Nobody gets out of life alive. But everyone should get out having really lived.

Remember when I needed an excuse to write? Barely. Hardly. It wasn’t very long ago. But that was another me. A short term me. That’s why I was so unhappy. I wasn’t outwardly unhappy. I still smiled a lot and always had a good time when I was being social around other people. But I had this inner crazy that I couldn’t get a hold on. I thought there was something wrong with me. I was convinced that evil is a gene. But it’s not, it is learned behavior. We all have personal freedom. We all make a choice. Who are we going to be today? Are we going to live in love or in fear? I try to mainly choose love. Also preparation and wisdom from people who came before me. 

 

There is still some fear I’m holding onto. Some parts of me that I don’t want to share. They are not entirely secret parts of me. But surely a version of me I’ve only shared with Jill Ramme in the cement stairwells in school; or with Susie in the chorus room; or Megan in her dad’s basement in between college semesters. For some reason there is a part of me I’m still afraid of, still ashamed of. It might even be the least offensive part of me. When I was younger I hated my voice because I sounded naïve. I sounded like a choir girl. I knew the difference between my voice and the voice of people who had something lived that was worth singing about. Now I have that and I’m afraid. I quit for so long. I literally had my abdominal muscles flayed and stretched and just recently fully healed but still not entirely with as much feeling as when I was younger. 

It requires keeping your head up. This is a hard thing for me. Head down in a book, on my smart phone, or at my son, because the world told me I made a mistake. But the world is fucking stupid. Anyone who has met my son knows I made the right choice for me. Anyone who has known me through the process of learning that has been raising my son knows I am a better person for him. Unconditional love has taught me things that hate and fear never could have. Before him death seemed like a reasonable escape. Now I care about the future. I know his life matters, and possibly he will have children, or my nieces and nephews will have children and what we leave for them does matter. Nobody gets out of life alive. But everyone should get out having really lived. Open your eyes to the damage being done. There are brilliant simple solutions and technology abounding, we just need all 7 billion people on this world to be educated to use it. Then we will be getting somewhere. 

I can never sleep until Alice slays the jabberwocky. Tomorrow will be another day of nothing. I bet it will still be talk of Miley and Syria, on different channels, friends who like global news vs. friends who like entertainment news. All news is entertainment. This joke has gone too far. 

I want every day to be inspiring but some days just seem the same. Tomorrow Zack and I will stay home all day again. Maybe if Kyle gets home in time we will go to Moore’s Farm Market. I am desperate for some healthy food, having to by crap food because it’s on sale and will create multiple meals sucks, because it will make you more full for longer. Frozen food sucks, canned food sucks, if it comes in a box it probably sucks, not necessarily in taste but most certainly for your health. 

Worrying about how to pay for food is new. Kyle and I have always both worked. The only time we didn’t we lived off our massive savings. Had we have been wiser we would have been happier and accomplished more then. Or at least enjoyed more our time together. We always enjoyed our time with Zack. Kyle will get a raise soon and we will gradually get used to being able to pay the bills without stress. I won’t forget this time though. I will probably be able to talk more openly about it once it’s over. But I’m sure I will draw on some of the tough experiences I’ve had for years to come. All of it has made me a better person. All of it shows me that I am strong and that I can survive almost anything emotionally, some crazy enough things physically. It is good to know these things about yourself. 

I wonder why I still fear people hearing my voice. It’s so strange. I remember living without fear; it was a long time ago. I just lived. I loved everyone, some people too much. I had a hardcore defense mechanism in place but fear was not an option. Excitement was always better than monotony. As long as it didn’t involve jail or grounding I wanted to experience it. I became much more concerned with my health and well being as a mother. I don’t want to live fast and die pretty. I want to be old and fucking shrinking, half forgetting who I am and what year it is when I get to the end. Sometimes you just reconnect with all that is. I had to stop believing that I was wrong for trusting the people who hurt me; instead of they were wrong for hurting me when I trusted them. 

