howie was hungry so he invented pizza:

i worked today. somewhere between making pizzas robotically and taking orders over the telephone ("hi thanks for choosing hungry howies, this is jon, what can i get you today?" or "would you like to try some howie bread with that pizza?"), i found myself happy. happy to be working again. it has been such a long time, i cannot wait to hit the road with a joint rolled tight and good tunes, pizza as my passenger and cash dripping from my pockets. yes, the motivation for this job is money. and freedom.

i decided not to give up on my writings. although at times i feel some entries are forced and unstructured, like life, sex and geographical maps, this online journal is up and down (thanks zachary). after talking to a friend on the phone, i decided that i shouldn't give up. i realized that people actually read this (the few who do, thank you), some even half heartedly (or whole) look forward to what i write next. that makes me feel good, but at the same time scares me. i'm still going to write for myself.

but these last few entries have been an attempt to dialogue with the audience. maybe its a lack of feedback, positve and negative (the negative i respect more) that keeps me still. wait. i look into things a little too much. maybe a new journal will begin, i sometimes feel as if my work is done here. but blog on. or at least try to. but just make sure you wait until the fruit ripens before you eat.

astronomical observation no. three: newtonian dynamics.

the law of intertia states that an object remains at rest (or continues in motion at constant velocity) unless acted on by an unbalanced force. i wish an unbalanced force would strike me while i'm at rest causing me to accelerate (newton's law of force). i've rested at writer's block for too long.

voice inside my head speaks on a twelve day college lecture tour:

lately, i've had no desire at all to write. to write about anything at all. my mind has been in other places, travelling to other lands and thinking about other things. although words once served as a solution to my confusions and doubts, it does not seem to do the trick at this stage. i tried writing earlier in here. as you can see, what resulted was a large piece of shit.
i thought about discontinuing this journal. while the cosmos are still cracking, and i still may be right, i have seem to hit some sort of wall at a clipping pace. i haven't made out what the wall is made of or how long it will be there, i'm still getting up and my head is still a little fuzzy. even as i type now, i'm still churning out one large piece of shit.
its hard for me to sit down here and write something. what always runs through my mind is what is the next greatest thing i could write about or who's head i'll turn. it just shouldn't work that way. prior, i wrote for myself, i didn't write one large piece of shit.
or, maybe i did? today is a bizarre day. i'm doing a bit of recovering from an exodus of reality yesterday. i returned safely, but the journey has worn my mind and body, some much needed rest took place and i'm still trying to figure out which world is real and which is not or, if i'm capable of entering the world i journeyed yesterday without the willing assitance i had in my hands.
deadlines are destroying my life.
i still think of her more than i should.
i begin my new job tomorrow.
oh, i'll let you know when i find her. hopefully it will be before the year 2010 (and it will be).
one, large piece of shit.

braver newer world:

i saw her, there, as the liquid settled. her face so simple yet so beautiful. she grew older as the waves formed new silhouttes, and died. when i see her in reality i will know. when i see her in reality i will marry her. yes, i will.

mission one: complete (i am now in the work force).

elliott on my backporch, this is where i found dreams that i dream about future possibilities in endless friendships which have been constructed instantly out of the mid winter air. somewhere hidden in the background (where the grass is tall) my shadow hides, jumps, runs, away away away into the vast expanse where i laid down countless evenings with countless different lives. the self is ever changing but so is my hair. i cannot begin to communicate how socially unaware i have become because i don't even realize it even when i'm writing sitting smoking and thinking on that second story green love seat porch that i will attempt to recreate a hundred times when the sun stays out longer than it should. we move to fast to remember. i will write on and write on i will, until another epic evening comes across my path and shouts: "hey. lets get some camo 40."

in loving memory of:

and when we find the mind blowing natural human experience of death seeping into our lives, its hard to understand anything anymore. i cannot explain any further, so i'll just remain silent.

