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The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

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Archives for July 2011

A Whiter Shade Of Pale

July 12, 2011 by Jack Steiner 22 Comments

Love and Hate

This is the kind of post that really should be told in person. There are stories and then there are STORIES about moments in which my face turned a whiter shade of pale. Some of them are tales that I tell with great joy and gusto because age has given me the ability to engage in self deprecation. There is a real art to it and it is a useful skill that many have turned to their advantage.

But there are other tales that I do not tell because they still pierce the thick skin that I have developed. These are moments that are only examined in quiet solitude and spoken about in a hushed whisper because sometimes in the quiet of the moment…it burns.

It feels foolish to admit this and say that some things still hurt. I am not sure why. I can’t say if it is because I am male and I don’t think that I should admit such things or if there is something else that lies beneath the surface. So I sit here at the computer trying to decipher the mystery of the moment while simultaneously searching for the proper moment to make mention of.  I explore the dark corners of my mind and dust off the cabinets that contain the chaos of the past and dare myself to go deeper.

In person it would be easier because the words that were spoken would die off in hushed whisper and the echoes would be brief. These words on this page don’t disappear and the echoes continue to bounce off of the canyons of cyberspace for eternity or however long this blog and all that record its words shall last.

It brings us to the moment where I can no longer try to deftly weave my way through the woods. Questions have been asked and answers must be given so here you shall find a few words that you can do as you see fit with.

The year is 1982.I am 13 years-old and in a Hebrew school play. They have adapted South Pacific to tell the story of a Jewish holiday. It is the standard fare of they tried to kill us, they lost, we won, let’s eat. I have a big role, but it is not the lead. Two weeks or so before the big opening the kid who does have the lead drops out and the director asks if anyone can step in and take over. I don’t think twice and offer my services.

I am not fazed by the idea of having to sing in front of the school and parents. The joy of being 13 is that I don’t ever consider the possibility that things could go badly. I never worry about my voice cracking at odd times and places.  I never wonder what I will do when the entire audience roars with laughter because my singing is funny to them.

Nor do I consider that many of the students go to junior high with me and that they will gleefully tell the tale of how Jack can’t sing…for all of the Spring semester.

This was a post for The Red Dress Club about embarrassment. I wouldn’t call it my finest work, but writing requires practice and this serves that purpose.

If you are interested in reading past submissions you can find a list of them below:

  • Wind and Waves
  • Donuts
  • A Detour
  • 1974
  • The Day Joy Left My Life
  • Preserve Your Memories
  • August
  • The Flying Clown
  • The Kitchen
  • One Slightly Used Pump For Sale
  • The Song of My Heart Has Gone Silent
  • Grandpa
  • Five Minutes
  • Endless Blue Skies
  • And then the world shifted
  • I Hear Music
  • A Fire In The Sky
  • The Telephone Call
  • She Wore A Red Dress
  • Song Sung Blue…And Other Colors
  • When Simply Awful became Simply Wonderful
  • A Mugger
  • A Jealous Man
  • She Was Wrong
  • It Was Just Coffee
  • The Mistress of Tongue
  • Dancing Didn’t Make Him Charming
  • An Unfulfilled Promise

Filed Under: Red Dress Club

What I Want

July 11, 2011 by Jack Steiner 3 Comments

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Four Generations & A Wedding

July 10, 2011 by Jack Steiner 10 Comments

Tuxedo Shirt 6-10-08 -- IMG_0615

Family legend talks about the day my father told me that my mother had given birth to twin sisters. I burst into tears and said that I already had too many sisters and begged him to send them back for a little brother.

Apparently his response has gotten lost in the sands of time but I imagine that it didn’t contain any sort of apology nor should it have. And there you have yet another public acknowledgement that my father was right and I was wrong. Mark it carefully, I don’t like saying such things out loud. It is not because I don’t respect my father because I do. The man deserves far more accolades and compliments than he gets, but the last thing I need is to add fuel to his fire because the men in this family have plenty.

Yesterday we engaged in the ordinary but created some extraordinary out of it. One of the twins is getting married and the menfolk had to get fitted for our tuxedos. So my son and I hopped in the car and headed out to meet my dad and grandfather at the tux shop so that they could tell me to lose some weight measure us for the penguin suits we are going to wear at the wedding.

