Jack of Clubs

My dear _______,

You don’t want to hear ‘this’, but I will tell you none-the-less. It’s only right, though you will have to keep this secret. Jack is lost. He already knows how you will hurt him, so just let him disappear. Now, I’ve said it.

Jack is jack-nothing to you. There’s no future. You like him as nothing, more, nothing more. Jack blames you, the one who takes his call. He now sees that you are the problem – He is just, he is just a symptom. You make too much of him. You make something ‘other’ of him. It is unreasonable. It’s jack. Just jack. This cannot continue. Let it fade to black. Leave the theater. Forget the secret utterance that signals “I am lost now” … Knowing, it would be easier to remember the madness, les sottise de valet… Pardon my jack-French -- I apologize.

(jack)I …
become tiresome.
(jack)I …
remain mysterious.
(jack)I …
Already lost.
(jack)I …
saying nothing.
(jack)I.
Jack
Just stops.

Like you, Jack must take a stand. You will call him selfish because of it, but he just doesn’t care anymore. Carefree.

Three facts:
1. Jack will not.
2. She will not.
3. We will.

Everything around Jack means nothing. There is no measure so Jack lets loose. He becomes hopeless; secreting what is felt in the blood and bones to see if he can trigger something beyond himself. My sorry Jack of Hearts bleeds. The hopeless hopes there is a witness. The nameless wishes to remain anonymous. The romantic looks for an interpreter to read the cuneiform, to decipher these cuts; an historian to remember the deluge.

Jack pillages the future from all this cosmic trash … Blinded by the unexplainable…
So, continue.

Find
‘this’

Mustard

Jack sat on pins and needles. Anxious, sometimes... Still, waiting for the familiar to arrive, his own familiar -- a suspect double he imagined would lift him from the malaise of knowing nothing -- the anathema of the jack-ass. The familiar, Jack thought, the jack-ass thought, would arrive in a golden carriage, in a flash of light, with an explosion that could not be ignored. Jack would know it had arrived from within -- he'd feel it ... suddenly alive -- bursting with joy and goodwill... Everyone would be surprised at the change. It would seem that Jack was no longer jack, but larger than himself ... still outside of himself but comfortable with this positioning.

The new Jack would look down on the old Jack with an aristocratic disdain. He'd try again to forget the Disaster. The starless, moonless nights... The Wagner Opera would stop running in his head, replaced by popsongs and jingles.

It will not arrive today. The double is careless this way. Couldn't care less...

"It is good to have goals. To have ambitions..." Jack thought as he waited. "But, it is also good not to want." What Jack really wanted was to not want. But, old habits are hard to break.


Lesson 6: night 3

jack-destiny tells us...
the saga continues...
find amity between the hypnotic and the operose...
assemble the insolent apparatus...
dead-duck proclivities dishonors the hic et nunc...

Bunny, ______ left the carnival to live a better life with the Psychoanalyst. Though she had not quite had enough of herself she had had enough of Jack. The lack of Bunny in Jack's life was not a cause for gloomy thirst or hunger, so much as the impetus for celebration. The white noise, the gray noise was gone for now and Jack hoped it would never return. It will of course, but for now he cherished the silence, the lack of thunderous downbeats and the shrill yet stolid warble of Bunny.

Though Jack had originally thought Bunny, ______ to be his familiar, it seems he had mistaken her for what he knew least of himself. He had had a change of heart. More foreign to Jack than Jack's own foreigness, Bunny was now just a speck ... of dust ... a shooting, fallen star ... something to be forgotten.


Lesson 7: day 4

jack-destiny tells us...
the saga continues...
exceed the chaffing hoi polloi...
ventilate through dialectic benevolence...
arrest and nullify efflorescent jack-abundance...

Without the momentum of the Arsonist or the blessings of Saint Augury -- the saga remains. Jack remains.

