Jacbook Wednesday

As things have calmed down a bit I am feeling just a bit less stressed about the next moment. Not to say that I am over anything because I am not, but I do feel that I have been able to concentrate on the work that needs to be done both vocationally and on my character defects and shortcomings. Through the storm that is my life I have also been able to see the breaks between the clouds and its not raining in every step I take. 

Invisible Ink

I can’t but think that all my work will end up in a scrapbook with invisible ink.  I suppose some might remember when the smoke clears what happened and not think it was a waste of time. I sure won’t because I learned so much and I will take that to Davy Jones’ Locker.

Blood is thicker than water no matter who pays the bills. I don’t mean that in a nasty way but money is just paper and when you die they can use it for wallpaper on your coffin. 

Heartache

Heartache is a funny thing it arrives without a knock.  It just jumps in and parks right smack dab in the middle of your solar plexus. Today I had a mild attack in my walk-in clothes closet and it stayed with me until about 20 minutes in to my spin class. Tripp Doherty was my tonic today and without the Zen of spin I might be alone on an island looking for sugar plum fairies. 

I have to concentrate on the work that I do and produce because there are still three people in my care even though my atom has been split. Obligations I will always fulfill and no one need worry that I would leave those that loved me in a lurch. Some might have a different opinion but what other people think about me is none of my business.  

Straits of Gibraltar

The book on me today is that I have never looked forward more to a Monday than I have to this one. Appointments kept, made and the future looks just a bit less occluded on this the start of the workweek. I have many obligations in the coming days and months and I will with the help of divine guidance navigate the Straits of Gibraltar with the radar on high gain and high resolution to avoid the small targets that will keep me from instincts in collision. 

Out of the Past

As I sit alongside my wife in a crowded hotel as she sets up for her craft show, the assembling admirers of her handiwork exclaim: “Did you make these?”  Yes my Margaret retorts in her uniquely demure fashion.  She has acquired the talent to be a little more aggressive albeit in a shy way. Nonetheless you can tell she is proud of her work and that is no small feat as she has a standard that even a high hurdler would find challenging. 

What I find so calming to me is that it is here that I want to be today. I get the day off from my vigorous workout regimen. I have my computer and so I can write and I even have the backup which I have seemingly abandoned my journal and pen. This weekend has been a blessing for me as I feel this sense of not being an island, which was my own, self-imposed exile I sentenced myself to.  

I have a family and for that I am grateful.  As a childless male I have been blessed to take up stewardship of another who has left his post without so much as a tear being shed.  I spend no time feeling sorry for this biological father because luckily for me he has resigned his commission without so much as a departure letter.  

Lucky, blessed whatever you would like to call it I can continue my legacy if not in name but in the footprints I leave after I am long gone. Does anyone know how to make plaster casts?

Satan's Evil Twin

This moniker appeared from out of the blue yesterday as I walked up the steps to my porch. Sometimes I need to bring myself down the least common denominator so that I can rise from the depths instead of sink to lower ones.  I know I am not the devils notorious sibling but it did give me pause for thought that some thought of me in that light. It’s the only reprieve for them at this point in time.  

I suppose that as long as you’re not married to me that I am not such a bad guy even though there were some days that I was negotiable in the bonds of matrimony. My patterns are just different and I did try but just like the chronic relapser I still bite my nails. 

People Will Talk

Life in the fast lane just got slower and it feels good not to be hurtling through space at breakneck speeds. I want to collect my thoughts and realize that nothing is forever and what seems like pain one day may be exhilaration the next. When people place and things ride uncharted courses there is bound to be egos in collision.  And when those prone to gossip about you it is because of their personal need to feel superior to you even if it serves no purpose. Funny how the court of public opinion has jettisoned you as if they are entitled to judge you by their own set of rules.  I will stay out of judging others who judge me because it is simply not my province to be Solomon. And I will hold the notion  that what people think of me is none of my business.   

