Below are the 6 most recent journal entries recorded in Jono's LiveJournal:

Thursday, November 10th, 2005
9:50 pm	Undeliverable Messages (Screw you, Matt Elliot) Here is an example of a story that includes writing in the second person, writing across gender, and an old dude who is not looking back. This is an effort to counter some really generous advice by one Matt Elliot. It can be found here and I disagree dammit. ( Undeliverable Messages ) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005
11:08 pm	BAH GOD UPDATE: Bushman Below are 16 haiku about this guy, who's been in San Francisco for decades, waits behind a bush in the middle of a busy sidewalk to scare passers-by and to panhandle the crowds that watch, and is awesome. They were part of a larger project and ended up being the only part really worth posting right now. My old senior comp professor appeared to me in a dream last night and told me to "stop being so tenative" (we were climbing nets miles above the sidewalk), so here's to that. ( Sixteen Ways Of Looking At A Bushman ) (Comment on this)
Monday, September 12th, 2005
12:05 am	Pool Hall, Knuckleball The other day, an interview with Paul Newman. The interviewer brings up a line from a movie I never saw ("The Hustler"). [Fast Eddie is bothered because Bert called him a born loser] Fast Eddie: Cause, ya see, twice, Sarah... once at Ames with Minnesota Fats and then again at Arthur's, in that cheap, crummy pool room, now why'd I do it, Sarah? Why'd I do it? I coulda beat that guy, coulda beat 'im cold, he never woulda known. But I just hadda show 'im. Just hadda show those creeps and those punks what the game is like when it's great, when it's REALLY great. You know, like anything can be great, anything can be great. I don't care, BRICKLAYING can be great, if a guy knows. If he knows what he's doing and why and if he can make it come off. When I'm goin', I mean, when I'm REALLY goin' I feel like a... like a jockey must feel. He's sittin' on his horse, he's got all that speed and that power underneath him... he's comin' into the stretch, the pressure's on 'im, and he KNOWS... just feels... when to let it go and how much. Cause he's got everything workin' for 'im, timing touch... it's a great feeling, boy, it's a real great feeling when you're right and you KNOW you're right. It's like all of a sudden I got oil in my arm. The pool cue's part of me. You know, it's uh - pool cue, it's got nerves in it. It's a piece of wood, it's got nerves in it. Feel the roll of those balls, you don't have to look, you just KNOW. You make shots that nobody's ever made before. I can play that game the way... NOBODY'S ever played it before. Sarah Packard: You're not a loser, Eddie, you're a winner. Some men never get to feel that way about anything. I've heard the idea before. Everyone has - it feels good when you're "in the zone," when you're doing really well at anything, right? When I heard the line, I immediately flashed back to this book that I read in a crazy little Eastern Philosophies class in my crazy little high school - Musashi's Book of the Five Rings. Essentially, a samurai sort-of-guy explains how you can achieve enlightment by being extremely good at anything, using his own amazing skill at combat as an example. By devoting his life to beating the shit out of people, he learned to beat the shit out of people so effectively that he immersed himself completely into the activity, and the conscious mind whose cravings and insanities make us miserable fades away - we are mindless in action, one with the world, enlightened. Like the Hustler, he believed that anyone could do it with anything - through combat, art, bricklaying, anything - if you devoted yourself to it so that you existed as an extension of that. Through any activity, we can achieve a state of grace. And I think that I've felt that, a few times, in flashes. Sometimes, writing flows out of me and it's an ecstatic experience, but painfully rarely. I've felt flashes of it a few times in a range of things: performing, laughing, working, flipping burgers. I can't devote my life to flipping burgers (career-wise, anyway), and I let the opportunity to pursue performing vanish unfulfilled rather than risk failure (a waste, a waste, and i'm trying to let that drive me now - "Better to live in hope than to never have lived at all"), so the most socially acceptable pursuit is writing. But then again, for every minute of writing in which I've experienced sheer joy, I've also experienced ten minutes (an hour, a year) of gut-wrenching fear and pain. Is it worth it? If I've spent these last few months knowing that writing could be my ticket out - that which makes me feel fulfilled (and were the girls a distraction from that gap?) - and wanting to make something of myself - but being too lazy or afraid to do actually do something, am I really cut out for it? Is it worth it? Would it work? And I know that I won't be happy unless I try it and do it, but let's see when I actually write something new. She gave me a picture of a closed door when I graduated - and I know that I will always regret not trying to tear that motherfucker open if I don't follow through with this - and yet, and yet, and yet. Anyway, here's another story. I wrote it before I really knew much about baseball, so there are things that I really regret about it now, to the point of writing this namby-pamby disclaimer - and yet, and yet, and yet. Forgive it, forgive me. ( Knuckleball ) (Comment on this)