Antipodal Species

“Just being weird.” Jack said.
Jack imagined he’d say … as he stood in his room … before his desk, before beginning to write.
When Jill asked what he was doing,
Jack said, “Just being weird.”
… hiding out, standing before the desk … Jack thought this would lead somewhere but jack didn’t know Jack so it lead nowhere. Jill just walked away. The saga remains ... nothing happened.
“So it goes.” Jack said,
as he shook then nodded his head. Didn’t matter anyway, Jack didn’t know jack, jack doesn’t know Jack. He wasn’t brilliant or anything, though mostly he thought himself a genius, the originator of dreams, at least his own. Jack wasn’t brilliant; in fact, he was quite stupid, dim in this and that, at this particular moment, dimly lit, at this moment stupid. Impatient. Yet reticent.
Jack never said,
“Just being weird.”
He didn’t. He didn’t say jack – he didn't get the chance.
Jill remained silent, didn’t even see him standing there, awkwardly waiting for the chance to say,
“Just being weird.”
Jill didn’t care, Jill didn’t care for Jack, really, and only put up with him because she mostly thought he was mostly brilliant, though also mostly stupid. It depended upon the subject. In the matter of certain very specific things Jill thought he knew quite a lot, but in more common matters Jill thought he didn’t know jack.
He didn’t even know Jack.
None of this meant anything to either Jack or her, Jill. They were in some mysterious way using each other. Neither knew quite how the self was using the other but they were both quite certain that the other knew how they were using the other and in time would reveal this mystery. Jack reveals jack to her, Jill … Jill reveals jack to Jack. And so the affair was sustained by avoiding the subject, by remaining in anticipation of a hopeless revelation.
“Just being weird.” is a provocation.
Only. For Jack only. To Jill it doesn’t mean jack. Jill didn’t get it, not even the gesture -- Jack standing awkwardly in the darkened room uttering the words,
“Just being weird.”
… which meant just being Jack, just wanting, just feeling hurt, just feeling what should not be felt, not feeling anything since they had never really touched … Which meant just being the jack-ass that Jill though Jack was, just being what Jack thought Jill thought of him, just being weak. Jack was weak – in the knees mostly, but in the heart as well.

Nothing will be revealed, not even in time, not even over time. Rather, the tale of Jack is one of jack recurrence. The moment of anticipation for hopeless revelation will recur, though the exact phrase -- hopeless revelation -- will most likely not be repeated. Any revelation is an offering, a gift, a climax, a punchline with a rimshot and this tale is about becoming, or remaining at the point of Jack becoming something other than jack, Jack. This becoming will lead to nothing. Nothing will become of it … nothing good, at least. If not puzzling, these tedious affairs are at least a puzzle, to be resolved if not solved. And, even then nothing is offered in either regard. Nothing that will satisfy.

The puzzle, Jack requires a cure rather than a solution.

Apocryphamnesis

With the help of Nostalgia, Jack thought back across open fields of false memory ... the crooked ways and wishful thinking. He tried to keep a level head but as we know, Jack has the capacity to take what was once mostly perfect and destroy it, make it ugly ... now ... to take what seems balanced and knock it out of whack. What Jack had always thought was memory was not, not a remembering but a dismembering.

As he thought back to The City ...now... memory always failed, covered over with a gloss of urban splendor and decay. Lombard crossed Flatbush, Hope Street crossed Colfax ... J had the body of K had the body of L had the face of ... Even his recent memories of K-town, failures really, were covered over by some sort of sentimental goo. Disaster looked better -- enough to cause Jack to pine in its absence. One cannot see clearly when Nostalgia is in the room. Nostalgia is the detour ... the crooked way that leads Jack toward schmaltz.

Jack never looked for Disaster it just came to him ... occurred to him, welled up, beamed out, pulled in. Looking back, Regret was always the easiest sentiment to form because all it took was some pieces from a broken mirror and a handful of mud. Disaster and Regret are sometimes siblings, sometimes enemies, sometimes lovers. Disaster, when not affected by the engrammic erosion of Nostalgia, is indistinguishable from Regret. Disaster has the body of Regret has the body of Disaster has the face of...

Jack forgot. Or tried to.

Lesson in the Uncanny

Jack knows best. Jack knows better. Jack doesn't know jack! What Jack knows, and this is why he knows best, and better, is that Jack doesn't know jack. But, now Jack returns to the phlegmatic pretense of his office -- to what he knows best. Cleans the slate and starts again. This is Jack's hope at least, though he knows Saint Augury won't permit it. He is already jack-ass, too far gone, too far from the sea for everything to be washed away.

This begins in K-town, 9,000 miles from the City, with Jack lonely but not alone. Everything was bothering him, always had been, really... Since an early age Jack knew he was an old man ... born gray, Jack stayed that way. What was inside, though Jack would deny this, had always matched the outside... There were no differences to be negotiated, no mythology to maintain, no saga to be recaptured and transliterated.


First Memory:
Less than a month before Jack was born the Psychoanalyst gave his famous seminars. At the exact moment the Psychoanalyst began to speak, Brother-Poet abandoned verse for visual art.

Jack's birth was long and difficult, causing great pain to his mother and it was initially thought that the newborn Silosopher might have been damaged in the process. He didn't cry for days but continually sighed and cocked his head either left or right as if in contemplation. The Doctors and Nurses were baffled by this behavior, while Jack's parents worried for the health and welfare of their cherished runt. It was obvious to all that Jack was not a normal child and everyone wondered what would become of him, what Jack would become, if becoming was in the cards, the stars.