I didn’t know all these relationships I awkwardly started in childhood would be so important. I didn’t know I’d know their adult artist selves. I didn’t know we’d someday have children. Some stories are still too raw for the writing, the stories about my severe losses. My severed limbs. Even when someone can’t be in your life every day you still know you sit underneath the same big sky. They are somewhere out there. Until they aren’t. You feel so much more a part of them. Their energy is not confined to a small space on Earth. What they left behind is in you. No one shares exactly the same feeling you have, every unique experience and memory becomes of its own worth. 

I think we time travel. We call them memories. But why do we remember some things at some ages and forget them at others. Sometimes we know shit and we can’t recall it. Sometimes we remember stories years after we thought they were forever forgotten. Our entire perception is that of a memory. The way things look, feel, smell, and sound. Our mind constructs the whole picture. Who’s to say my red is your red. We have something to offer one another, in what we remember, in sharing what we see and have seen, maybe in another life.

I always just want to be alone. Then I can’t disappoint anyone. Although I’m sure I’ll find a way to disappoint just by not being there.

Whenever my phone is loading shit I want to read too slowly I will take that as a sign I’m supposed to be writing on the AlphaSmart3000. I have to call it that. I love its name. That was part of why I picked it about the Neo and the Pro or whatever; Aside from not needing all that fancy shit. It is just a keyboard for your lap. Some writer-person invented this, or someone who loves a writer-person. It seems I have to be having a love affair with what I am writing on. That’s why the desk computer and I don’t write well together. It’s ok but the chair hurts my back and so does the position of the keyboard and the mouse. I am also more tempted to use all my words arguing or preaching on Facebook instead of writing them just for myself. The blog and the writing, it is really all for myself. It is the only thing I like to do. It is the only thing I like to practice. Don’t I say the same things all the time?

That’s why I feel I’m at a crossroads. I’ve written all these essays. Blog posts. Journal entries. Whatever you want to call them, they are all the same. The constant stream, that happens in my mind, all the time. It is honestly hardest to pick one and focus on that branch, and to type as fast as they go by before I am like, what the fuck was I just thinking. The more I practice, the faster I type. Took getting used to the AlpharSmart3000 Keyboard just riffing on some random shit and the angry stuff about my family after Grandma Jackie was buried. Hunter must have written about the typewriter in Fear and Loathing the book. I’ve never read it, but the type writer is in the movie. Some shit I just couldn’t understand as a kid. I hope I get less angry as I get older and not more. Now I need to take those essays and ideas I wrote about succinctly to satisfy an internet audience and expand one of those ideas into a book. I have no idea what to write a fucking book about. I feel like I am 11 years old all over again trying to write that fucking play. Is this a play? All I can write is inner monologue. 

That would be a pretty boring play. 

[Stage instructions: writer sits on bed crossed legged with AlphaSmart3000 on lap. Narrator reads inner monologue] Haha. I always laugh at my own jokes. People who are Trying to be funny never come off as very funny to me. I always laugh at a good story or a weird fact about life. I am not as bleak as most people make me out to be. I like talking about dark morbid things but in a very satirical way. Kyle and I are intense with our sarcasm. I notice we try and ease people into what we think. We never try and change anyone’s mind; we just want to make sure we aren’t going to be judged. We have very very good friends and family now. I never feel self conscious or bad whenever I talk to anyone I know. It’s so nice. But I am isolated a lot and choose who I see. I am always here if someone wants to call or visit. Most people don’t. They are busy now, they have jobs and social responsibilities. It’s such a busy fucking world. I just sit here with it Whizzing by my head. Someone told me it’s just my perception of how fast it goes. I already knew that. But what does that mean? I can’t seem to slow it down. I feel like it has been on a constant acceleration since birth. It used to feel terribly slow. Sometimes painful moments seem slow. But then again, not really. 