I Don't Know Jack

Well son I guess it was doomed from the start and of course I will not forget anything and I will not consider it a waste of time because I did a lot of good a lot of good. I just have my own demons but those are issues that I have never resolved from my childhood. Perhaps it was the death of my sister in 1969 I don't know I have a psychology degree but I am not a psychologist. (Yet) My problem was that your mom in my mind needed saving and since I was a people pleaser it seemed like a great fit. And make no mistake she is a wonderful woman, mother, wife (for the right man). I will always love her deeply and no one can tell me different even she.
The pressure of finance, my own ego was my undoing as a step parent and the attention I am getting now from my writing has sated my "wandering star" I unfortunately will not have a legacy like your mom and see your children or your sisters children but they will be always in my heart. I know what I am culpable for but I am still Jack or John inside. I for the first time in my life don't know what I want actually because no one has ever asked me including myself. Now I need to do that. Whatever is next however there will be no obfuscation I am who I am warts and all.
It's not cheesy that metaphor and remember that  for you and your wife I did my best and for a time I did the best I could for your sisters. (They didn't have to unfriend me on FB lol) Mea culpa my son and you will always be what you were to me a challenge at times (waking you up for school) and a joy when you graduated college and when you married that beautiful woman next to you. I need this forum because for me it is a catharsis and I have no family here.

Back On My Horse

After a week on the lam I have come back to reclaim my den. As I sit here watching my beloved Yankees all three are upstairs hunkered down in their respective rooms probably for the night. I will settle down with my emotions and take my anger and put it on the shelf at least for the present. I know that none of the residents in my house are up to taking me on maybe because I hold all the cards or maybe they are not up to a war of words with me. But I won’t use that as a wedge or brandish it anyone’s face. I am done retreating I am here. Living with me might be even more difficult than living without me. Maybe it will be the reverse when my body of work is looked at with some impartiality. I did notice I lost another FB stepdaughter but I guess I am stuck with her financially for the duration. It’s funny too how I am still good for some things including my address. I think I would like to pull the plug on that except for the fact that I might hurt the one that I hurt and I don’t want that.

Happy Fathers Day

Dr. Richard Kimble and I will become very good friends  today; fugitives from family justice are often heard not seen.  I am only speaking metaphorically lest someone take my words literally. 

Although I never fathered a child biologically that survived the birthing process, I was caretaker to three young adults for 13 years.  I have mixed feelings about my efforts and undertaking the job that another man abandoned for reasons that I will never know.  I am also ambivalent about how now they have abandoned me because of my “chosen” behavior. I do know that when the s**t hits the fan in their lives that I would love to be a fly on the wall to witness how their judgmental attitude adheres to their self-righteousness.  A bit of sour grapes for sure on my part but how adults take it upon themselves to enter into private business is reprehensible and the only anger I hold is towards them.  Conversely, I hold only sympathy and sadness for my wife who is the only victim here, not her children.  One day at a time will work and if it doesn’t one minute at a time surely will.  

The Wolf's Cry

Blue true love never came from the wolf’s cry. We think that the animals cry within us is love calling, it’s simply our hormones goading us into brainwashing the mind that it is in love. Well hardly. All five senses gang up on us at one time and we think we have no alternative but to believe nature has found us our mate. Ah but there’s the rub. When the five senses can no longer conjure up the excitement they together helped produce, we are usually left with just one sense and alone it can’t quite carry it off. Compound that with our partner having the same plight and a different sense than the one we rely on, the disintegration process has already begun. She is visual and you are touchy feely. She likes to “see” things and you want to “feel” them. The communication is headed for a break down. The language barrier between you becomes a bridge too far. In the beginning it’s all-blissful, but inevitably ennui rears its ugly head. And just like a shark that fails to keep moving love sinks and just gets too heavy to start breathing again.Lust is the main culprit, which takes this imagined love as its wolf’s cloak. Lust is a beautiful emotion God gave us but it usually gets us into trouble once we have had the peak sensation. And lust can take us for quite a ride and can even make us forget the torture she puts us through in between love making sessions. We imagine she’s in love with us during the sex act only to find she’s grown even colder after the last time in bed.

Funny when you ask why we try to bed someone it is usually because they’re hot. And we hope we fall in love with their mind later. And if they aren’t blessed with a steamy presence we get to know their mind first and go to bed with them later.

So what do we do? Go to trueharmony.com and try to get our 27 character defects lined up with someone else’s? Do we leave it to chance meetings in bars, the supermarkets or serendipitous chance meetings?

The first conundrum is when we find someone attractive how quickly do we head to the horizontal dance between the sheets? If it’s the first night the stigma of he’s a player and she’s a slut gets stamped across our foreheads. If we go back into the 20th century we waited in some cases until we were married before we engaged in coitus. But it’s the 21st century and fortunately/fortunately it’s more like the third date when we “consummate” the relationship. Too soon? Who is to say? A month, two months? Does that insure respectability or even longevity? The trick is to have had as many lucid moments as possible before we share our body with someone else. We could get casual about sex, practice it safely and hope we hook that striped bass we can take home to the family for more intense viewing. But casual sex can harden our attitudes about love and we get calluses instead of finding a tender spot with someone.