(silence).

i heard a record and it opened my eyes:

and the last chapter was written at the top of the stairs
mused by a memory that never existed
and an empty space that was never filled
all wishes, were hopeless lies by the time the last word was written
there will be no refund
there will be no champagne
there will be nothing

surrounded by sounds moving through motions
to hear the voice would break into
these traces of a friendship found in
cigarette butts and empty bottles
all at their end accompanied by a faded photograph
there is nothing (filling the space in a world too familiar).
there was nothing.

oh distance has a way of making love understandable (thanks, wilco).

saying what you keep up inside of your soul is a wonderful feeling.

i hate to say "i told you so" (but i did!):

i only looked at it once this past week. you all should be smiling and shaking my hand, preferrably at the same time.
*author's note(s): sorry for the happier/funnier entries lately. i hope they didn't catch you off guard at all. i promise, to each of you, as my readers, that i'll be back to my usual fashionable despair by sunday (warning: i often break promises).
**if you really want to get down on life in general, browse through my archives.
***julie james is brilliant.
****nicholas writes about me (a lot).

was that my cell phone i heard ring(?)/ hey! its your month:

to the university of michigan "theatre" women: 616.304.1361, give me a call. peace and bright lights, jmiggs.




i should of been an actor. maybe i already am?
i should of been a poet. this kid sure fucking is (congratulations, christopher).
i should of been a lot of things and i should of done a lot of things.

warn the town, the beast is loose.

re: michael jackson and nicholas

tell them thats just human nature

is what a great artisan told me
but i can't escape her
date her replace her
my mind trying to erase her with a faulty eraser
because i chased her
with a mode of transport resembling that of speed racer's
but
the breaks dont work
so once started i cant stop until someone gets hurt
meanwhile i'll flirt and
think about the skirt
and the work and that fucking smirk
and i'll import women to take the press from the shoulders
and i'll export a contorted confused catastrophe that leaves me feeling
happy.
yeah, happy.
but the race will still carry on
and here and there it will come up in the air and i'll call it
heads: i win
tails: you lose
but this game, is not about what i have to prove
its about staying true to what i know is truth.

recipe for a night to remember:
3-4 women
1-2 bowls
1 crammed ford escort
mark and brian live
1 coffee
1 mt. dew
1 michael jackson album
scissors
2-3 bowls
1 electric toothbrush
*mix in cigarettes where applicable

to whom it may concern:

maybe you wouldn't feel so guilty if you didn't tell half-truths?

recounting and counting:

arrival. boulders. ultimatum. cleavage. reunion. sketch comedy. third wheel. fourth wheel. prospects good. financed. polished wheel. east lansing. coming of age. ugly. naked. drunken. cocaine in bathroom. unshaven. co-op. frat boy. you remind me of. hip-hop. fourth element. raazamatazz. fog. armani suits and a stage. coney. sunshine. goodbye. hello. alone. prospects even better. native son. truths. studio. wine. pot. guitar. mixes. you are not normal. furniture. cigarette(s). dinero. finally. finally. finally. scuba? (since i've been back home, i haven't felt the need to write on here. maybe because everything is "ok".
the comfort of the nest surprises me, its good to smile).

the grip of temperature:

beneath the field of winter's edge
the sun climbs up the mountain's ledge,
pouring through in shades of red;
breathing life to what was dead,
we hear the song lovers sing;
of newborn lust beginning to cry,
echoing the young lady's sigh
and in the cradle life will lie,
welcoming the spring.

of all the conversations sprung
a reminder comes of what's been done,
the sharpening of the blinding sun;
left drops of amber on our tongues,
young lovers turn the locks and sing;
i remain frozen in free form,
washing the past of what's been worn
await to be melted await to be torn,
welcoming the spring.

thursday, september 26, 2008:

chicago, case no. 94776: american schoolchildren, not satisfied to distinguish themselves from their boss, agreed to pay a severance package over domestic security legislation. so the kids were told to get off the school bus, where a tall thin man stood in the shadows. something about the tall thin man waiting at the bus stop struck them all as suspicious. there was all that dust on his shoes and then there was that big black duffle bag in his hand. at the man's back was mick jagger and the rest of the rolling stones musing on aging as a tropical storm dumped rain on the gulf coast (many new orleans residents planned parties). scientists, george w. bush, rami mahamid, an attorney general (jim ryan), tom daschle, jean-rene fourtou, and myself all stood and watched the world begin to fall apart that day in chicago. the schoolchildren had told us it was going to happen, and the world responded. hollywood's gadget factories were working overtime, leaving the entertainment industry in a panic over the internet. i turned to the scientists and jean-rene fourtou and said, "someday we'll read the story of a comic genius who was as kind, thoughtful, generous and selfless as he or she was funny. in the meantime, as these two new accounts illustrate with varying success, comedy is not pretty. and genius is pain, if not for the genius then for anyone who happens to be nearby."