Friday, September 9th, 2005
12:37 am	Remember this Remember this years from now. It's about noon - you write your parents, you tell them that four job opportunities fell through, that you don't know what the fuck you're going to do, that you're depressed, discouraged, and scared. You miss her. In the e-mail, something that you write comes off as a sort of shot at your dad, who has always been good to you, you regret it as soon as it's sent. You feel terrible, but you have to hurry to make lunch now so that you can leave for work, and as you're doing that, your phone gets a message from your dad, who is calling, telling you not to be too depressed, that you have enough money to hold out for a few months, that you're going to be okay, and he sounds sad, sad for you, but he says that you're going to be okay. Halfway through the message, you start bawling, the first real cry in years. Minutes later, there you are, eating applesauce for lunch on the dusty couch in the dark room, your eyes still damp, an old man on the television watching and listening to a younger classical pianist. When the music stops, the old man speaks, and you realize that you are eating applesauce and watching Mr. Rogers alone, tear-stained and only temporarily employed. This seems like such a recognizable low point - something that you can remember years later and think look how far I've come since then, look at what I have built since then - and the ridiculous overwrought quality of this moment is so transparent that you begin to feel better. It's funny, right? Remember this years from now. Here's another story. ( Undeliverable Messages ) (Comment on this)
Monday, September 5th, 2005
9:18 pm	The mission At some point along the line, I stopped working. I'm not sure why, I'm not sure how. Maybe I used the work that I was doing for school as an excuse to not work outside of that realm, and maybe that's fair. Nonetheless, instead of filling the time with thinking about how I was going to improve in all of the areas that bothered me - I'm lonely, I'm too fat, I'm don't read enough, I don't write enough - I focused on the first problem as if it would solve the rest, as if another's acceptance of the way that I was would allow me to accept myself. For a while, this worked - I've always looked for something to obsess about, something that would fill the empty hours between every minute, and the long line of shes helped a lot. But here I am now, after a summer wasted in sloth, after a year spent gradually becoming afraid of my own writing and my own growth, a year of looking toward you not like a man but like an addict. And if you're reading, I'm sorry - that's one of the factors that turned a good thing bad. It's time to rebuild. The people that I admire accomplished the things that amaze me through sheer sweat. The problem was believing that I could become the person that I wanted to be without the work that's always at the base of everything good. It's time to work. It's time to build the person that I want to become - not expecting results, but believing that the work itself purifies me. The work itself - reading, writing, exercising my mind and my body - is the good life. Anyway, this journal is part of that. I need another reason to write, so here's one. Thanks for getting through all the rambling above, here's a story. ( The Seeds ) (Comment on this)
9:11 pm	The beginning Hello. Here's the first piece of prose that I wrote since the end of the thesis. There was a poem written on the spur of the moment at a wedding that was technically the first thing, and it was important to me, but it also kind of sucked and I don't have it anyway. This isn't fiction but what the hell, for the record's sake: submitted for review: The problem is not that I am alone, but that I ever believed that someone else could bridge the miles between me, myself, and I. The solution, then, is nothing less than reshaping the ground upon which I live. The solution is to reunite the trinity: to bring body, mind, and dreams together into the self that will always be my companion. For some time, I've looked for a purpose that electrifies me into a state of belief. The solution is this mission of simultaneous excavation and construction: a capital project completed only in the death that vivifies us. (Comment on this)