TorturedJester
12-20-2003, 06:38 PM
Jacob sits alone in a small theater on Telegraph Avenue. He’s mesmerized. A rush of adrenaline leaves him breathless as he anticipates the nights feature presentation. The emotion is hard to duplicate. Some say only skydiving or heroin could compare to the bloom of endorphins flowering in Jacobs’s system. A feeling every man would love to experience.
Sitting in the small independent film theater, he watches his memories flicker before him on the screen and in Dolby surround sound. As the opening credits pass by he is aware that nothing in the world matters but this moment. Jacob has tried now for nearly a decade to recapture the day he lived in pure bliss; it was an enchanting event he will never forget, one that gave him every reason in the world to live with hope of the future. If only things had gone to plan.
Jacob is an aspiring filmmaker. He graduated from the academy of arts film school in San Francisco over a year ago and in less than a year Jacob managed to max-out his credit cards to pay for film, lighting equipment and editing software in preparation for the short film he was certain would be worth every penny and moment spent in preperation. It had to be, he had invested everything, including his heart in the project.
Weeks in the dark room and at his P.C. Jacob spent condensing frames and reprising images he could never shake from memory. He aches, tosses and turns, loses nights of sleep to a mind that only thinks of rehashing the one sacred day when everything went right in his life and was allotted divine knowledge of how God loves and dreams.
As the movie begins, the film fades from a black screen to a child actor sitting on a lawn with a bike beside him. The wheel is still spinning and young Jacob looks on curiously at a swamp filled with tadpoles, frogs leaping and dragonflies gliding. He’s absorbed in the beauty of a life without tensions.
A walking stick stumbles by. Jacobs glaring with such wonder and admiration, he feels tapped-in to a higher power, to whomever created this masterful picture worth recapturing through memory traces and film. He watches the past replay and it comes so close to being the perfect dosage of the perfect drug where for a moment the past can be just as potent as the present moment.
Jacobs pulse quickens as a scene plays in slow motion where the young boy glides arm in arm with a young girl, his first love, through the groping, swaying arms of weeping willows. His day belongs to the gods, he knows, he feels, and yet young Jacob doesn’t stop to analyze the beauty; he’s too young and caught-up in the moment to be distracted by thoughts or to reflect on the present.
Instead he wonders and wanders with the young blond neighbor who smiles toward the camera with big blue eyes and rosy-cheeks; her lips are succulent, they pout then blow kisses in Jacobs direction and in that instant transport him to a place of euphoria where he will never ever truly live again. Never as purely and innocently as those hours where he explores the timeless.
Holding her in his arms he looks into her eyes and sees unanswered questions- the wonder he will come to know in later years in many shapes and forms of heartache and bliss- the look of innocence just waiting to be shattered by the traffic inside his head.
As evening approaches, the camera displays young Jacob sitting by a pool meditating on the day’s prior events. The sun is setting and the last rays lick the moisture from his tiny-bronzed body and caresses his face with the gentle yet violent knowledge that he will never again experience such pleasure of being a fully aware human being.
Jacob looks up at the apartment complex, at the turquoise pool where just above the gray building, the sky cuts like blue upholstery.
A denizen of clouds parade by, the purplish hue brushes across the landscape into rosy shades that slip into the cracks of shadows where he soaks in the beauty of being a child of the Most High. A time much better than the present he hides away from today ,through booze, drugs and his camera.
It’s been a month since he last saw his girlfriend's face. She left him alone in the apartment they both rented; filthy with shame, frustrated by life and addicted to everything including her love. Jacobs’s guilt consumes the air in the room he’s grown to despise, to abhor the walls and everything within it, including himself and right down to the blue, bloodstained couch he sleeps on despite the bed in their bedroom that still holds her fragrance.
Mid-morning, Jacob awakens shivering and possessed with a deep-seated guilt he feels for losing Tamara to his obsessions. The monstrosity of his addictions had finally scared her away; the pursuit to relive the past caused him to ignore her entirely when she was still in his life.
Only the urgency of a fix took precedence and he would plead into tears for her to give him money to feed his habits when he had spent most of his on booze and film. Jacob would scream anguished,” how could you do this to me? You know how badly I need it. I swear I’ll quit tomorrow.”
Tamara knew it wasn’t true.
He’s there with a six-pack that he can’t keep down though he tries, tries harder than he ever tried at living life.
Tamara couldn’t stand to be around him any longer, to watch him die and lose his mind after watching him only a year before at his best; she knows that Jacobs beautiful soul is no longer detectable and to Tamara it’s like staring at the sun for too long on a picture perfect day. To watch as the warmth and beauty burn the lenses and distort the way she now sees him; it pains her too deeply to see him this way. Its seems like only yesterday when both their smiles used to shine.