and the speakers hanging over the remains of chicago blared drunkenly: "and ladies and gentlemen, friends, let me loosen the big boom, let me invite you to fasten your seat belts because we're about to take off, because it's one thing to call for the guaracha and another thing to see it come."

the tarzan of culture, the superman of culture, the james bond of culture were nowhere to be found. they did not show up to dinner, had not phoned and had not given a shit about our culture. america's schoolchildren were all right. they all continued their streak, and pointed me in the direction of superman and tarzan. they were cruising the elevated train, listening to johnny cash's new album with the angels and smoking dope. harmless.

i continued my search for james bond, stumbling upon the tall thin man from the bus stop. he opened his black duffle bag which contained three different weapons. he told me i would need one of them, and calmly directed me toward the boarded up broken building that bond had recently made home, all while handing me a handgun.

i found james bond on LSD. nervously, with his finger wrapped around the trigger of goldeneye's golden gun, his teeth chattered as he rambled off his latest scientific discovery, "after the cubes...were ingested a startling series of events occurred with marked individual variation. all senses appeared sharpened and brightened; vivid panoramic visual hallucinations of fantastic brightness and depth were experienced as well as hyperacusis (better known as abnormal acuteness of hearing). ouch. senses blended and became diffused so that sounds were felt, colors tasted; and fixed objects pulsated and breathed. depersonalization also occured frequently so that i lost ego identity; i felt i was living with my environment in a feeling of unity with other beings, animals, inanimate objects and the universe in general. my body image was often distorted so that faces, including my own, assumed bizarre proportions and the limbs appeared extraordinarily short or elongated. i was enveloped by a sense of isolation and often was dominated by feelings of paranoia or fear. i would mark that if large doses were to be ingested, confusion and delirium may set in. whatever others may see on LSD, hallucinations are rare. i prefer the term 'consciousness-expanding drugs' rather than 'hallucinogen,' since the experience for the user consists more often in seeing things that are there but hidden."

i tried telling bond, james bond, that the cubes me and george w. bush sold him were placebo and that what he was experiencing was reality, and i warmly welcomed him to thursday, september 26th, 2008.

i am now on my way to shake the hand of edward e. ericson, jr.:

spring was in the air. it had most of us believing that tale at least. but spring brought something else with it, a sense of urgency, a sense of confusion and moreover a sense of realization of how truly messed up human beings are.

solzhenitsyn said this: "the line that divides good and evil cuts right through the heart."

the wavering back and forth between good and evil is evident, especially in the spring air today. i happened to have witnessed this with my own pair of eyes. a man who i was friends with, a wonderful, endearing man, who was kind and generous, thoughtful and organized reminded me of this line solzhenitsyn talks about as he walked by me in handcuffs, being escorted by two men. so while our hearts move back and forth between that which has been deemed "good" and that which has been deemed "evil" (thank you society/history/white man/judeo-christianity), i realized that whichever good or evil deed that we associate with the most, is the one which we will embrace and allow to ourselves to be definded by it at that moment. it isn't until after the fact that we realize who we actually are, by what we have done right or wrong.
and so i allow this to settle and consume me, and apply it to my circumstance. maybe the line that divides good and evil cuts through experience and money?
tomorrow morning i will arise, eat, listen, participate, eat, study, and sleep. and in the meantime i'm supposed to get a job to earn a wage to become a responsible man of integrity. however, i find that right now i'm learning lessons about life that will have more value, merit and validity in ten years than if i learned to budget my wages so i can pay my mortgage. but somehow, i am told to find a balance between the two, and whatever that balance is i hope it breeds as much intensity that life is capable of generating, even if i'm more concerned about the value of paper than the value of my life.