Some of my friends are making very good art these days. It makes me very proud. I want them all to. I love some very beautiful people. Whole people have lived through some shit. Whole people who you can get real with and connect with. You don’t have to be the same, you just have to be yourself. Kyle and I want to plan a music night. That’s what I miss most about how much he is at work. He always fills my house with music. Whether it’s piano, guitar, or synthesizer my house is always filled with music when Kyle is around. Sometimes I participate. I don’t know what my hang up is. It feels like jumping off a cliff. Will I fucking drown? I will regret it if I never find my voice again.

I think the best way to get some of my words heard would be to say them, especially to Kyle’s music, since it is so good. Even I write nice riffs sometimes that I never remember and only rarely write down. Then I forget how it goes between practicing. I’m the same kid who played a year of every instrument, just enough to not be able to play anything. I can hear music. I just never trained my fingers to be strong enough to play the same thing over and over. It’s probably more the repetition of music than the actual keying. Typing is similar but never the same pattern of keys. I mean I type like a fucking fiend. (Thank you Jess Taylor and all my fucking old AOL Instant Messanger friends.) Nothing will make you type as fast as wanting to talk to all your friends as much as possible before your mom calls lights out. 

Who would have thought all those nights I was up all night typing to myself in LiveJournal or DeadJournal I was and could have been more specifically practicing a skill. Why didn’t anyone tell me I could be a fucking writer? It is literally something I’ve never heard a girl told she could be. I know a couple of girls who did it anyway. But I feel like girls who excel in anything do it despite a really fucked up set of standards for what women and men are allowed to get away with. I read an article detailing how many more hours women must spend doing their hair and other personal grooming for working in the business world compared to their male counterparts who look the same. Not to mention they have to do everything Perfect lest they be called a slut or someone who used their looks, they are forced to maintain, to get where they are. 
 

Oh yeah. I am starting an Organization. That is its primary goal though. Just to organize the tribe of human beings. I want a lady led organization but it won’t be strictly for us. It’s called Ladies Organizing and Voicing Equality. Bet you didn’t realize this whole time the L.O.V.E blog was an acronym. It will be for equality for all of us. Therefore we don’t want men being forced to be ultra masculine and unemotional anymore than we want women to be objectified in the media or any gender, race, or sexual orientation discriminated against. We want people with tattoos and bad teeth, hairy faces and no make up, to be accepted. Those superficial looks don’t tell you who is intelligent and who is a hard worker. Who has something valuable to contribute to all of human histories collective knowledge. Those are part of the reason we have lost our meritocracy. Money buys lots of expensive beauty treatments, for men and women of the business world. But facials didn’t seem to help them predict the housing bubble burst, or the dot com crash, or the stock market crash of 2008. Manicures don't seem to instill ethics and values.

So my goal should be to incorporate some of my amazing essay ideas into full blown stories with characters. Will I ever be able to? I’ll be like Ayn Rand editing for years until I create this epic masterpiece I believe is perfect and is the most perfect representation of my ideal world. 50 years later it will be completely misinterpreted by a prick like Paul Ryan. He will use my beautiful prose to sway the masses, unless everyone is still prude about women publicly saying the word fuck. As if everyone doesn’t curse sometimes. It is healthy to curse, it is funny and it expels negative energy so you don’t bottle it up. That’s how I survived my high school years without ever doing drugs. I just screamed “Fuck!” all the time about everything. And I called everyone a “cunt” because no word is more offensive and empowering to a 16 year old girl. Now I find teenagers who are miserable in paradise funny. If you just ignore all the assholes, the world is a beautiful place. 

Be My Friend

Tweet that shit or something. Help me out.

Dear President Obama: On Syria (Again, Yes It's That Important I Post A Second Blog Post So We Don't Go To War) P.S. Stop Slut Shaming and Pay Attention

This Is An Old Format For Me. From When I Wasn't Sure I Was A Writer. 