Some men and most women resort to being a bit more particular in choosing a bed partner. If it includes alcohol and we end up in bed sooner than we had planned our regret period may leave us wishing we had waited. Better we get a little more analytical and decide tonight’s the night before we have imbibed any spirits. It might take some of the spontaneity out of the moment but better that than waking up with buyer’s remorse the next morning when we glance to the other side of the bed. Let’s face it, we make decisions based on emotions and then we justify them with logic later. Don’t we do the same with carnal knowledge?

There can never be enough time when it comes to thinking we love someone. But love is a disappearing act, it not only comes and goes but it becomes ghostly when the amount of love we give relies on how much we can take. That sweet feeling becomes bitter when we mix in the sour grapes of judgment and cynicism. Attachment is the ultimate spy that we clamor for and takes with it disillusionment as its partner and we are never the same. Expectation becomes insistence and no one can live up to those selfish claims not even us. Things that we think are required for love are the elements that decompose it.

Just what are those elements? Smothering disguised as attention. Possessiveness wearing the mask of faithfulness, and needing becoming a un healthy co dependence. And in the end sensuality and sexual attraction become emotional apathy. Which brings me to the biggest lie of love, SEX. It is the celebration of the biological function that gives chemistry a bad name. Acrimony and jealousy seem to be covered up by great sex. And when everyday life comes calling the prime ingredient of the relationship gets thrown out with the Wednesday night trash. When monogamy becomes routine, sex is the glue that keeps the two pieces together. But unless the union has interlocking pieces the parts will separate and die. Not a very lovely view of one of the greatest gift to us humans, sex but when we place so much emphasis on it when we begin a relationship we will wonder if we can ever trust our libido.

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Time Expired

A critical time in my development has arrived and although it came too late for some it might just be in time for me. I have of late come up with the phrases: The stick is getting shorter and everyone has an expiration date. The latter being one that most of us are extremely hesitant to face but we all know that we lose friends, lovers, significant others, spouses because of a host of reasons. Usually it’s because we have changed our growth pattern from the ‘other’ and in a sense we seem like we have become bored or lost interest. I know in my case it might seem that I get bored easily but I am not that high maintenance. It could be that I have a short attention span. Yeah maybe that’s it. I also know that I am Mr. Magoo and can’t see the things as plain as day like the fingerprints all over my computer screen that I didn’t put there.  And that can be disconcerting to some and the fact that I am constantly losing things because I don’t keep my head where my feet are. 

I for the time being am going to let go what some will call Jack’s character defects and still others that will hate me because of their own belief systems. Going forward no more obfuscation and that includes everyone even those that have an expiration date.  

The Day After the Night Before

The Beatles in August of 1965 released the single: The Night Before and today it carries a tune that my heartstrings are playing and that is  the song of sorrow and disappointment. I have failed more times in matrimony and only Elizabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney have me beat but this time I think the song has ended and the ties that bind will have to be ones made of bakery string instead of the chains of love. (Which is one my all-time favorite songs)?

I can’t go back that I know and in order for me to learn from this 13-year experience I must give up the notion that I am the marrying kind. Because if I am frank with myself the answer is that I am just not. I tried but it’s not in me. Does that make me a bad person? In the court of public opinion and the issues  of my blended family it does. I will take away what I need and I know that I walked in my shoes and I walked in theirs as well.  

  I will also live knowing that I will probably  never see these stepchildren ever again. I was already  told that I will  never see them across the Thanksgiving table and I will miss my 3 Father’s Day cards this year as I came up a week too short.  I think I might have saved one or two and I can peruse them in the rocking chair one day.  

The Night Before we said our goodbyes and as the bitterness turns to memories I will have a deep regret but know that I loved the way I could and no one, no one can tell me different.

Making Peace

Making peace is always a good thing especially when you have unspoken hurt feelings lying inside the heart and mind. I know what I will be losing (at least I think I do) but living is the only way to tell what you are living without.  I have been blessed for 13 years. I can look at it as all for naught but I won’t do that to the memory I share with my blended family. I tried my best with ½ a Brady Bunch family but in the end my own character defects and shortcomings kept me from completing the mission that I had no real plan for. 

Now that emotions have been at least confronted the unwinding process begins. There are so many things I can still maintain with my soon to be ex-wife and that is a civility and an appreciation of our individual but very different talents that we both possess. I will miss many things but for now maybe I can get along better with her without obfuscation of any kind.  

