This is just one little strand that I needed to pull out for myself.

Jacob was smart. But he was also dumb.

(that was why after he absorbed Wittgenstein he turned to fiction)

"What we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence" -Witt

I remember this one time at Roy Rogers. we were trying to pick up a group of girls. Jake did all the talking. He was really charming (in a teen age way). He was our brave front man. Reckless (floundering, not knowing what to say but keeping the conversation going, turning their laughs at his expense into more stretched out seconds sitting next to hot older girls. It was great. We would pipe in, get caught, Jake would save us. "yeah" (a jake yeah) "well, anyway, you know, what he was trying to say is..." they would laugh at this and then we would laugh at their laughing. In those moments everything was o.k. around the roys table (we were all bunched up at one end of the table) (Jake gave me a lot of those moments) Nothing was really said. it was a disaster. We basically ran off mid-sentance. (Jake would never admit to that ) I think we were trying to convince them to come drink beer with us in the park. I'm not sure exactly what we wanted them to do, but the point is, failure was built in. (they were years older than us, respectable, going home to watch a video in the den, or so it seemed. It wasn't going to happen whatever it was). We had a de-briefing in the parking lot after they shoo-ed us away. Jake became serious (not really). He proceeded to recount everything. every word, every reaction on both sides as if he was hovering above, meta-stenographer. he even claimed to know what each of the girls was thinking. " I know that is what she said, and that is what you heard, but I also know that she wanted me."

I saw jake squirm over the years. Stuck in his head, seeing so much - sheer volume. Most of it was there, somehow. Partially there. But a lot of it was wrong. It was information he used to analyze what happened afterwards. He would fixate on events, replay them and go crazy to figure out what had happenned, (or what was happenning). To solve went went wrong or to flag what went right. We all do this, of course, but Jake was the master observer/analyzer (destined to be a writer, i guess)

The later Wittgenstein showed him that there was no mystery to solve. There was no longer an outside in which Jake could hover above and look back in from. There was no mystery to solve. The thing to do was to become a part of the mystery, to join it. (The mischievous Jake probably just felt more at home there, anyway)

It makes me happy to see it this way because i think Jake found some peace, especially when he was sober. Thinking about this whole philosophy to writing shift that keeps coming up is a way of tracing his path toward sobriety for me. I like focussing on his sobriety as an end point. He was proud of himself and happy. I loved that. He told me had a peace he had never had before in his stints of sobriety, with his family, with his friends, with himself. (I know that was also pitted against some serious shit) . For someone so skeptical of everything small, his rejection of philosophy was one large blanket of acceptance that weighed everything down to the ground. He rejected philosophy because in philosophy he would be attempting to answer questions that , according to witt, it doesn't make sense to ask.

"there is no place to go. we are already where we ought to be." -witt

According to Witt, nothing is hidden, everything lies open to view. After realizing that, the thing to do was to describe the hell out of it. Writing was a way for Jake to be here. You gotta be here to see what the hell is really going on. Description replaced explanation for him in the larger sense. It got at the truth of things better. Also, for him it was a way to get real. Jake was brilliant and could have done whatever he wanted, including philosophy. I'm sure he could have carved out a space within philosophy that still jibed with things after his reading of Witt if he had really wanted to. But as goose pointed out, he didn't see the point. I just think he knew that writing could take him where he needed to go as a person.

I also think it is fitting that Alcoholics Anonymous focusses on the notion of acceptence. Jake knew what he had to do, more than me, more than a lot of us. And he was doing it, and it was inspiring to see him battle so hard for it. Somehow studying philosophy, that pursuit that goose talked about, that he went to chicago to follow but did not find, was a last ditch effort to not come down; to figure out a way to not have to come down. But as Jake always said, he couldn't write for at least two days after he used.

Writing was a very sober enterprise for Jake.

Anyway, this is also a thank you to Jake. Some people can "party" and work. But some really just can't do it and I am one of them. We talked about how the work could get done. what would it take for the work to get done? It was everything. I battle similar demons and Jake was really courageous and honest with himself and he shared what he learned with me because he knew I needed to hear it. And the way he shared it, specific to me, so sensitive. Of couse it was, (as i am sure it was with everyone else), because as I have poorly tried to say; Jake was great at reading the world. When we talked about the work we had to do, we were really talking about the people we had to become. We talked about the work as if it was the most important thing in the world and it was.

One more thank you to Jake for being smart enough to be dumb:

My dad was really sick and was probably going to die. Jake heard about it and came down to D.C. without me asking him and just showed up. I wasn't even at home but he found me. And we were outside leaning over the trunk of this car. And I was upset and I was talking to Jake. But he didn't bullshit me with any nervous talk. (which i wouldn't have minded) He was uncomfortable, I could see it in his eyes, in his expressions. He didn't know what to say. He just let me talk and held onto me like a big bear, grunting every now and then - never really saying anything at all. It was perfect. so nice. I think about that all the time.