The News Today Makes It Appropriate

Dear President Obama,

Do not support the bombing of Syria. This is yet another false flag of the global elite. You can choose to have a legacy of peace and not the death of innocent civilians. The poor of this world are desperate and suffering. We need to speak for them! Do not allow another generation of children to be sent to war against people who are more like themselves than the men who send them. These people don’t deserve to die. If they do, it is not our choice to make. Why not try and reason with people and make truces instead of bomb them with missiles? We bring bombs to a gun fight. The global elite must have been involved if there was use of Chemical Weapons. The poor don’t have access to Chemical Weapons, it is not rebels. The world knows we have all the weapons. A larger military budget than every other country in the world combined. I don’t have to tell you these things. You are a smart man. Make the right decision. Send food, gas masks, and medical supplies. Help people and they will help themselves. We need to get off oil before there is crisis. Now is a good time. Start the solar revolution instead of this endless perpetuation of war that is blood shed in America’s greedy privileged name. Hopefully you read this letter. I remember the bombing of Baghdad, I watched it in my living room at 17 years old, we have been at war ever since in my lifetime. There is a road named after my friend Vinny from Silver Bay Elementary school. I have friends who were in a military system where rape is rampant. I have friends who are injured physically and far older than they should be mentally. My son is 7 years old. He still believes in peace, as I’m sure your girls do as well. Usually my other letters are more important. The ones I write to people just because I love them and I want to hear what they have to say and encourage them to speak up more. But right now, we can see change or we can see the same ol’ bloodshed. The choice is up to you.

Love, 

Jackie Lane

Send Gas Masks Not Bombs: Syria

America is on the verge of entering a war. It just feels like a Wednesday. I don’t even have to wonder if the war continues for 10 more years will my son be forced to join. We no longer force boys to join before they are even adults. We instill that fear in them by making them sign a draft card just in case. Now we Convince people to go to war when they are not even adults, so that we can place the full weight of responsibility for civilian deaths on their heads when they return home. Instead of on the heads of state. It doesn’t feel like the verge of war. 

Isn’t that how war has always been? People making these choices from ivory towers, whose children will not be slain on the battlefield, or if they are, they will know eternal honor. When really most of the life lost is in the currency of innocent civilians. Powerless people who sometimes resort to violence out of desperation but who never have any power in this world to change things drastically. Not alone. They don’t know they can change the future. We must all refuse to fight. 

The powers that be can keep killing civilians with drones and Sarin gas but the more they do, the more it will be obvious, Which Side Are You On? There are only two, the side of the people and the side of their masters. I may not be the most disenfranchised person in this world, which is why I will always be an ally. None of these changes will happen alone in a vacuum. We have to teach the children. Future generations are capable of thinking everything we think of as normal is wrong. 

We think it every day as a society. “Flat Earth Society” and the like. We even mock prior cultures for what they did not understand. What will future generations mock us for still believing? Keep in mind Sarin gas is so terrible the American Military was supposed to do away with its stores in the late 1990s. It goes against what we as a world are supposed to believe is unreasonable do to do people in war. 

So did someone of superior military clearance of one of the world’s powers hand over Sarin gas to either side of a horrific civil war. Or is this just another lie like the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and 9/11 to start another war of aggression so we can continue to live our lives of excess oil as long as possible before it runs out. 

Off the oil! Harness the power of the sun, not from millions of year old sludge in the ground but from the sky. Send Gas Masks Not Bombs.

The global elite are trying to force the United States into the civil war in Syria. Obama better hold strong. If the Military Industrial Complex is allowed to escalate this war and the violence being suffered by very poor civilians at the hands of very wealthy there will be a large uprising. People have had enough, for once all 1.3 billion of us with internet access are watching intently. They can only pretend for so long that it has no effect on current events. It may not have at first. But we have flexed our wings. We have learned to fight back. The only battles we are losing right now are the ones that can’t fight through the constant droning of entertainment news and be heard. We are listening and watching. We need to start being more selective about the things we care about seeing or at least about why we choose to see them. 