Taking Inventory

Now that those that have judged me in their own special way without regard for anyone but their own ego satisfaction, I can go on with my personal journal. There is no doubt in my mind that I am a dog but this canine gave three siblings a home when theirs had disintegrated 13 years ago. I took them in at various stages of their lives and gave them shelter, food and a home base while they went on with their egocentric ride of personal development. At present maybe my heart feels regret and sorrow but it also feels a deep hostility as my “personal choices” have left me as the outlaw who stole their mother’s happiness that she never had until I showed up on the scene in 1998. 

People in glass houses should not throw stones and now that I have been stoned in silence I will remind those that have thrown me under the bus that they best take a look at their own behavior before they take my inventory. Believe me I have taken my inventory and look around because mine is not the only judgment day they will be part of. I will have more to say on this topic soon.  

13 Years To the Day

Odd that my family life died this day I take full responsibility and blame no one but myself. 

This going forward will be my personal journal and the traffic that I have garnered of late will disappear and will no longer focus on what's wrong with my life but what is good about my life.  I am on balance a good man no matter what the court of public opinion says. 

Feelings Aren't Facts Part III

I sometimes forget  this AA idiom and it might serve me well right about now in my life. As I seem to feel like I am an island surrounded by sharks that don’t talk just bite. 

I am not sure that metaphor works but when I am encased in silence around me I can only hear my brain squeak which like a noisy fan can keep me from the somnolent state. My entries as I have written in this blog were supposed to be seen only by me. However, try as I might my ego which is not part of my writing but likes to lay claim to it especially if it is viewed as being good insists that is be available like my other etchings are. 

I kind of like JacBook because it allows me to ramble with even less direction than an Abbott and Costello movie. For those that don’t know that obscure reference it was a comedy team in the 1940’s that was top box office and its movies were thin on plot but fat on comedy. Mostly I think that JacBook inspired by someone that knows me better than the back of my own hand gives me the opportunity to relax and not be too concerned with content and just go on a junk run. Junk runs were filler in between my structured runs in the 1970’s and 80’s wherein I just logged miles and had little concern about its value for future performances. 

I entitled today’s entry: Feelings aren’t facts didn’t I? Well it is often hard to separate the two especially when feelings are usually so selfish and egocentric it’s hard to discern that most of the time feelings are projections and conclusions without any hard evidence and a paucity of  facts as well.  

The Silent Treatment Part IX

This weekend has brought me another round of the silent treatment. Where does anyone think that will get them? My ego would love to just pull the plug on all of this but my anima wouldn’t stand for it. My life is on the move and it only seems like I am at a weigh station but that’s because I have to check my own cargo before I move on.  

I could feel sorry for those that lack the communicative skills I possess but maybe they have other skills I have not considered.  I suppose too that I am in purgatory for the time being but I refuse to be in a living hell so that those who cannot fend for themselves sit and wait for me to make the next move. The weekend used to mean my respite from the workweek but now it only serves as a self-imposed prison until the weekdays arrive again. Fortunately these days do pass quickly.  

Chessboard Moves

The main ingredient keeps changing when it comes to life in my house. I am the only one that seems to make moves on the chessboard. My stepson and his wife are a beautiful couple but do not have the indomitable spirit that God has bestowed on me. I have always wished what was best for my son when he took up residence with his mother and I some 13 years ago but his glass has always been half full. I suspect that his wife as lovely as she is suffers from depression because she feels she should be with child by now. Exacerbated by the fact that my stepson’s cousins are both in the family way. 

I can’t for the life of me figure out what to do at this point. It would seem that my only move is a compounding one that unseats my wife, my stepson and his wife and yours truly from the home we have made these past 8 years. In some ways it has gone by in a blink and economics makes it drudgery rather than a home that I clamor to come home to. I can’t put my life on hold any longer I must move on in physical and or spirit. I am trusting that my higher power will guide me in the right way for all concerned for my and their future.  

A Fortnight

It’s been a fortnight since I have made an entry in Jacbook. Well not really but I love that word so much I just had to use it in a sentence. This past week has brought much momentum in my personal as well as physical life and it all starts with me. It really can’t be any other way because the people in my life are always content to live in the status quo. I of course cannot. And as a symbol I have let my face grow long this week and I have little intention of taking a razor to it. Not more than a small sample of rebellion, nothing too major at least for the time being. 

When things are set in motion they tend to stay in motion until they land and when they do things will never be the same or be in the same place.