the man behind the curtain

After several years of exploring life through the perspective of my alter-ego, JizzJazz69, I've decided to integrate, "come out", synthesize.

The old Juke Joint may have a future life, but for now, I'd love for you to keep reading and join me at

my new home.

evolution

I've taken my blogging to another place. I hope you'll follow along.
Click here and click your heels to get to my new home.

ice age

I write tonight from a labyrinth of ice. My first post of the new year (lunar or solar).

The world around me is frozen. Hoary trees bow and scrape before Old Man Winter. Limbs snap. Lines fail. Frozen water torture. Nature's pulse forced to a stop.

And where do I find myself? The center of it all. Improbably warm with lights glowing. Seated on the floor, tapping away. A beating heart--hot amid the freeze.

These are days of deep poetry. The world speaks to me in metaphor, in symbols and signs. Everything has weight, portent.

Perhaps it has always been this way, the world. Blatantly miraculous. Terrible. Beautiful. Sublime.

Words can only point., toward these things I understand more and more each day--the relentless Presence of the Universe opening and opening in vast soul-shattering splendor. Quiet, still, and irrefutable as breath. A seizing shudder. An orgasm. All that is, felt in one moment. Gratitude, amazement, release.

When I look out the window at a world erased white, I feel the fragility. Everything impermanent, slippery. Shapes only suggested.

I've been horny lately and lonely. Seemingly similar conditions with two entirely different remedies. I haven't been motivated to pursue either.

How this all feels like a waiting game. A strategy of patience, though. Not a doctor's office variety holding pattern. A poignant pause at the edge of a precipice, pitched forward, out and over some new slope.

I feel I am exactly where I am supposed to be. Serene, calm, sure. And yet, completely unknowing. At peace with ignorance of direction, destination, destiny.

Content to let flakes of life swirl around me, stick in my hair, melt on my tongue...


Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time.



image: Michal Macku

darkness falls across the land

The Winter Solstice has finally arrived--the shortest, darkest day of the year.

It's been a tough one for a lot of folks around me.  Fatigue, depression, and general weather-induced gloom...

Today, however, marks the end.  Today, when Christmas lights blink on hovels and houses across the northern hemisphere, our pagan souls collectively call back the Sun, begging for light and warmth to come near to us once more.

For me the Solstice seems to bring major transformation.  I feel deep and powerful alchemy taking place just below the level of my consciousness.  I'm doing my best to be still, to be present, and to keep my nostrils flared for a whiff of what's cooking.

It seems I'm at a point now where I've been surrendering to the Spirit of the Universe long enough that the detrius and consequence of my earlier choices and actions are starting to wind up and leave open doorways to paths I've never even imagined.  They said this would happen in the Rooms, and like most things I've learned there, words just can't quite nail the actual experience on the head.

So on this Solstice I welcome the darkness as a curtain falling on the end of an act (or perhaps just a scene).  I am grateful for my life and all its curious wonders and entanglements.  I'm grateful for the love I find around me, and I delight in the lights that twinkle encouragingly from the houses and shrubs all around.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...

image: raymond carrance

slowing down

The past six months have been an exercise in exertion.  I have taken on a massive job and done pretty well getting it to a managable state.  The cost has been long hours and a relentless work schedule.

Although it's socially accepted and generally applauded, I can see that my work hyperdrive is at times a compulsive side effect of my alcoholism.  It feeds my desire to be in control, to have proof that I'm worthy of my existence, and sometimes even to avoid feeling my feelings and living my life.

All that said, I truly love the work that I'm doing, and I'm exceptionally grateful to have gainful employment in these crazy economic times.  I just have to remind myself there's more to life than work.  "Work to live" as they say, rather than "live to work"--that's a tough one for me.

Another thing I've noticed over the past few months--I'll work my finger to the bone, my ass off (and any other body part) for someone else, but I don't seem to be able to manage the same level of enthusiasm for activities that benefit me exclusively.  For example, I'll pull an all-nighter to bring a project in under deadline, but I won't take an hour out of my day to go to the gym.  I'll spend days refining a design for a publication or ad, but I won't set apart time to explore my own art.

Of course, this goes back to the matter of balance.  When I slam myself full force 12 and 15 hours a day into work, how can I be surprised that when I do get a moment of free time, I'm too exhausted to do anything but lay around surfing the Internet and watching re-runs of Family Guy?

So as the year winds down, so do I.  My hope is to find a more poetic, seasonal, sensual rhythm for my life.  One that is not quite so frantic and frenetic.  It's something I'm going to have to learn.  Something, ironically enough, I'm going to have to work on.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...

no longer dormant

Something is happening.  

Perhaps it's the sun's journey through the dark, swirling waters of Scorpio.  Perhaps it's the fact that I'm not slammed with morning to midnight obligations in my schedule.  Perhaps it's because I've been in mourning long enough for the end of my relationship with Montenegro.  Whatever the reason, my sexual flame has stopped smoldering and caught fire.

There is a feral, electric charge between my legs that is pretty delicious if truth be told.  I've felt more erotically alive and aware than I have in months and months and months.

Now don't let that fool you.  I haven't become an overnight horn dog, poking my cock in any available hole.  In fact, I've been surprisingly restrained.

You see, instead of reacting blindly to this sudden resurgence in sex drive, I'm seriously contemplating what I want my sex/romantic life to be.  And, once again, I find myself moving into uncharted territory.

I'm definitely gun-shy enough to be very wary of anything remotely "marriage-like."  However, at the same time, I don't want to get on some endless rollercoaster of casual sex encounters.  I've been there before, and I know it will turn into another self-destructive experiment in excess.

I cannot say definitively that I'm cut out for monogamy.  I can, however, say that I have lots of love and affection to give, and I value intimacy, tenderness, trust, and loyalty.

Of course, all this speculation is ultimately bad business for someone like me.  It gets me into my head and out of today.

The simple truth is eroticism is a lovely bonus of life, and I'm pleased to say I'm paying attention and enjoying it!

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours a day...

image: Steve Jerome

power plays

I am a control freak by nature.  

This fact has given me lots of trouble throughout my past.  I've not behaved very well in the face of things I cannot change, unalterable facts, or even basic reality.

In the past year or so, I've made great strides in accepting life on life's terms, understanding the beauty of things unfolding around me in unimagined ways.

I've also come to understand the security and comfort that comes from surrendering the will to a higher power, to the spirit of the universe, to the raw atomic energy of creation...

Lately my curiosity has been drawn to guys who experiment with submission, power, and control in their erotic lives.  Not those who engage in humiliation, torture, and abuse (I can do that to myself without anyone else's help thank you very much!), but those who engage in exercises of trust, exploration of boundaries, warmly and with much affection.

Along those lines, I've also been thinking about eroticism, friendship, camaraderie, and how gay men seem to vascilate between assimilating into mainstream culture and maintaining the erotic perogative that comes from being a sexual outlaw.

More than anything, I guess I'm understanding that it's human nature to want control.  Self-preservation comes into play.  The fewer the variables, the more likely your survival.  

For an addictive personality, control is just like anything else, we have to have more and more of it to be satisfied, but there is never enough.  We just can't make that final leap to godhood.  

The Universe is not stupid!

So as I make my way through life, I am more and more sensitive to my impulse to reach out, to grab, try to fix, manage, control...  Ultimately we can only control our own actions and reactions.  That in itself becomes a great puzzle of power.  A never-ending adjustment to the reins.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...

image: Rinaldo Hopf