I Think I Dream About You At Night But I Don't Remember When the Morning Comes

I started having crazy dreams again. I usually do when I've been reading about dreaming. I had to take the medical tape off my thumbs to write this because I couldn't write with it on. My thumb's are still sore but I have to write. I felt anxious energy in the air all day. My two thumbs and my 3rd finger suffered the consequences. What happened to mind over matter? Matter won this time. If I want to write or art for a living, even if it is styling hair, I'm going to need my hands, my fingers. That is a part of why I can't do hair right now. That is the hardest thing for me to explain to other people. These things take time. I plan on healing but I obviously can't do it over night or I would have already. 

People from some of the most open minded families fear coming out. Many people my age have traveled back in time to an era where they must hide their true selves. I refuse any longer, to be one person some of the time and another person the rest of the time. I am always one solid being. Every changing but forever the same. I want that for everyone. No one should have to suffer through being one person at work and another person at home. Or one person with friends and another person with family. I want everyone to be their whole self. It is such a good feeling, even on the worst days of criticism now I can be okay because I know who I am and I like who I am. I wish I had learned sooner but everything comes in its time. 

I find all the things I've ever experienced, even the bad shameful things, I couldn't trade. Everything that makes me this understanding compassionate person I am had to have happened or I'd be someone else. This is my path I'm forging and I'm happy with it. If you are spending your time trying to tear down others, something is wrong in your life. 

If what you do doesn't matter, do you exist? Without consciousness you don't exist. When your mind has left your body, what is you, is gone. Are you living an unconscious life?

I need to research local gun violence. I'd like to use Ocean County as my local region. Maybe all of New Jersey as well. I need to know accidents and incidents of domestic violence. Violence on a fundamental and subversive level. I need to go back to basics. Prove to people around here that they are not the exception. The news doesn't cover the things you don't want to see. They don't tell you the things that they should. We blame street dealers instead of the politicians that make it possible to traffic the drugs here. Everything is backwards in that sense.

Someone had mentioned that maybe I should counsel families suffering from alcoholism. I like the idea but I don't want to narrow my scope. I want to help anyone I can who is suffering ridicule at the hands of their own families and life long friends. People just need support. The things the human body and mind are capable of are astounding and yet we submit to this world of limitations. 

I haven't felt so good since I remember writing as a child. I didn't know I was a child. I tried to write a play and failed. My characters were flat. I knew better. I read at an adult level of understanding. I could only write my life experiences. Some of them were very traumatic. Those things were things I couldn't share. So all my stories were lifeless.

We had a retreat at my high school called Kairos. It was supposed to teach us that everyone suffers at least one trauma in childhood. We all share that. We all carry a little humiliation and shame with us. It should humble us. It should make us realize that even in the most vile minds, twisted and mangled by abuse, there must be good underneath. Anyone with a conscience tested their boundaries. Teenagers are selfish and uninhibited. They act out of self interest. We shame them for their ability to fight for themselves. Until they submit to the fact that they are lazy and ungrateful. So they go to work and learn not to talk back. Why shouldn't we speak when spoken to in a manner that is meant to hurt us? 

In order for the world to continue on this path we must maintain the pecking order. Everyone needs someone we are in control of. Our mother, son, daughter, father, sister, brother, husband, wife, or employee. Everyone gets a little taste of power somewhere. What we don't get is a taste of freedom. Once you get a little taste of freedom it's the only way you can live. Once you trust your own best judgment and learn to listen to the light within, you will never stop. 

Everyone has a small bit of power, that binds us to the fact that we all live in fear. Fear of what others think. Fear of theft. Fear of violence. Fear of death. Fear of failure. What is success? I say it is the ability to live every day in love instead of fear. That means failure is a choice. It also means letting go of all your fears. What will be, will be. What already was, we cannot change. We can only change how we choose to see what already was, and how we let it shape who we are, and who we are going to be.

Be My Friend

From my personal journal dated 7-14-2013. 
I wanted to share something more personal than usual. (Don't I always say that?)