my heart sped up. I have known the man for almost 16 years and never heard or seen him open up so much. Its almost as if he is slowly lowering himself over the volcano and we are finally allowed to meet the real him. I want to meet the real him. I want to meet the real me. This project is more for me than any of my readers, no offense meant, but when I let my fingers fly across my grimy and finger-print caked keyboard the writing flows and I speak to myself through my own literature. I still have much anger and confusion about the world and my own self and everything in between, but I also possess patience. Therefore, I am in no hurry to discover what else lies within me. I will let my madness continue to unwind and my muse to articulate my spiraling thoughts. Goodnight.

I Am Jack's Muse