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

Love

Two Souls In The Present

by Leave a Comment

Somewhere in the 1,930,938,784 words here you will find the story of two souls outline and a variety of parts and pieces that are tied into it.

Seventeen, 28 or 50 some years of burning love produced and prepared in a sort of a jigsaw puzzle format floating in cyberspace.

Intermixed are the comments, emails and questions that have asked for insight and or answers but have yet to be given.

It is not clear yet whether an update shall be shared here or left as is in other places but it is safe to say that something will happen and when it does you will discover it.

Or at least that is the expectation, that you will show up one day and find something that offers a beginning and a middle but probably not an end but the reasons for that aren’t to be shared today.

She Is Out There

by Leave a Comment

The questions float into the inbox with the quiet ease of a calm forest stream.

Most of them are focused upon why I ought to be interested in paying for a product or service that will help traffic to this joint explode but the occasional one touches upon other topics.

“Jack, what happened to your girl? What happened to the one you used to write about? Did you find each other and if so, what was the outcome?”

Sometimes I stare at the page and think about composing a post providing the full story or wonder if I ought to just put some words down in an email and let it go at that.

Should I provide facts and details or just a couple of lines outlining the tale in a way that sort of answers the question.

It is kind of funny to me because she who you refer to is a woman who wants details. She needs specifics and it drives her crazy to give half an answer.

I am good at driving her crazy, always have been.

That doesn’t tell you what our status is or isn’t now does it. But you don’t really need to know one way or another.

She Is Out There

She is out there and so am I.

Our lives intersect and connect in multiple places but as to the depth and frequency well that is is something to discuss elsewhere.

Water Won’t Wash It Away

by 6 Comments

You might wonder if this is about the birth of a murderer and I wouldn’t fault you for doing so, especially with a headline like the one above.

But this isn’t one of those posts where I ask you to wonder if you are capable of wrapping your hands around a person’s neck so that you can cut off their air supply and watch the light fade from their eyes.

I thought about doing so.


whatisreal

Thought about asking if you could imagine being given the chance to dole out justice to those whose deeds have caused them to be excised from the ranks of humanity and delivered to whatever justice comes post life.

Wonder whether that would make a difference in how the death penalty is carried out. Wonder what would happen if people were given the gift of execution and those that were done wrong could rest assured their immortal souls would be avenged by those whose winged souls haven’t yet taken flight.

Some Things Are Better Left…Unlearned

I have no doubt about what I am capable of…at least when it comes to protecting my children.

There is no doubt about what I am willing to do to protect them but that is because of what I have done, what I had to do.

The thing about it is that I wish I didn’t know these things about myself. Wish I didn’t know that these hands which have done so much good and have been used for gentle and peaceful things are stained.

I might sleep better.

I might feel better.

Some things are better left unlearned.

Some stains can’t be washed…away.

artlie


I swam competitively in high school and college.

Ok, in college I wasn’t on my university swim team, but I was part of the fraternity intramural squad.

I might be a Taurus but I was the kind of bull who was always at home in the water. I wasn’t ever the best on the team, but I was good enough to be a factor.

Good enough to place in the top 25 in the city in a couple of races and maybe, just maybe good enough to have cracked the top ten.

Since Doc Brown hasn’t offered to let me take his Delorean for a spin and I haven’t discovered any other way to go back in time I can’t say if that last assertion is true.

So I’ll never know what could have happened if I had practiced a little bit longer and trained a little harder.

It is part of why I tell my children that if you really want to find out how good you are at some things you have to go for it now.

Maybe one of the reasons I like writing is because it is not tied into youth and being in perfect shape or as close to it as some of the physical endeavors are.

Some might say that writing is tied to age and life experience and that more years and more life has helped make me better at it.

So I'll never know what could have happened if I had practiced a little bit longer and trained a little harder.Click To Tweet

There is an old goal being given new life today.

It is time for me to dust off some of the stories I have written and to take that fiction and do more than provide lip service about producing a short story.

I have a million short stories and a bunch of them have run here. Hell I have the start of one in this post.

So I have decided to push myself to write something for the Kindle Single program or something similar and to have it done by the end of the year.

There aren’t any good excuses for why it hasn’t already happened other than my own fear of putting something out that was horrible.

It is stupid and irrational but fear often is.

What youknow

Writers can’t let fear fool them into thinking they have nothing to give or offer.

Writers write and I am a writer.

This is where I walk into the water and wash away the stink of fear and move into the future I am furiously fixated upon building.

It is where I show my children that the biggest stumbling blocks in life are self-imposed and that the future is waiting for those of us who are bold to go after it.