yesterday afternoon's affair:

if skipping class is wrong then go to hell. accompanied by a fat stick and good tunes a friend and i departed this area code for an afternoon of antics. i found my head full of a cloud for most of the time, communication seemed limited. food made me function. and sleep made me want my pillow even more. so what was accomplished? what made skipping class worth it all? maybe it was the freedom given to me to chose. maybe it was what i did instead of class. or maybe, it was because i am now happy.

my friend and i had another conversation, which discussed how we convince ourselves we are in a state of despair. and then we write. and we write using the emotion of despair because it is so easily recognizable to the reader, it is an emotion the reader can relate to. secondly, we use the emotion of despair when we write because this is one of the more intense emotions that one feels, but we chose to use this emotion. constantly writing with despair as our muse is dangerous water to tred my friend. you're swimming with sharks, so lets stick to the better things that life brings, and when life sucks, sure, we'll chronical it all, but for now, i'd prefer to keep my head up.

a maple tree and a boardgame:

he ducked behind the shade to feel comfortable. somewhere, somehow, the feeling was all too familiar. but as the seconds passed and the contemplation grew in size and proportion, life hit him on the head. unconscious and wrapped somewhere in a dream state, not even the isolation of the shade could protect him in waking life. while in dream, he dreamt of memories lived--when he told his friend it was going to be the end. he had removed all devices, made the right precautions. his calculations seemed correct. but still, what made him him, continued to creep out from under concrete cracks on a path he thought he had far removed himself from.

this is the new game of life, not created by parker brothers, but by life itself. moments aren't made up of seconds that we sit and dream about all our lives, they come from living in a reality that is open as a midwestern plain, the countryside between here and the next big thing. each destination is a scribble in our journal, allowing us to define ourselves by our introspection or lack thereof. i'll take my bread and water, and stick to the smallness of our reality, inching my way along bullshit boulevard until i can finally fall asleep without dreaming. without moving. and without waking.

in the changer: ryan adams "heartbreaker"

a failure. sometimes words suck.

when i realized that i forgot what it was like to be jonathan william mcglone:

moment by moment the focus on life seems to come clearer. no longer is it blurred or skewed by outside hands that control the lens. the lens is wetted with tears. what has kept me from moving in life feels to have scattered away like birds in a stirred nest that felt so comfortable, that felt like home. as hard as it is to actively decide to leave behind something that definded who i was, and to do this at every moment--the comfort of friends and the newly fallen snow allow me to feel that this decision is right, that jonathan is finally right.
and so the story goes on and i'll pen my adventures along the way shedding what insights i can to a life that now seems meaningful, logical, a little less romantic, but in the end, reality.

the.cosmos.are.cracking.

cracked. stolen. sore. scabs. happy.

and next week will be the same as today (as it always is):

drove thru to get food.
dividends didn't make me meet.
a lost sunday (a chapter that continues next week).
let go of a dream held close.
mother waited to hear a voice that broke out of her.
could't stand wind.
considered begging for my life (change).
hope was around the corner.
tried to be diligent.
ended up being confused.
realized i chose to be here.
that made me feel better.
created what will hopefully make a change.
spoke to an old friend(s).
remembered to save my cigarettes.
hope is still around the corner.

previously written material is now surfacing these pages (and this journal burns me from a distance at my desk):

low is playing an i'm confused
many thoughts begin to rush through--
in an earlier life or a different stage
i thought things would be harder at an older age.

i was right, but not on boastful terms
specifically in that i had already learned, (and continue to)
as i wonder what will kill me first
this cigarette i inhale or the distance across the earth
so difficult to cover but seems worth my time
because only a memory of her exists in my mind.

so as i lay me down to sleep
i pray my eyes will close and my thoughts will cease
and rest will prevail throughout the night
because with this distance growing i no longer know what is wrong, and what is right.

in the changer: lullaby for the working class "blanket warm"
this evening's film: david maysles, albert maysles and charlotte zwerin "gimme shelter"

astronomical observation no. two: newton shrinks the ego.

at the age of twenty-four in the summer of 1666, issac newton invented calculus. the day i feel i have contributed to society, my life will end.