Chronicles of Jahaka
I first started keeping journals when I was 16. It was a project in my high school creative writing class. Other options were to record dreams or to write poetry. At the time, I felt that poetry was too 'sissified' and writing dreams was too much work; right when one wanted to slide back into slumber, not the reverse. So I settled on journaling.
To keep my nosy mother in the dark about my nefarious activities (she had no inhibitions against snooping through my stuff), I used a quadruple code system in my journal language. I had two sets of coded alpha-characters that I alternated between, reversing the character sets on certain days and alternating between English and German as well. (I was a third-year German Student and at the time it was the only other language I felt comfortable writing in.) I didn't know it at the time, but I had come up with something resembling 128-bit encryption, which testifies to how highly I thought of Mom's intellect and how much I dreaded her consequences for my 'bad' behaviors.
I don't know where those early books are now (I filled three large steno pads before dropping out of school as a junior, an expectant father) and I didn't resume keeping a journal until the year 2000, when I found five lovely volumes at an obscure bookstore in Manhattan, with the picture of a lion on the cover (top right). I bought all five books and every Leo who has seen them since has coveted them. Unfortunately, I was never able to get any more than those initial five, even though I wrote the publisher (an unanswered letter) about them. Now I'm nearing the end of space in Book IV, and it seems that to continue beyond that point of my last virgin volume would mean to write in plainer tomes ...
Or I can blog, of course. Indeed, since this idea came to me through the email of a friend, I have blogged almost daily and, perhaps, in more depth that my poor hardbound journal would never know. The catharsis is most remedial.
Book IV has seen some juju, as far as the emotional twists in the life of Jahaka is concerned. I broke its cherry a little over a year ago, after I split from a poetess with whom I cohabitated for about 18 months. Book IV's more recent entries concern my vocational challenges (the poetry chronicles) and, moreso, my attempts to cope with a new relationship, one that evolved from improbability into intensity, hit me with density, and exploded into bitter reality.
Yeah, I guess it kinda fucked me up, or at the least blindsided me. I had just shaken myself awake into "active" mode just before I met her. I wasn't a dog, but I did my share of sniffing at ass, scratching at fleas, digging through trash and pissing on trees. Then she "blossomed" in my mind.
This lady to whom I was attracted displayed a beauty that moved from merely physical to intensely non-physical the more I got to know her. Her very existence sang to my Being in a manner I had never experienced before. I was helpless not to respond to that song. I endeavored mightily to be cool and unaffected, but it was futile from the beginning. I fell in love so hard and so deep I didn't know where reality ended and fantasy began.
My writing reflected this also, but it was deep and powerful prose that seemed to borrow from realms both mundane and surreal. I felt inspired by everything she said and did and my writing increased and increased. In the six months before I became involved with her, I wrote perhaps 20 poems. In the six months since I first kissed her lips, I have written over 100 poems. Only one in ten were about her directly, but the power of her presence was co-author to all.
The only problem was that this woman, so clearly perfect to my ideal, was married to somebody else. And even that didn't seem like a really HUGE problem, because he was a pariah of questionable moral fibre and he clearly did not deserve this woman; this woman to whom he rode in like a knight and then... (Jahaka! Control yourself!)
Anyway, my vision of Camelot featured me as Lance-a-lot, riding away with sacred Guinevere and Arthur could fall on his goddamned sword for all I'd care! My reality was far different from the vision, because of course the chaste Guinevere would choose to remain by the side of her leige, to Lance-a-lot's dismay. Wow. I guess that updates Jahaka's chronicles all the way to... today.
Healing begins with serenity, courage and wisdom.
Lord, Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference.
Seems like wherever the Chronicles of Jahaka lead, there still is the quest to find myself. I strive, once again, to start from that three-part center, shield against all that would fragment me.
Peace.
posted by JahStorm @ 11:19 PM
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