As Jack grew, childhood proved not to be his cup of tea. Already an old soul, an old man by kindergarten his tastes were well beyond crayons and eating paste. Jack preferred his great-grandfather's wine, his grandmother's inventive use of gestural profanity, and the pretentiousness of his friend's parents and his parent's friends to pretending with his own friends. He never was his own age.

___

Jack had always thought about writing this story. What prevented him from doing so was that he thought the saga ultimately boring. Even Jack was bored by the thought of it, so its retelling had for the most part remained limited to bar-time anecdotes, and drunken shanties better fit for bawdy nursery rhymes than literature.



Second Memory:
Brother-Poet, who now called himself the Artist, came into Jack's life early on. When they met it was immediately obvious that Brother-Poet, the Artist had little to teach Jack. Brother-Poet, the Artist who was Jack's elder, found this rather frustrating, since his employment depended upon his success in educating Jack. They argued endlessly, not over aesthetics or color theory but over what one could offer the other. It was minutes after one of these heated discussions that Brother-Poet, the Artist suffered a debilitating stroke, and hours later died.

Jack was introduced to the Psychoanalyst while at University, but it was not until after college that he was introduced (in)to psychoanalysis. The latter never really worked for Jack, as even here, on the couch he found himself somewhere else and the Psychoanalyst refused to interpret daydreams. Though Jack paid dearly for the sessions, he never quite bought them as curative. He considered the sessions to be research, and from the Psychoanalyst he learned how to draw.

___

That was then. Not even Nostalgia (stepmother of the muses) could overcome the shortcomings of jack-memory. The stacks of children's blocks ... a wood framed shanty ... the ticky-tacky flat.

First Commotion of Saint Augury

It ended as quickly as it had begun ... but the saga continues.

The night before, Jack's world had been populated by and occupied with Disaster so he was not surprised that in the morning he remained jack-ass.

Before coffee he was still trying to convince himself that Disaster was a good thing -- that Disaster signaled real progress... That any reversal was the beginning of momentum... But, as he rummaged through the rubble of the night before, Disaster began to lose its appeal for Jack. There had been a change in the weather -- from hot and humid to cold and clammy. All that was left were gray and jaundiced mementos, shards of glass and scraps of paper ... puce and pea-green puddles. Junk really...

By mid-morning Jack stopped thinking, started thinking about something other than thinking. Which is to say -- Jack woke up from the Arsonist's hex. jack-ass faded and something else of Jack, in Jack emerged. In an instant, Jack, no longer Jack or jack-ass decided to allow this becoming of what he was not. He thought without thinking that he had it in him to make this change -- to crack the code of the otherly, to learn the language of the orderly, to sort sagacity from the sordid. He just might.

Jack started to plot a course.

"collect weapons ... foster logic ... clean your plate ... listen carefully ... suppress desire ... clear your mind ... ignore curiosity ... travel ... don't overthink, methinks ... let go ... oil the squeaky wheel ... keep busy ... romanticize nothing ... avoid labor ... retreat ... follow birds ... feel less ... get out ... fidget ... stop dreaming ... confront everything ... remain hidden ... capture the moment ... muster the strength ... suppress desire ... clear your mind ... ignore curiosity ... covet ... follow passion ... relax ... overthink, methinks ... demonize the enemy ... prevent collapse ... advance ... tribulate ... play ball ... feel more ... enter into treaties ... be brave ... take notes ... lolly gag ... avoid conflict ... swagger ... equip yourself for Disaster ... prevent the idiotic ... be resourceful ... tread lightly ... just think, methinks ... dismiss everything ... repair the broken ... remain idle ... amplify ... cross swords ... balance ... stay put ... carry a big stick ... feel, more or less ... do not despair ... foster audacity ... brown-nose ... reject everything ... be the bigger person ... throw it all away ..."


By late afternoon Jack had lost interest in the rigors of Saint Augury, returned to jack-ass and took a nap.

Cosmic Trash

All this damned cosmic trash, from here and there, the TV and the radio, from the love of jack-life, killing jack, the way Jack kills himself. I'm not talking suicide. I mean cold blooded murder -- the death that is integral to sublimation. I mean a death that signals progress, the death that occurs when optimism seems stupid, when it means absolutely nothing. If there were jack-love I am sure it would kill Jack – she always does, she always has. And, Jack, perhaps would hate for this pattern to change, it is too beautiful, something to be proud of, awe inspiring -- wanting, but it doesn't seem safe, bright, dark enough. Just a bunch of wind...