Jacob hates himself even more than his captive does, at least she could flee, he’d run-away too if he could he tells himself and in solitude detaches from the pain of past and present with another drink he can’t get down fast enough and can barely hold inside of him.
Somehow knowing Tamara dislikes him helps him get through the day, makes him feel less alone, that he’s getting what he deserves. Makes hurting her because he’s helpless, so much easier to swallow.
It’s been eight days since he ate the last of the food in the cupboards; the last remnants of noodles and taco bell hot sauce packets.
A week crawled by and the only thing Jacob could get himself to do or care about is his film and his girlfriend's potted plant that he’s brought back from the dead. A plant he somehow encouraged to grow with words of inspiration that he could never give himself. That he never offered his companion when she was still around to listen.
Jacobs wilted further with despair while starving and coping with delirium tremors, the symptoms of withdrawal that punish his body further though he accepts it gracefully. But he can’t seem to accept anything else. He feels like such a failure; he lies for days on the couch, unable to pick-up the phone and call a friend or family member to help revive him.
Alone he fights the demons in his head while torching his flesh with a lighter and punching his fists into the walls.
The only act of faith he can manage is to scream outside the window for God to wake-up and save him. Forgive him. But there is no response. As he stares out the window at scenery obscured by tears, he only sees shades of what ifs and what could have beens, miles of too lates and an ocean of never will be.
Jacob breaks down completely while he glares out at blue water in the distance, at skyscrapers and a spinal chord of clouds dissolving in mid-sky.
To Jacob, the big empty sky has nothing really to say, he doesn’t see the beauty that has always been there around him, was there as a child. Instead he tells himself that "there is no God" and beats his thighs with his desperate, trembling, fists.
“If there is a hell this is it” he convinces himself and is startled by the revelation that breaks through the haze.
The near perfect November horizon suddenly shouts back at Jacob,” You are on your own this time son, and you will never rise from this hole you dug with your own best of intentions. Never. So don’t even try.”
Jacob shuts the blinds and weeps hysterically the way the defeated always do when hope has been crushed by the admission of utter defeat.
For hours Jacob just sits and stares at the wall , wondering what and how and where his life went wrong exactly, when he finally manages to pick himself up and return to the task of editing clips on his computer.
Days pass by before Tamara returns to the apartment to pick-up some clothes and to see if Jacobs’ still around;” maybe this time I will find him dead”, she thinks to herself.
When she enters the apartment the stench of his pain immediately assaults her and she cautiously enters to find him decaying before her eyes, eyes that have seen too much pain of her own to even be affected by what Jacob must be enduring.
Tamara finds Jacob exposed to his downfall in full tumble and in the ultimate act of self-centeredness Jacobs eyes flash-on for a moment as he thinks of nothing else but of what she can give him; food, money, alcohol, love. Jacob pleads for a few dollars and is basking in the limelight of his weakest moment, when she gives his pathetic soul a twenty-dollar bill.
And in that exact moment he has the equivalent of a spiritual sprouting, a nudge he feels upon accepting the money, though he swipes the bill from her hand defiantly, his buried spirit acknowledges the filth. For she offers her free hand to him in an act of peace and tenderness and finally breaks down crying, standing before his sucked-up body weeping with such obvious pain he nearly feels the same emotion.
She tries to embrace him and cries,” this is terrible but I can never see you again Jacob, I just can’t do-it anymore.”
Jacob pushes her away, even after all he’s put her through , even as she gives him money he only thinks of himself and how he can now afford to forget her with the aid of drugs and booze.
He pushes the twenty into his pocket and pulls out the truth, a moment that pushes his spirit into a place of deeper slumber.
” I don’t need a damn soul, ever, in my life, not as long as I have another drink, a rock to smoke or my camera to preoccupy my time and help me forget this ******** life.”
And at that precise moment he walks away from her heartfelt sentiments and thinks of all the crimes committed against himself, by the hands of his parents, ex-girlfriends and by society. He looks back to see Tamara for the last time and somehow sees his own heart walking away with her. He shuts his eyes and weeps.
At two in the morning in the dark sticky theater where Jacob works until closing, he watches the imagery of the past wind down to a conclusion.
Sitting in the butter stained seat, with feet sticking to the cold cement floor, his life disintegrating around him, he realizes that his film was everything he could have hoped for and more. Something nobody can ever take away from him. Unlike his dreams and hopes. Jacob also realizes how he is all alone with nothing but time to torment him further.
