The Contents of My Pockets - or - Memoirs From My Pants

Hey.

I've been doing a lot less writing over the past 11 months or so.  More theatre and songwriting and such.  But not writing writing.  Clear, adult reflections on what's been going on so far with Jara Jones.  What I've learned, and where I want to clear up patches of my ignorance.

And, after a rare morning where I actually spent two hours sitting in a diner having a leisurely breakfast, reading a novel and sipping coffee like the fantasy version of the grown-up I'd always wished I'd resemble, I thought:  Why do you make writing so damned hard, Jones?   It's not.  Good writing, sure - it's a horror.  It's a story of abandon and draft after perilous draft, of sending out copies of what you've done and getting less and less feedback to the point where you're convinced that it's garbage and that it has no value but you keep honing the text , keep loving and attending to it with fanatical devotion in an effort to beg its purpose. (Exhibit A:  My one man show of fear, love, and collapse - GHOST ON A STICK.  It will be completed and produced  -if only as a staged reading at first - before 2012 leaves me.  It fucking has to  - it's eaten up a decade of my life and constantly taunts me with its lack of completion and the fact that somewhere in that show is something wonderful and I need to find it and deliver it)

But not all writing has to be good writing.  In this digital dayscape, with text spilling forth from everywhere, we can write effortlessly and raw sometimes and let it live in the moment. 

So, that's the idea with a thought experiment I'll be starting.  I call it - THE CONTENTS OF MY POCKETS.  Basically, I'll reach into my wallet or pockets and pull something out at random and riff on it and not edit it.  See where it goes.  Make it a bite-sized memoir.  Here's the first entry:

Red Casual Male XL Rewards Card

It's a fat card.  A card for being fat.  Even the store name is condescending as fuck.  "We at Casual Male believe our customers have no desire to sweep away the crumbs from a fortnight of meals off their distended and pillowy lakes of flesh.  So, we keep them happy with ill-fitting slabs of prison-drab attire!" 
I hate it.  I rarely shop there unless I have no other option.  I'm fat.  I've been fat since I hit puberty and I went from being rail thin to just ballooning up and my weight's been see-sawing from there.  I was always a guilty kid, and I clearly remember forging my parent's signature on a note in the sixth grade for a disciplinary mark I got from my teacher because I was reading in class instead of paying attention ( I had already finished the lesson and was bored, bored, bored , but she got extremely upset and made me stay after class and wrote this note which she said my parents had to sign).  I was and am an extremely straight-laced , anxious kid, and it gave me the dry heaves to imagine my parents being ashamed of me getting in trouble.  So, I faked their signature on the form. Practiced my dad's almost epileptic-esque scrawl for a few hours and gave it a go.  Handed it back to the teacher, and that next day, my parents took us on our big family trip to Disneyland.  But I couldn't enjoy it at all.  I felt so rotten, so terrible.  I lied and without being honest I had nothing.  The trip ended, and my parents asked me what was wrong and I broke down sobbing and confessed my crime and they looked at me like I was crazy.  And then I immediately started puberty.  For the longest time, I felt my obesity was a way to punish me for lying.  And, since I shared my parent's habits and brain chemistry, being depressed didn't really make me want to exercise or improve my diet. I liked reading and playing video games and spending hours and hours just staring at the white, pop corn speckled walls, daydreaming about the plays or films I'd one day create, or the songs I wanted to make up, or the grand, passionate romances I would have.  Not really calorie-crunching activities.  And my folks were dismayed.  They saw my skin buckling and my clothes growing tighter, and they tried to encourage me to get better, but I never did.  And today, I still see my obesity as a weakness. Women see it as another reason to avoid me. I treat it like a dog I never liked.  Ignore it, press it down.  Hide from it.  And, if those feelings bubble, dive into bed.  Sleep it away.  Distract it with a story or a song or writing.  But when I have no option to hide, when I'm trying on new clothes or staring into the mirror or feeling strange, unfamiliar physical pains or actually skin to skin with a rare, wonderful woman, it assaults me.  I've wished for so long to be the very archtype of aloof humanity Alan Watts joked about:  the human consciousness as a head with a long, ignored string for a body.  But I'm not.  I'm fat.  And I really don't know how to get better.

Waiting - first draft of new original song and thoughts on depression

Hey.

I was in the doctor's office the other day.  Nothing wrong, just finally making a check-up and finding my own physician in New York City.   And I'm talking with the doctor, just summing up what I've been through medically in the past.  She stops me halfway through, asks me when's the last time I saw a psychiatrist.

And her tone is obvious.  You really need to see a shrink.  Do it.

I've never had a positive experience with therapy or pills.  It feels like one drawn out magic show where I know all the tricks and it's not entertaining and I don't want to watch it.  I know I've inherited a lot of biochemical triggers and habits which lead to depression (another reason why I will never have children)  But  I haven't found a pill yet or a mode of therapy which engages me or helps in the long run.  Instead, I live off these little highs and lows from creating things or writing or doing plays or making music and when I'm running ragged or lonely or have a lot of free time on my hands, I hide by sleeping.  I'm not a cutter.  I don't binge eat or drink or have a relationship with anyone at the moment.  I sleep.

And sure, a lot of that habit is rooted in fear.  With every second, I feel insignificant and ugly and convinced that I'm not going to be loved again.  I fear that I won't be able to make a creative impact and that I'll never have much of an artistic career.

And then I make a song or do a play and that muck clears for a brief window. And that's why I do it.


Here's the song.  It's called Waiting.  It gets a little loud at the end; just a warning.

LYRICS

First Verse
I spend the hours in my bed
Close my eyes, the shutters drawn and tight
This humble bargain that I've pled
I lie, pretend it's all I've wanted, right

The silence, see it crumble and wither
Gone awry, senses are reeling, pain to deliver

Chorus

I keep waiting
I keep waiting
for the building
to burn down

I keep waiting
I keep waiting
for the building
to burn down

Second Verse
What came first, being bitten or being shy
Haven't seen the sun for days and days
You can't hurt me if I don't even try
Spend my time in a still malaise

Forgotten what it's like to be needed
Damn the lot, entropy crying out to be feeded

CHORUS

Bridge
Now, will I find serenity
Among the ash and misery
 - the char and chill  -
come what will
as sure as every story ends in death
can't turn the pages, hold my breath
 the day will come
 Damn you, start living -
 don't keep waiting
I keep waiting
just keep waiting
I keep waiting - why am I still waiting?

CHORUS