So I’ll go after it hard, fast and certain and do my best to put something out because I figure the first time will be the hardest.

And I figure that if I really nervous about whether people will like it I can always come up with a pen name like Tolkien Hemingway Fitzgerald Dickens or something simpler like Biteme Bitowski.

I can see it in my head. It is not hard to picture. All I have do is take what I see inside and turn fiction into reality.

Don’t ask me if I believe in the impossible because I have already loved and lived it. I can do it again.

This Is How You Do It

by 14 Comments

The last time I saw my grandparents dance together was at their 75th wedding anniversary party. They were both in their nineties and though their minds were still sharp their bodies were not what they had once been.

Flip through the pages here and you’ll find posts where I shared how my grandfather would tell me how he never saw a 90 something year-old woman sitting next to him because all he could see was the girl that he fell in love with.

They were together for so many years that it seemed inconceivable that there might come a time when they would be separated, yet it happened. Grandma died and left grandpa alone.

He wasn’t angry with her for dying, but he missed her terribly and I am convinced that he died of a broken heart. It took 18 months, but that is what killed him. Her absence.

Not a day went by where he didn’t talk to her or think about her, but it wasn’t the same.

When I think about that final dance I can’t help but smile. All six of their great grandchildren were there. I heard my son and my oldest nephew groan when they kissed and laughed when they swore they would never have girlfriends or get married.

For a brief moment they convinced their legs to hold firm and their backs straight and I remembered them dancing at my Bar Mitzvah and other family functions.

Life is filled with all sorts of different moments. I am doing my best to recognize them when they come and to appreciate them while they are happening.

Life is A Tale Told By An Idiot

by 9 Comments

desperation“If I could read your mind, love,
What a tale your thoughts could tell.
Just like a paperback novel,
The kind the drugstores sell.
Then you reached the part where the heartaches come,
The hero would be me.
But heroes often fail,
And you won’t read that book again
Because the ending’s just too hard to take!”
If You Could Read My Mind- Gordon Lightfoot

I am in a funny and unfamiliar place now that I am not quite sure how to describe. It feels a bit like I have stepped into one of those carnival fun houses and I am staring at myself through a variety of crazy mirrors.

The floor keeps tilting and the lights keep flashing.  Every time I take a few steps forward I find someone or something has placed some sort of hurdle in my way.  Don’t know whether to laugh or cry so I choose laughter.

Each time I try to move it is a step forwards, always forwards. Sure, I may have to turn right or left but my eyes are always on the trail ahead. Doesn’t matter if I have to zig or zag because forward is where I am focused upon.

Some of these situations require finesse but that is not my forte. I don’t want to to tip toe through the forest. My inclination is to bull my way through and let the chips fall where they may. But time has taught me to temper that so I try. I slow down and take a hard look.

Damn fun house didn’t have any lights so I have gone and stumbled into some swamp. Now I am working twice as hard as before to navigate the mud and the muck. It is waist deep and I am exhausted, but I am still moving forwards.

Finally I am so tired I can’t take another step. I collapse against a tree and as I fall asleep I hear a man’s voice whispering in the woods….

The Heart Wants What The Heart Wants

Someone once told me that the heart wants what the heart wants. I don’t know if that is a line from a book or a movie, it could be. Then again it might be one of those pithy statements that people come up with. I’d ask the person who told me but I can quite remember who said it. Hell, it might have even been
me.

The heart wants what the heart wants. You know what that means? It is a statement made by people who can’t explain why they are in love with person xyz. It is what you say when there is no logical explanation for your actions. It is a catchphrase, a tagline, a slogan and a motto.

 The heart wants what the heart wants. It reminds me of Shakespeare, Life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Somewhere my high school English teacher Mrs. McDonnell is smiling. Little Jimmy actually remembered a line from Macbeth. See ma’am, I told you that I could hear just as well in sunglasses as without..

The heart wants what the heart wants. It is the kind of thing you hear people say when they are trying to explain why they are hung up on someone from their past. Or maybe it is what you say when you stop denying the love that is in front of you.

If love were rational, if it were based upon logic life would be easier. When I think about some of the things I have done because of love I want to scream. When I consider the self-inflicted misery I have endured I want to cry because it seems so very foolish. How could I waste so much energy on such a silly thing as a woman, a single woman. The world is filled with millions of women. It should be easy to replace her. It should be as simple as changing shoes, but it is not. It is not, it is not.

The heart wants what the heart wants. It does and mine has chosen someone that is far more special to me than all of the others. My lips remember hers. I can still feel her touch. The pillowcase has never been washed because I have this fantasy that I can still pull it close and smell her.