When he returns home he will warm-up some noodles with hot sauce, devour a bottle of cheap vodka and light up a joint. He will fall into a deep sleep and replay the movie in his head until he rises to bathroom rituals and the call of another bottle that helps him forget the feelings of the present moments that haunt him and the memory of having lost everything to his pursuit of the past.
Sitting in the small independent film theater, he watches his memories flicker before him on the screen and in Dolby surround sound. As the opening credits pass by he is aware that nothing in the world matters but this moment. Jacob has tried now for nearly a decade to recapture the day he lived in pure bliss; it was an enchanting event he will never forget, one that gave him every reason in the world to live with hope of the future. If only things had gone to plan.
Jacob is an aspiring filmmaker. He graduated from the academy of arts film school in San Francisco over a year ago and in less than a year Jacob managed to max-out his credit cards to pay for film, lighting equipment and editing software in preparation for the short film he was certain would be worth every penny and moment spent in preperation. It had to be, he had invested everything, including his heart in the project.
Weeks in the dark room and at his P.C. Jacob spent condensing frames and reprising images he could never shake from memory. He aches, tosses and turns, loses nights of sleep to a mind that only thinks of rehashing the one sacred day when everything went right in his life and was allotted divine knowledge of how God loves and dreams.
As the movie begins, the film fades from a black screen to a child actor sitting on a lawn with a bike beside him. The wheel is still spinning and young Jacob looks on curiously at a swamp filled with tadpoles, frogs leaping and dragonflies gliding. He’s absorbed in the beauty of a life without tensions.
A walking stick stumbles by. Jacobs glaring with such wonder and admiration, he feels tapped-in to a higher power, to whomever created this masterful picture worth recapturing through memory traces and film. He watches the past replay and it comes so close to being the perfect dosage of the perfect drug where for a moment the past can be just as potent as the present moment.
Jacobs pulse quickens as a scene plays in slow motion where the young boy glides arm in arm with a young girl, his first love, through the groping, swaying arms of weeping willows. His day belongs to the gods, he knows, he feels, and yet young Jacob doesn’t stop to analyze the beauty; he’s too young and caught-up in the moment to be distracted by thoughts or to reflect on the present.
Instead he wonders and wanders with the young blond neighbor who smiles toward the camera with big blue eyes and rosy-cheeks; her lips are succulent, they pout then blow kisses in Jacobs direction and in that instant transport him to a place of euphoria where he will never ever truly live again. Never as purely and innocently as those hours where he explores the timeless.
Holding her in his arms he looks into her eyes and sees unanswered questions- the wonder he will come to know in later years in many shapes and forms of heartache and bliss- the look of innocence just waiting to be shattered by the traffic inside his head.
As evening approaches, the camera displays young Jacob sitting by a pool meditating on the day’s prior events. The sun is setting and the last rays lick the moisture from his tiny-bronzed body and caresses his face with the gentle yet violent knowledge that he will never again experience such pleasure of being a fully aware human being.
Jacob looks up at the apartment complex, at the turquoise pool where just above the gray building, the sky cuts like blue upholstery.
A denizen of clouds parade by, the purplish hue brushes across the landscape into rosy shades that slip into the cracks of shadows where he soaks in the beauty of being a child of the Most High. A time much better than the present he hides away from today ,through booze, drugs and his camera.
It’s been a month since he last saw his girlfriend's face. She left him alone in the apartment they both rented; filthy with shame, frustrated by life and addicted to everything including her love. Jacobs’s guilt consumes the air in the room he’s grown to despise, to abhor the walls and everything within it, including himself and right down to the blue, bloodstained couch he sleeps on despite the bed in their bedroom that still holds her fragrance.
Mid-morning, Jacob awakens shivering and possessed with a deep-seated guilt he feels for losing Tamara to his obsessions. The monstrosity of his addictions had finally scared her away; the pursuit to relive the past caused him to ignore her entirely when she was still in his life.
Only the urgency of a fix took precedence and he would plead into tears for her to give him money to feed his habits when he had spent most of his on booze and film. Jacob would scream anguished,” how could you do this to me? You know how badly I need it. I swear I’ll quit tomorrow.”
Tamara knew it wasn’t true.
He’s there with a six-pack that he can’t keep down though he tries, tries harder than he ever tried at living life.
Tamara couldn’t stand to be around him any longer, to watch him die and lose his mind after watching him only a year before at his best; she knows that Jacobs beautiful soul is no longer detectable and to Tamara it’s like staring at the sun for too long on a picture perfect day. To watch as the warmth and beauty burn the lenses and distort the way she now sees him; it pains her too deeply to see him this way. Its seems like only yesterday when both their smiles used to shine.