There is just too much difference between them. They sat there, apart, babbling, challenging affection. Jack warned her, then apologized, so sorry for his Being, jack- being, not being able to make up his mind, his self-palavering mind.

.moving backwards

You write in your head when you look.
Understood.
But it seems looking is not enough.
Understood.

the variety store pocketbook stained with grape kool-aid
bad rubber check paintings
a phone book

"I'd call you but I'd rather not have to talk to you. I can't afford the charm; I can't afford you period, period(.)."

Mistake.

(left coast) forget the beatnik capital, the dead-dead ways, the circus ring around your neck. How well trained Jack thought he was, he thought she was. This had, has to change.

Mistake.

Jack has written a letter declaring his love because he knows he won't send it. Jack knows it isn't Jack she's leaving -- it's this place, this jack-place... So, it is Jack she's leaving. They both hold grudges -- it makes it easier.

stereotypes | fetishized body parts
the family | superheroes

70:
Three men loiter outside a barbershop. Their faces are hidden but historians wearing suits write their lives. There are uniforms and goals in this story. There's a clown in Jack's bed. A wealthy polygamist (pornographer) enlists women, their lives as yet unwritten (barbary), as subjects (law).

invisibility | silly perversion
hick-life | hick-love

80:
Three women turn their backs to Jack. They are unfit. There's a clown in Jack's bed. jack-sex belongs to the clown because Jack wants these women. They belong together. Jack wrote her body as more than one because there's a clown in his bed.

dishonesty | the idiot
the old school | power/desire

90:
Her smile is weak and there is only conflict. Jack's split so Jack splits for Bakersfield on a bus. There's a clown in his bed. The three women spit in his face.

simulated violence | familiarity
bourgeois journalism | mediation

00:
She's an ape, familiar. The ape woman is dead because her brain is too large, passive. There's a clown in Jack's bed tickling the ape woman. Bonds form so as to guarantee an end.

it's dusk now baby, so put your ear to the ground
listening for parenthetic angels
it only seems like jolly good fun

1. Jack pulls a rabbit out of a hat.
2. The rabbit, he thinks, is rabid because it bites his hand like she always does.
3. He tosses the rabbit out into the audience and it falls in her lap.
4. She brushes it away unaware of the gash it has put in her hand, maybe her face.
5. The blood frightens her and she glares at Jack.
6. Jack attempts to apologize for his mistake, her wounds.
7. She screams she is going to sue, call the cops, buy a gun.
8. She wants Jack dead, to make him pay, so she gives him her phone number.

Jack will not call. The number sits in a small tin box next to his bed, along with the numbers of others who want to kill him. If Jack had rented a different hat none of this would have happened.

Midori Frowns

They were sitting at the bar ... It was happy hour, harpy hour ... Jack stood at the edge of the party ... listening to the blabber of sophisticates ... on and on they talked -- the stock market, fashion, politics, Italian shoes ... on and on... Jack took mental notes, mental pictures and didn't say a word ... on and on they blabbered, speaking in tongues ... he and she and he and he, and the couple from the Bureau ... drinking cosmopolitans ... waiting for their table ... singing for their supper ... Jack didn't say a word ...

Jack's invitation had come late ... minutes before at the accidental meeting of he and she and he ... she, Midori, had known Jack before ... in The City ... when Jack was famous and she was not ... had said hello as they passed in the alley ... made the mistake of asking how he was ... it was her companions who made the invitation ... Midori frowned ... Now there they were ... sitting at the bar ... blabbering.

Midori was there so he and he would look better to the Bureaucrat and his wife ... Jack was there without reason, though surely played a part ... standing at the edge of the party ... Jack frowned ... was ignored ... there were no questions ... no introduction to he and the couple from the Bureau ... Jack, the shadow took mental notes, mental pictures and didn't say a word ... waited as they spoke in tongues.

They were drinking cosmopolitans when the maitre d came to show them to their table ... he moved his hand across Midori's ass as she spun her chair to stand ... Midori frowned at the snuskig gubbe, thought of slapping him and said, "I am just nineteen." ... she had told Jack the same five years before.

As the party approached the table, blabbering still, Jack realized this was no place for him ... there were only six chairs ... for he and she and he and he, and the couple from the Bureau ... nothing for Jack ... seated at the table, the party paid no attention to Jack standing there, the shadow ... on and on they talked -- handbags, cinema, psychiatry, Italian shoes ...Jack frowned again, didn't say a word, took mental notes, mental pictures ... headed toward the exit ... toward the alley ... toward the harbor.

"What a serious man."