jawn /jôn/ noun (chiefly in the greater Philadelphia metropolitan area) used to refer to a thing, place, person, or event that one need not or cannot give a specific name to. Jawn is a neutral, all-purpose noun used to reference any person, place, situation, or object. In casual conversation, it takes the place of the word ‘thing’. Example: “A jawn just fell off that dude’s car and hit our porch.”
jawn one.
In this house here, you might at any time find dust/ dirt/ crumbs/ crumpled up chip wrappers/ spilt chocolate milk/ soda spots/ mystery cheese/ dog hair/ dried dog piss/ dried food/ ice cream bar sticks with dried ice cream gunk/ wet towels/ wet socks/ wet T-shirts/ wet shorts/ small mud clumps/ empty plastic bottles/ half-full cups of juice or soda or milk with bugs floating dead on the surface/ dirty dishes in the sink/ leftover food left unwrapped and untupperwared on the kitchen island/ half eaten meals on plates abandoned on coffee tables/ blood stains/ enough popcorn in the couch cracks for an American movie theater small size worth approximately $7/ probably dried boogies I don’t know about and I don’t wanna know about/ dog hair tumbleweeds/ unidentifiable splotches of gunk/ broken toy bits/ loose Legos/ tiny kid drawings/ dropped pizza sauce dried and hammered by feet/ human footprints in the Swiffer streaks that stand and reveal themselves in the front room at dusk/ ancient Funions hiding like Roman coins/ Sharpie art on furniture/ splattered sauce or dog mess on Covid-era painted walls/ human hair in the sink/ action figures down in the full hamper/ tvs on with no one watching/ fans running/ air conditioners powered on in the strange mode of ENERGY SAVER in which electricity is neither used nor unused/ half empty ramen containers that have been left to the dogs to tip over and suck/ dead bugs, intentional and unintentional/ vintage records laying on the floor with damage from dog piss and kids stepping on them like they’re colored mats back in kindergarten/ dripped toothpaste down in the sink and on the faucet handles/ toothbrush spit-out splosh up on the vanity mirror/ fidget spinners scattered like cartridge casings after a street battle/ sneakers and shoes of various sizes slipped off feet and left wherever that happened/ missing remote controls in rooms with no TVs/ permission slips for school activities scrunched up and shoved down behind book cases/ Hulk pull-ups pre-soaked with hot piss and then hidden way back under beds/ busted pencil bits/ parts of pens disassembled for unknown reasons/ paper plates with various sauces including Chick-fil-A, Sriracha, Crystal Hot Sauce, ketchup, mustard, marinara and chocolate syrup/ hardly charged iPads laying out in the open upon heavily traffic’d floors and on heavily used couches and chairs/ various-sized used spoons randomly distributed on bookshelves and the tops of vinyl stacks and on the floor/ sneakers with dog shit on them kicked off in the mudroom and abandoned/ mouse turds/ bat guano/ flies and their babies gathering in the kitchen/ crushed chips under the kitchen seats/ long strings of dehydrated great dane slobber on tabletops and television screens/ a heads-up lucky penny caked with chewed gum on the other side/ empty cans of Diet Coke possibly left behind as a fuck-you message to elders/ dusty copies of old paperbacks no one has read yet/ dirty pillows on the couch/ half painted walls, half decorated walls/ countertop coffee stains that look like a penis or a ghost or Greg Allman after you’ve guzzled six beers/ bird feathers from long ago/ cracks in the fake wood floor where dust gathers like destitute migrants in a violent storm/ Santa Claus shit during summer/ Halloween shit during summer/ half-burnt-out strings of holiday lights tacked up to the entryways/ all of which magically disappears when the sun goes down on the good nights/ and I have a jelly jar of wine/ and I understand, ephemerally, what it means to be king.
jawn two.
