Where's the Rand McNally Already?

They talk about weak spots in terms of chocolate cake and lottery tickets. My weak spot begins with a slow, internal sigh, a few hopeless thoughts flitting through my mind like forlorn moths bumping into screen and then a dive into a jagged hole of despairing introspection.

Where is my life going? If I grow, will I ever feel like it's enough? And, even then, will it all flop? Failure? Failure. Failure.

Weird coming from someone newly engaged, recent first home-buyer, less than one year old business starter. Yet I find my head constantly swiveling between black and white photos saluting the Statue of Liberty and Jesus returning on a horse.

I'm just saying.

I recently saw the new Alice and Wonderland. Aside from suddenly wanting cakes that say "Eat Me" to appear, there were three lines in it that stuck out in an eyebrow-furrowing, heart-thump kind of way. This was it: at three different points in the movie - three moments throughout the elaborate and adventurous and, of course, lesson-learning journey of Alice through Wonderland - the wise and mystical caterpillar (the one smoking the hookah, of course) said these things to Alice and in this order:

#1) You're hardly Alice.

#2) You're not quite Alice.

#3) You're Alice, at last.

Strangely, this helps me.

Because if I take a turn in my introspection from the gloom and despair and doubt and ask myself why I care so stinking much about where my life is heading, I realize this driving ache has been there since I was eating Gerber's and sitting in Desitin. I. want. to. become.

And then I remember this. Jesus actually knows who, as fleshy, pooping babies, we were intended to become. He knows how those few years in childhood put guilt on us we can't shake or how that relationship pumped us full of fear and worry or that we have been steeped in a culture that taught us to love and be loved conditionally.

He prods us. Pushes us. Asks for permission to change things, show us new organs he wants to put in us and does the surgery, to boot. Challenges us. Doesn't do the expected. Is painfully simple with his love. Treats us unlike the grandma or the boyfriend or the wife or the pastor or the best friend did.

We give ourselves to this and find out it's doing things to us. We. are. becoming. So much so that hope is snowballing and a part of me believes that at the end Jesus will take a drag of his hookah, exhale through his nose and say, "Jordan, at last."

Jazz Night

I am proud to follow in your footsteps. I do not speak in silly cliche or metaphor.
It is your real and blood filled foot stepping over rock and root.
When you fall I laugh and celebrate, and you laugh too because we share it.

I am proud to climb to rickety heights with you, to stand on places that Olympians have stood.
We love and tumble as men, and our grandfathers look on proudly.

Do you have such as us? Do you stake out your place in the night boldy, or
do you crawl into bed fed by gruel and television.

I will take my meat, and I will have this night and gladly give you
50 ignoble days in exchange.... and I will not let it be taken from me
by any force of man or time.

Mike's Self Portrait

I am the Viking warrior.
I am a Polish slave.
I am a German worker.
I am a Scottish king.

Through histories fog and misfortune, I have been molded, scolded and folded into this man you see before you. This blond haired, blue eyes, misfit, this lazy ass tumbling, this “I don’t wanna budge” adolescent caught between willy nilly and 80 year old windows to my soul.

I am a conniving thief, I am a miracle, I owe you more, but you wont get it from me. I am mostly lost, yet it’s finally finished, I am done, I am scared, I give up, I stand up, I fight, I am a wavering walking contemptuous contradiction. I will give much, and leave you wanting, I will try hard, yet never will I be enough.

What I want I will not have, what I crave I can not fight for, when I think of me, I think of black and red, I think of white and I think of blue, I am a grayish purple hot rod soon to go out of style.

I am a creek of culmination, I am an estuaries end, I will be used, and I will be be abused, but you’ll never have me, I am confident only when you are not around and when you are I will give you nothing more than ambiguous answers but they will be simultaneously short and to the pricks point.

Look to the sun and you will see me, I am amongst the shadows, I AM close and I am all things to all men forever and then I will be who I want to be, someday I will come together, until then I am broken and in pieces.

Confession

What am I doing here, you ask?
I've got no place left to go.

You want a confession?
Wrap your goulash around this.

I'm a murderer. I've pointed a revolver at another man's chin, cocked back the hammer, and pulled that heavy trigger until the hammer swung down and smashed into the blasting cap. I watched his face explode in slow motion, and I marveled at the lovely pattern his brains made on the powder blue wall behind him. He's still alive, but I'm a murderer all the same.

You want more?
Pull down your sequin sunglasses and take a gander at this.

I'm an adulterer. I've been in bed with hundreds of of different women in my life. I used her body, but she never saw mine. I degraded and humiliated her, and to top it all off these lovely ladies never knew my name or saw my face.

Are you sick of it yet?

I've cheated, lied, stolen, broken, beaten, coveted, slandered... I think you're starting to get the picture.

Why am I here on the bloody ground in front of this ancient torture device? I've got no other place left to go.

Approach

#1

I don't feel as You can. I can't.
Incapable as a shoe.
In some fashion
It manages to be
Simultaneously unbearable
And absolutely Right.

#2

Don't give me a second thought.
No no, you just eat and expound and caffeinate.
Why would I want your condition?
Lucky for me, it's about as contagious as a parked car.

#3

My:
A made-up
Plastic
Flammable concept.
Draw it out.
Delivered by the snake,
Accepted under skin, then
It festers
Erasing bone,
Consuming blood,
Creating lack.

Direction for a Self-Portrait

I’d start with a round shape. Well, I guess if we’re going to get fancy, let’s do almond. A Japanese person once told me I had an almond-shaped face. But they’re strange that way, always eating seaweed and bean curd and stuff.

Add some yellowy snarls of hair around that thing. Imperfectly parted and disobedient. Include some commentary from my grandmas while you’re at it – twenty-eight years into this thing called life and they still can’t get over that I have curly hair. Maybe they’re jealous I won’t need a permanent when it’s time for the round-head all women are fated for. Or maybe they’re flipping through the files of their brothers and sisters, in laws and uncles by way of my tresses, remembering which ones had curly hair, too, and how it was in great uncle Gordon’s hair as well. But we don’t talk much about him.

Don’t forget the fixings. Lips that pull over smallish teeth and gargantuan gums, two bluey eyes, a set of ears and an Anglo-Saxon beak. And skin. Sticks of concealer have told me I’m fair, ivory, light cream. I would suggest tying a whitish crayon to a pinkish one to an orangish one and giving the forehead a good scribble. You’ll get the point.

And of course there are the smatterings:

: The mini crater on the seam of my left nostril, once an astoundingly large pimple in tenth grade. My dad called it my twin sister. Mary Simensen and I, in our genius way of prescribing topical remedies, slathered wart remover on it. It burned through my skin – no, I should say it ate through my skin. But I guess it did the job.

: Scar on the bottom of my chin from a tragic roller skating accident.

: Slight circles under eyes.

: Constant flaring of nostrils (if you can do that on paper, that’d be great).

If you want to apply a general feel, I’d bend pieces and lines to the tune of intrigued - maybe an eyebrow up, or something. It’s OK if you can’t erase it. It’s a good idea to me. A life full of questions and interest and pursuit.

Shaving Day

It's the last day of march, and that means time to shave off my two year beard and make way for Mustache April. That's right. Mustache April.

I must admit, there were a few tears streaming down my cheeks as I sheared off my long luxurious face-mane.

Oh well, it will certainly grow back, but for now I will enjoy a solidarity of one. Let Mustache April begin!