Jacob hates himself even more than his captive does, at least she could flee, he’d run-away too if he could he tells himself and in solitude detaches from the pain of past and present with another drink he can’t get down fast enough and can barely hold inside of him.
Somehow knowing Tamara dislikes him helps him get through the day, makes him feel less alone, that he’s getting what he deserves. Makes hurting her because he’s helpless, so much easier to swallow.
It’s been eight days since he ate the last of the food in the cupboards; the last remnants of noodles and taco bell hot sauce packets.
A week crawled by and the only thing Jacob could get himself to do or care about is his film and his girlfriend's potted plant that he’s brought back from the dead. A plant he somehow encouraged to grow with words of inspiration that he could never give himself. That he never offered his companion when she was still around to listen.
Jacobs wilted further with despair while starving and coping with delirium tremors, the symptoms of withdrawal that punish his body further though he accepts it gracefully. But he can’t seem to accept anything else. He feels like such a failure; he lies for days on the couch, unable to pick-up the phone and call a friend or family member to help revive him.
Alone he fights the demons in his head while torching his flesh with a lighter and punching his fists into the walls.
The only act of faith he can manage is to scream outside the window for God to wake-up and save him. Forgive him. But there is no response. As he stares out the window at scenery obscured by tears, he only sees shades of what ifs and what could have beens, miles of too lates and an ocean of never will be.
Jacob breaks down completely while he glares out at blue water in the distance, at skyscrapers and a spinal chord of clouds dissolving in mid-sky.
To Jacob, the big empty sky has nothing really to say, he doesn’t see the beauty that has always been there around him, was there as a child. Instead he tells himself that "there is no God" and beats his thighs with his desperate, trembling, fists.
“If there is a hell this is it” he convinces himself and is startled by the revelation that breaks through the haze.
The near perfect November horizon suddenly shouts back at Jacob,” You are on your own this time son, and you will never rise from this hole you dug with your own best of intentions. Never. So don’t even try.”
Jacob shuts the blinds and weeps hysterically the way the defeated always do when hope has been crushed by the admission of utter defeat.
For hours Jacob just sits and stares at the wall , wondering what and how and where his life went wrong exactly, when he finally manages to pick himself up and return to the task of editing clips on his computer.
Days pass by before Tamara returns to the apartment to pick-up some clothes and to see if Jacobs’ still around;” maybe this time I will find him dead”, she thinks to herself.
When she enters the apartment the stench of his pain immediately assaults her and she cautiously enters to find him decaying before her eyes, eyes that have seen too much pain of her own to even be affected by what Jacob must be enduring.
Tamara finds Jacob exposed to his downfall in full tumble and in the ultimate act of self-centeredness Jacobs eyes flash-on for a moment as he thinks of nothing else but of what she can give him; food, money, alcohol, love. Jacob pleads for a few dollars and is basking in the limelight of his weakest moment, when she gives his pathetic soul a twenty-dollar bill.
And in that exact moment he has the equivalent of a spiritual sprouting, a nudge he feels upon accepting the money, though he swipes the bill from her hand defiantly, his buried spirit acknowledges the filth. For she offers her free hand to him in an act of peace and tenderness and finally breaks down crying, standing before his sucked-up body weeping with such obvious pain he nearly feels the same emotion.
She tries to embrace him and cries,” this is terrible but I can never see you again Jacob, I just can’t do-it anymore.”
Jacob pushes her away, even after all he’s put her through , even as she gives him money he only thinks of himself and how he can now afford to forget her with the aid of drugs and booze.
He pushes the twenty into his pocket and pulls out the truth, a moment that pushes his spirit into a place of deeper slumber.
” I don’t need a damn soul, ever, in my life, not as long as I have another drink, a rock to smoke or my camera to preoccupy my time and help me forget this ******** life.”
And at that precise moment he walks away from her heartfelt sentiments and thinks of all the crimes committed against himself, by the hands of his parents, ex-girlfriends and by society. He looks back to see Tamara for the last time and somehow sees his own heart walking away with her. He shuts his eyes and weeps.
At two in the morning in the dark sticky theater where Jacob works until closing, he watches the imagery of the past wind down to a conclusion.
Sitting in the butter stained seat, with feet sticking to the cold cement floor, his life disintegrating around him, he realizes that his film was everything he could have hoped for and more. Something nobody can ever take away from him. Unlike his dreams and hopes. Jacob also realizes how he is all alone with nothing but time to torment him further.
When he returns home he will warm-up some noodles with hot sauce, devour a bottle of cheap vodka and light up a joint. He will fall into a deep sleep and replay the movie in his head until he rises to bathroom rituals and the call of another bottle that helps him forget the feelings of the present moments that haunt him and the memory of having lost everything to his pursuit of the past.