Too many people are driving right through the heart of summer with their car windows up. This is my stance and I cling to it with radical aplomb. Cars with air-conditioning are allowed in my world, I guess. I’m not trying to be a straight-up tyrant or anything like that, but as a seeker of truth in a world absolutely jack-punched by infowar brain melt I have to stand upon this little hill of mine and holler it from the ridge. Riding around with your AC on in the car all the time is making you dumb. And it’s draining your humanity battery faster than you could possibly imagine. What you think is luxury/ or comfort even/ is actually self-imprisonment/ holding you back from the gashing gush of the hot wind that carries the bugs/ propels them like tiny lost moons at your squinty face in the middle of the wide open afternoon. Oh how much you miss when you are fully ensconced in the driver’s seat of a motor vehicle with the windows up tight and the outside world shuttered away. I’m not messing around here. I’m dead freaking serious. It’s almost like a class war I wanna wage, a truly diabolical battle between the lit-up forces of natural poetry and the hard darkened forces of sheltered living. Don’t you remember that music, real music/ good music/ soulful songs and stuff that hits your spirit upside the head with the horny smile bat/ don’t you remember that that kind of music sounds way better with the windows of the car rolled all the way the f*** down?! AC/DC = windows down. Rolling Stones = windows down. Bruce Springsteen Otis Redding Fleetwood Mac James Brown Iron Maiden The Replacements Dolly Parton The Who The Beatles The Killers The The The Cure The Cult Marvin Gaye Bill Monroe Nina Simone Billie Holiday/ you get what I’m saying/ plug in whoever you like and it will be proven by scientific fact that listening to it with your windows down as you barrel along through your evaporating life will make you stronger and better in bed and it will give you talent where you had none before as it raises you to the level of Greek God simply because you are being smashed by the world rushing in and the heat wrapping you in her arms as the antiquated lanes of hot summer welcome you back into their magic embrace, panting down your neck, whispering in your ear. Sweat a little for mankind, man. Not for environmental reasons, I’m not preaching that right now. I’m talking about loss of impact. I’m talking about the great missing out coming down all around. I’m begging you to hear my prayer because I care about what I see when I am flinging down the road in a Honda with no AC and no radio and only a shitty Bluetooth speaker to guide me along. The music is mastered in some AC-riddled studio somewhere by so-called experts traveling at 0 mph. But in truth it can only ever be honestly born to flourish when it is surrounded by the chaos of living. The audio and the visceral and the sensational all at once. One lucky penny is all it takes in this world. And that sort of supernova moment never comes with lottery wins or any of that. I’m talking the gusts and the sun here. I’m talking the spider on the backseat and the bee on your dash. Riders on the wind. The trucks roaring by. Your fingers in the hair of our witch who is earth. The sky rushing in all the while.
jawn three.
The numbers game adds up like this: A certain amount of years allowed are what you get. No more, no less. You have very little say in what the number is unless you choose, at some point, to take your own life. In which case, you forfeit any forgettable playing out you might have had coming to you in exchange for something mired in the total unknown. For the rest of us however, there is the solid number, down to the hour and the second, which, although not recognized by us just yet, it will likely be soon enough. Thus, the numbers game we play isn’t voluntary nor is it even always pleasant. Hell, for many of us, the days and nights add up to a crushing weight upon our chests at times. We have trouble breathing across so many 2 ams because we are simply spent from the seemingly endless slog up a proverbial mountain that never ever rolls up over a crest. What does it mean then? What is the point of even ever discussing a set number in reference to our life spans when most of us are too busy trying to make ends meet or keep our kids safe or raise our credit scores or seek revenge on the ones who hurt us or get tickets for Taylor Swift or land that promotion or take up mountain biking (GOD PLEASE NOOOO!) or conquer our demons or pay for a vacation or trying to get noticed as an influencer or recognized as pretty or seen as having it all together despite the fact that we know (and so do a very select few others) that we are a hot fucking mess of sizzling crazy dancing ‘cross the skillet of lies? Like, what is the purpose of considering the end when everything is happening full throttle right now? Hmmm. This is a good question, I must admit. And likewise, I must confess, as I often do down here under this shady bridge called Thunder Pie (with the river that smells like eels and the racing traffic sounding off high above us on the echoey overpass), that I don’t have a goddamn clue what I’m getting at one way or the other. I just keep whiffing the burning brakes of time, this mountain stank of smoldering rubber, and in it I can detect some kind of something telling me to hurry up and open my senses. To notice what is happening right now, right this instant, before it sinks back into the ether forever, never to come this way again. The heaviness of such a force to be reckoned with maybe slants us all towards a less intense approach to survival, I guess. After all, what good is mindfulness — or whatever it is that I’m harping on here today — if it can’t be utilized to make your life better? To make you feel better about everything that has happened, about everything that is set to unleash itself upon your humble world? I suppose it might be because I struggle personally with my own search for meaning at times that I end up seeking it in the minutiae of a life that has in fact known grander things. What is it that I am trying to understand? What Jedi power am I chasing here, you know? I’m not sure. I think I’m just trying to feel the cool spot of a dirty penny underneath the sole of my foot some morning. And to recognize that for what it really is. A miracle. The most beautiful moment in the history of everything that has ever happened or ever will.