I am sorry to say that I was slow to recognize the importance of the day. It is fair to say that at the moment life is filled with an extra amount of tumult and turmoil so I have been more focused on trying to sail my ship safely past the rocks and reefs. My bank account is a bit thin so I am loathe to lose a ship as I can’t say when or how I will replace it.

So when my son and I walked in the shop I was far more interested in getting it over with than in enjoying the moment. But seeing my grandfather helped snap me back into place.  He was sitting on his walker lost in thought about time and places long since past or so I imagine. I suspect that what he was thinking about was my grandma. He talks to me about her quite often and I do what I can to listen and help. I don’t think that he is aware of how he cries when he talks about her or how hard it is sometimes is to not be able to do more to ease his pain.

In one capacity or another they were together for 85 years- that truly is a lifetime so there really isn’t much that I can do beyond listen to him speak. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind it. The only thing that bothers me is that I can’t do more to help.

But yesterday I did have one secret weapon, a great-grandson and he is able to bring about a different sort of smile than I can. I like to stand back and watch them interact together. It has been one of the great pleasures and privileges of my life to do so. I have watched my grandparents hold my babies and then watched as the babies grew into little people.

Yesterday as I helped my son into his tuxedo I had a flashback to the last family wedding and that is when it hit me. Eight years ago the 2.5 year old boy who once was told me that he wouldn’t put on his tuxedo. Eight years ago four grandparents walked down the aisle and helped celebrate the wedding of a granddaughter. That 2.5 year old boy only had two first cousins and hadn’t yet learned what it meant to have a little sister.

The coming wedding will still be filled a lot of love, joy and laughter but there is going to be three big holes. Three people who were enormous influences on my siblings and I are gone. It is not unexpected or unusual but I would be lying if I didn’t say that it feel a bit surreal to me.

Yesterday grandpa told me that he is going to tell grandma about the wedding and that he is really looking forward to it and I believe him. But the rules of the blog dictate brutal honesty and that requires that I acknowledge that the light behind his eyes has dimmed a little bit.

We had a few moments alone, grandpa and I and he told me a few more stories about him and grandma. I knew them all but still enjoyed listening to them anyway. Just before he finished speaking he looked at me and told me that grandma really knew how to make him smile. I smiled at him and said that something told me that grandma wouldn’t like him telling those stories about her. He chuckled and and with a smile that kept growing bigger said, “there is a lot that you don’t know about your grandmother.”

I knew better than to ask what that meant, some stories are best left between those who experienced them.

Later on I looked at my son and marveled at how that tuxedo made him look a little bit older and a little bit taller. If I didn’t know better I would say that for a brief moment I was given a glimpse of the man he is going to one day become.Or maybe that was just the overactive imagination of a man who throughout the day kept slipping between grandson, son and father.

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,”

As You Like It- Shakespeare

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Filed Under: Life and Death

The Write Words For June

July 9, 2011 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Dear June,

Time is a fickle thing is it not. My heart had a talk today with my head and declared that though it has been a thousand years since we walked in our secret garden nothing has changed. By royal decree the edict was issued and offered without explanation because there are no words to properly express what once was. The heart looked back upon this, this and this and told the head that these words were all the proof that was required to make his point.

The head fought back and offered logical reasons why it was nothing more than a fools errand. He spoke eloquently and passionately about why it was an impossibility and then posited that the simple truths he spoke of couldn’t be ignored. Perhaps that would have been enough had this been the province of logic but it is not. The heart wants what the heart wants and when it is roused it is capable of moving the earth.

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields
Woods or steepy mountain yields

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flower, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”- Christopher Marlowe

We read these words together and walked through our secret garden. Our fingers intertwined and our breathing in synch we shed the constraints of the earth and floated in places few are ever privileged to see. We experienced bliss, awe and something beyond the power of words to describe. The fathers of our country would have said that “they hold these truths to be self evident” and they would have been right. You know as do I what sort of magic we created.

And yet here we are in the lifetime we live in…alone and apart. We stare at the moon from separate places but though our bodies are far apart our spirits remain as they were. We are as you once said “inextricably linked” together. A physical connection isn’t needed to prove what is. And if there was it would merely be the consummation of the truths we already know even if we fear to say them aloud.

So I reach out and say again that I know the write words will wake you from your sleep- perhaps not today but soon.