Sometimes I think that reincarnation must be real and that in a past life I must have stolen fire from the gods or committed some other heinous crime. Because there is no logical reason why I would be punished in this manner. I found the woman that completes me. I found the person that makes me whole and I let her go.

She would have stayed. She would have held my hand. She would have helped save my soul but I couldn’t say the words. I couldn’t make myself do it. Even though I knew it to be a simple thing. A brief plea for help and she wouldn’t have left me. I wouldn’t have been left to live in shadow and night. I could have been whole. Her love was enough to let me believe that I could have been something more.

But like I said, in that past life I did something. I earned the wrath of those who sit in judgment. Or maybe it is nothing like that. Maybe there is no reason why. Maybe this is all there is and happiness is based upon some sort of random something or other.

The heart wants what it wants and mine has betrayed me. In a different life it lay in a green garden beneath bright blue skies and now it is filled with weeds and fields of shattered stone and black night skies.

Once I might have hoped for salvation. Once I believed that I deserved better than this but now I understand that not to be so. Hades has issued his decree. I stand next to Sisyphus. Tantalus is my brother. Happiness is something that I can see but can’t reach.

The heart wants what the heart wants.

A Dislocated Thumb, Elton John & More

by 2 Comments

Midnight has come and gone and I am wide awake. Been sitting on the couch reading magazines and looking for a book or two to catch my eye. Unfortunately the quest for a new book to read has been unsuccessful. Eventually I’ll find one, a real book that is. Sounds strange to say that but with the proliferation of Kindles and e-readers it has become a necessity.

At the moment I don’t own one, but my parents just upgraded from the original Kindle to the new one so I think that I am going to borrow one and see what I think. Can’t imagine that it will ever replace my love for real books, but I know that I am going to enjoy it.

Got a bad thumb, courtesy of a blocked shot from a pick up game on Monday. It is on my left hand and for the most part hasn’t been too much of a pain in my ass, but it hasn’t been pleasant. Would have been more exciting if blocking the shot meant something other than five seconds of jubilation- but such is life. These finger injuries fit into the category of nagging injuries. They take forever to heal and if you forget about them you can guarantee that something will happen to remind you. Like, having a six year-old accidentally slam into it.

Felt great having it jammed again.

Elton John songs are flowing through iTunes now. Just listened to Your Song. So many memories tied into this one. At the moment I keep seeing a hundred people at the tail end of a Fraternity party put their arms around each other and sing. Must of been about 2 am or so and something that the neighbors loved- but I can’t help but smile thinking about it. Sat there singing under a black sky that was lit up by a million twinkling lights and for a moment time stood still.

And then I hear these lyrics:

And you can tell everybody this is your song
It may be quite simple but now that it’s done
I hope you don’t mind
I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you’re in the world

And I remember that I promised someone a song. I don’t know if we know the words, but the melody has already been written upon our hearts and we have sung it together. Perhaps one day we shall again and when that day comes to pass you can tell everybody that this is your song. Until then keep looking up at the moon and know that when you are thinking about me I am thinking of you.

Elton cycles through to Circle of Life. Some people hate that song, they think of it as being too gimmicky or too whatever. Not me, I like it. Reminds me of my kids and I am a sentimental sap. Reminds me of when they really were babies that I could tuck in my arm like a football.

Last night I carried the six year old in from the car. She wasn’t really asleep, but she wanted me to carry her in and she knows that her daddy will always carry her. So I picked her up and stood in place. For a moment I closed my eyes and tried to take in the moment. Her head on my shoulder and my right arm underneath her butt. Used to be that I could carry her all day and all night and never get tired, but not any more.

My girl is getting so very big. She noticed that we weren’t moving and whispered, “daddy, carry me in” and I started walking. When I reached the side of her bed I waited another moment to put her down and then tucked her in. Little arms circled my neck, she kissed me on the cheek and told me that she loved me.

I whispered back that I loved her too and then sat down next to the bed. Even though it was dark I could see her staring at me. So I moved closer and whispered quietly, told her again that I loved her dearly and promised that I would always do my best to take care of her. She reached out, caressed my cheek and said “I know.”

And you ask why I am going to have to kill any boy that tries to date her. So sweet.

But, life moves on, things happen and you do the best that you can to roll with the punches whatever they may be. There are changes in the air and time moves on. Life is going to be interesting, but something tells me that we’ll find our way.

And much as I hate to do this, allow me to share some more song lyrics

Don’t look so sad
It’s not so bad you know
It’s just another night
That’s all it is.
It’s not the first
It’s not the worst you know
We’ve come through all the rest
We’ll get through this…

Lailah tov from Los Angeles