jawn four.
Now I will trust you with a secret that I don’t even try to keep any more. Iron Maiden came late to me. The reasons why we miss things sometimes only to discover them later in life are, of course, varied. Yet, for the most part, I think it can all be chalked up to one fairly obvious one. The time is right when it is right. And when the time is not right, it is wrong. Lately then, listening to the magnificence of Maiden’s unstoppable 1985 live album, Live After Death, I find myself overcome with bolts of joy and excitement as if I was a teenager, in fact: The very teenager I actually was long ago: Hair down to my ass and a cigarette in my lips as we stood in a circle in the sunset woods/ behind the strip mall/ someone packing a bowl of shake/ no girls present/ not because we wanted it that way. Those days, those Friday nights, were filled with a longing to live that fades over time. Which isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy the ride anymore, it’s just glaringly obvious that the original voyage I was on at 16 has been fully replaced by a different one. It’s still fun and all, but let’s face it, you spend a lot of time later in life trying to figure out how to be young again without looking like a total loser to the world at large. Aging is perhaps the most heavy metal thing of all. The most Maiden thing of all, even. For in its incessant grip, each of us, in our own way, is grappling to slay the dragon with these meager chintzy pelotons and songs written in our 50s and pictures of our kids college dorm rooms that we call weapons. We pretend that financial security is a massive sword. We tell ourselves that our jobs are solid maces and that we swing them to survive. Our homes? Fortresses protected by decent odds. And our unknown futures? Probably not so bad if we toe the line, wear the exact same civilized armor as our neighbors and the beautiful people on social media. Iron Maiden, taken wholly, without backstory or any knowledge really but the music itself, stands as a testament to an unlikely but sublime flashlight on existence for someone like me. I am older now and I am more forgotten every day. The passing of time has found me battling forces I never considered when I was a younger man. Which is righteous, I might add. When I was 13, 16, 20, 25, there was no taste of anything finite on my tongue. I was ablaze with juvenility/ I was the warrior laughing at the sorcerer. Back behind the malls, deep hits locked into our lungs and tasted like copper pennies. It was such then: My tribe traversed the landscape under the banner of primal beauty. Our needs were basic and they were met through selfish harvesting, through dime bags and porn mags and the cassettes that we held tight like diamond daggers. Iron Maiden would have been sensible for me then, but they didn’t stick. I liked the Stones. I liked Springsteen and Steve Earle and some Motörhead, even. I liked Robert Johnson and The Temptations. I liked all kinds of music, but I never found Maiden necessary for my youthful quest. And what a delight that turned out to be because now… somehow… I have stumbled into them here deep in this dark forest of midlife crisis. And what, I beg of you, could be further from exposing the truth about a 52-year-old ex-rocker dealing with transcendental questions of mindfulness and existence in a world enslaved by shadowy dark forces than falling in love with a metal band’s spectacular feat from long ago (complete with epic overdubs I gladly accept!)???!!! Pure driven drifts of Hell’s own snow have parted off my shoulders to reveal the silvering man emerging from the blizzard! He is squeezed in the massive hands of a the most ferocious beast you can imagine! The beast’s name is Eddie! And I offer myself unto him as a sacrifice in all of your blood-stained names!!! MWUHAHAHAHAHA! \,,,/
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Serge Bielanko lives in small-town Pennsylvania with an amazing wife who’s out of his league and a passel of exceptional kids who still love him even when he’s a lot. Every week, he shares his thoughts on life, relationships, parenting, baseball, music, mental health, the Civil War and whatever else is rattling around his noggin.