“I fell into a burning ring of fire
Went down down down and the flames went higher
It burns burns burns that ring of fire that ring of fire and it burns”

Ring of Fire- Johnny Cash

Filed Under: Fragments of Fiction

The Friday Night DJ

July 9, 2011 by Jack Steiner 1 Comment

Been a while since I spent time sharing music in a post with you. I think that the time is coming when I need to write a more indepth post about music and life, but not tonight. Here is a brief sample of some of what I listened to this evening.

Heartbreaker– Led Zeppelin
Broken Hearts– Living Colour
Picture– Kid Rock Featuring Sheryl Crow
God Only Knows– The Beach Boys
Tunnel of Love– Bruce Springsteen
Ghost of Tom Joad-Bruce Springsteen w.Tom Morello
Hold On… / Soul Man-Sam Moore w/ Bruce Springsteen (can you feel the energy in this- raw power)
Moonlight Sonata– Beethoven
9th Symphony– Beethoven

And just for the hell of it a couple of award winning acting performances for your pleasure

Hope you are enjoying your weekend.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

A Few Words About My Death

July 8, 2011 by Jack Steiner 15 Comments

John Donne, one of the most famous Metaphysica...
John Donne, one of the most famous Metaphysical Poets. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I died last night. It doesn’t matter how I died or why because I am gone. Nothing more than the memories of a person who once was and thoughts of who I could have been. This is not supposed to be dramatic. I am not looking for attention or asking for people to come racing after me because I am gone. It is up to those who loved me to determine how to best remember me.

Don’t come looking for answers to that question from me because I am not going to give them to you. I can’t tell you how to remember me or what you should do. Ok, that is not entirely accurate I can give you specific directions on what I want to see happen and who I want to manage it all, but I won’t.

I won’t do it because I think that this is one of those situations in which more is gained by experience than by being told what to do. It reminds me of that stupid comment where people say that you don’t have to visit the sun to know that it is hot. That is true but it doesn’t really tell you all that much about what the sun is really like. It gives you a basic overview of it but no real understanding of what life is like there.

This blog  is a collection of my thoughts, feelings and ideas about life. If you read it you will learn much about me. You will gain many insights about who I was and what kind of person I tried to be. But you won’t get it all. You won’t know the little things that made me into the person that I was. You won’t know what kind of face I made when I was happy or sad. You’ll never know about the twinkle in my eye or the way that my lip curled. You will have to rely upon the words of the few that knew me. You’ll have to look to them to help flesh out what can’t be seen here.

My children will be able to tell you thousand stories about me. They know so much more about me than they realize. They see things that only children see in fathers, both good and bad. They’ll tell you stories that are worth listening to because in those stories they’ll share insights into them and me. And though they are very much their own persons those insights will help you to see hints of me inside them. The physical evidence is easy. You look at them and you can see my genetic contribution to their appearance but there are other things to experience.

That is not supposed to sound narcissistic or egocentric. It is tied into my beliefs and comments about how in some ways the dead keep living. It is those little quirks and habits that we pass down from father to son to grandson that I am referring to. I am reminded of days long past where I would sit with my father and grandfather and people would remark on how we all made the same gesture. Perhaps that was learned or maybe it is genetic, I don’t really know. I don’t think that it really matters all that much.

As I sit here staring at the screen I wonder what else there is to say and whether I should say it. It is a funny thing because I have rarely been one to suffer from writer’s block or to be speechless. Words have always been among my most faithful companions and though they haven’t always done what I asked them to, they never failed to appear.

Yet, I sit here and wonder if there is a point and a purpose to writing more. Would ten million words tell the tale that I want told of would they still fall short.  Had I lived to be a thousand years it wouldn’t have been enough time for me. There were always ten thousand things to see and places to visit. Read my words and you’ll see that one of many dreams would have been to live long enough to become an expert in many different fields. You’d see that I wanted to be able to live in places long enough to become a native and not just a tourist passing through.

Well, not every dream is made to be realized and so it goes. Still a life worth living is one in which you never stop fighting to live your dreams and not dream your life.

Now it really is time to go. Go live your dreams and perhaps I’ll see you on the other side.

Death Be Not Proud- John Donne

“Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.”

Filed Under: Fragments of Fiction

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