Salt Water

Welcome home my friend, grab your violin and begin playing the emotion of your choice.  Play loud my friend, so the skeletons that sit high up in the balconies above can hear you.  Hang your coat and  open your eyes wide as you slide down the waterfall of fun.  The outside advice can be cold and sharp, but in here, on this stage, in this dark room, the advice is all from your own skeletons that never seem to make any noise no matter how good you play.  Why are the floor seats empty, but the balcony seats full?  It only takes one skeleton to stand tall out of his seat, this is good. You have gotten what you have been looking for, or better yet what you weren't.  "Our past is out best advise, our scars are our best guide, and our problems are our best solutions," says your skeleton, this blog, this sticky stage full of salt.  Living in the back seat of my car is where I found the Orchestra.  A small line of elephants marched right over the back seat arm rest and into the trunk.  I stuck my head through only to find that all the little elephants turned into a room with just one very big elephant.  A 500 pound elephant that had been following me around everywhere, without me even knowing was looking straight at me.  I was no longer in a trunk, just the dark, dark everywhere, nothing else..... well, besides the elephant.  Skeletons started pouring out of my mouth, and water came pouring out of my eyes, creating a little pond that the elephant began to gulp down with his long trunk.  I didn't start out playing the violin, of course not.  You probably didn't either.  I was taught by the white bones.  They would play 'til I broke.  They would play 'til I understood, learned, and appreciated.  The skeletons played 'til the vicodin got bored and went home.  The crystal mountains I once lived in, and the snowy white powder that I once played in, soon melted away through the cracks of the black stage.  

His face was nothing but black holes and a white outline, but the day he reached out the violin for me to play, was the day I saw more detail and expression than I had ever seen in any one's face, or any thing's face.  So I played, and I still do, with an audience filled with my own past, sitting in the top row looking down.  There is nothing motivating about this blog my friend, nothing special about this Orchestra, simply just a trunk full of black.  The trunk space is endless; there is no surprise ending.  My pain hurts worse than before, which is a constant Advil popper, because the exact opposite seems to make more sense.  How could this be?  The more I get to know myself today, the more I cringe thinking about before.  The more I come to the realization that I will never talk to him again.... makes me sick.  Maybe this is why there is always one empty seat high above.  I find beauty in strings of truth, only bright happy orchestras play songs full of lies while their elephants are caged under the stage and their skeletons locked away in the dressing room closets.  I am a prisoner of myself.  There are times when I am the biggest Jon North hater. I find myself typing hate mail to myself, and writing devilish stuff on bodybuilding.com, but who can stop me?  I can't.  The walls shake like bombs dropping all around, only to find that the falling dust from the ceiling is from the weights dropping.  Maybe I will one day take a peak outside to find the person who is really writing this blog. Who is the guy on the radio?  Who is this teacher they call coach?  What happened to frank the tank?  aka J-NO?  I will tell you one thing, what you're reading is me.  A place where I continually find myself, a place I can be myself.  I am so glad you came across this letter.  I live in this blog, never to see light again, besides the slight glow from your computer screen.  It's okay though, I like it here. I like when you join me.  I wish you luck though in the real world with that crazy mother fucker Jon North, the dude is nuts, and if you can run, run for your trunk.  You know where to find me.  Let your skeleton teach you how to play so you can play with me one day.  Slide down your salt water of falling puke and enter a world full of weightlifting and family. Enter a world of you.  Salute.  

The Orchestra 2016