The Book of Jommy: An Introduction

I have heard it said that, if we manage to make it through childhood and adolescence, we will have enough stories to fill a thousand-page novel.  Can’t you picture it now?  Sitting by the window, late afternoon light falling through the curtains at angles, your thin and wrinkled fingers carefully turning the yellowing pages, reading and reliving all of the joy and pain and love.  A lifetime worth of memories, one fragile page after another.

Perhaps I haven’t realized it fully until now.  Or maybe I have always known and couldn’t see the worth in it.  But I think I am ready to embrace the idea of it now, ready to realize my potential, as people keep annoyingly saying to me (like potential is something I misplaced and need help finding, like my keys or my dignity); I am a storyteller.  It may, in fact, be the one thing I actually excel in - aside from my ability to eat, well, anything regardless of expiration date or time spent on the floor - this being from the immoderate amount of practice I have had over the years.  

Just ask anyone that has spent more than ten minutes with me.  ”Oh, yeah,” they’ll say, eyes widening, shaking head knowingly, “with that dude it’s all ‘remember the time when we drank all that [insert any alcohol that comes in a plastic bottle] and then fell off that [insert object of considerable height] and Cole broke his [insert any body part, because Cole’s bones are made of glass]’ or ‘aw, dude, let me tell you about the time I was in ASIA cause I’m edgy and adventurous’….yeah, that guy is lame.”  But I cannot help it, it is what I do.  I live for the story almost as much as I live for the experience.

I remember getting in a fight with an old girlfriend once (not old as in “golden-years” but old as in “one who has been permanently relegated to the past-tense”) who was upset because, when around my friends and family, all I seemed to do was reminisce.  ”All you ever talk about is shit that I can’t relate to because I wasn’t there,” she said in a not-at-all-bitchy tone, “and I just have to sit there and listen.”  And the more I contemplated this, the more I realized that she was completely right. I do spend large amounts of time reliving the past, laughing over the stupid shit I’ve done, remembering and perfecting the art of blending histories with fictions, swinging from the narrative arc.

But why?  

I do not live in the past [mostly true] and am not so insecure that I need to cling to these anecdotes as proof of a life well lived [also probably mostly true]; for me, these stories are how I define my own existence.  They connect me to everyone I love, and through them I can see the fingertips stretching into the lonely abyss that separates us all from everyone else.  If you are in my stories then you are forever a part of my family, eternally attached to the millions of threads extending from my chest and going forth, silent, into the blackness.  They are my currency.  Some day I may die - but probably not - and all that will be left is some dog-eared paperback books, a bank account containing $43.75, and my stories.  They are the greatest and most important thing I will ever own, and because of them I will be hungry and cold and lonely….and rich.

Hemingway: The Great Storyteller

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This blog, like all blogs, will be self-indulgent, perhaps meandering, at times abstruse, and probably contain post which are all…too…goddam…long.  Still, it is a way to tell my stories, and perhaps make someone laugh or think (or more likely, make someone say, “Jesus, I can’t believe he still ate that” or something equally horrific).  Like all good Gospels, it will have misguided philosophies and parables, flashes of truth mixed with the romance of myth.  So gather at my figurative feet, and I shall tell you a tale…