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.”
“Melancholy were the sounds on a winter’s night.”
– Virginia Woolf
jawn one.
I cling to my defenses but at what cost? When I find myself up against a proverbial wall, jacked there by someone or something that feels like its threatening my state of mind/ my peace/ my paradigm/ or my power, what else have I got? It’s my defenses that come around. It’s my defenses that step gingerly out of the alley shadows/ lookin’ tough/ frontin’. How do they manisfest? Oh I don’t know. Does it ever really matter? I mean, if my defenses are acutely tuned into the universal wavelengths, they’ll help me out, right? But what if they ain’t? What if a person’s defenses are all convoluted by their own experience and no matter how hard they try to force themselves to adapt fresher cleaner methods of self-protection, they just can’t swing it? In some cases, my defenses ask me questions in the heat of the moment and for that I am eternally grateful. There’s nothing better than being able to have a little tete-a-tete with your deeper consciousness right smack dab in the middle of big decisions about to be made. It’s a sign of immense growth in the tale of anybody, trust me. No one is born being able to check in with themselves upon times of strife. It’s quite the opposite actually; human beings, by the by, are no different than, say, mountain lions or squirrels when it comes to navigating perceived dangers. It doesn’t really matter either if those so-called dangers are actual murderers looking to flat out take us down or your own kids looking to bamboozle you with Tier 7 psychological warfare. The reaction is rooted in the defense. And my defenses are rooted in my past. So I cling to my defenses, hold them like the sword that protects me from pain, because guess what? That’s exactly what they do. But at what cost? And what on Earth is the alternative?
jawn two.
The natural occurrences in my chest seem strange and familiar to me at the same time. I get a butter flutter sometimes/ this slow worm kicking it in my arteries by my heart. What you cannot see within the confines of your own body is mesmerizing and tantalizing. There are moments when I long to be clear: like an old milk bottle or one of those vintage clear push button phones. This would fully allow me to look down at my own skin and witness the comings and goings of health and illness. Of life, I suppose, as it unfolds in real time. And death, I’d propose, as it wiggles its way into me, ushered in, in total darkness, by the small time crooks who guard the spreading cracks of time. Am I actually feeling high blood pressure? Is that possible to sense a tiny fist forcing its way through the noisy tubes of my system? And if it is and everyone knows it and I’m just dumb about medical things, well, isn’t that kind of cool in a macabre sort of way? I mean, at some point I’m going to be done. And the knowledge that that day is coming isn’t lost on me either. I tend to think about it probably more than most, I guess. Not because I’m cut out of more stoic or poetic cloth either. Hell no. It’s more, I think, that I’m afraid, just like all of us, but also fascinated too. How will I know? What will I feel? Lying in bed one night this week/ agitated by life forces beyond my control/ pissed off by something I probably could steer better if I tried harder/ I found myself pondering this creeping sensation down inside my heart’s cavity. It was slightly painful and somewhat alarming on the surface of things, but it also seemed to be a reminder to me that I am a ticking time bomb. And there are fuses lit down in me/ some only recently sparked/ others that have been burning long off in the distance/ like rebel campfires across the dark starry river. Why can’t we celebrate our own demise before it comes along? Why can’t we take our sadness and our fear and hold them in our cupped palms, examine them like the natural things/ the dare-I-say wondrous things they are. Isn’t my impending death the same in a way as a lovely autumn leaf? Or a cold palmful of creek water? Isn’t the whole idea of my chest being filled with wee hard workers sent to pack up my stage and move my show out, isn’t that, in a lot of ways, just as brilliant… just as glistening with crystal shine as a mountain lion’s tracks in the fresh fallen snow? Or even a squirrel’s? What am I afraid of? What are you so scared of? There’s a blood clot moon shining down on all of our fields tonight.
jawn three.
People miss the point. It’s fairly common nowadays. Was it always like that? That’s rhetorical, by the way. I don’t expect an answer on that one. But the notion of why is intriguing, isn’t it? Why do we… they… you… me… why do we miss the point so often? There are many ways in which the big spastic opera of point-missing might be belted out, of course, but one of my favorites (and by ‘favorites’, I mean, most irritating) is the ways that people miss the point on social media. Now, I understand that missing the point on social media is such low-hanging fruit at this juncture that it actually necessitates the mention that, in fact, it would seem that missing the point on the interactive internet is kind of the point at this point. You know what I’m saying? For me, as I’m sure for many others as well, watching points being missed left and right often happens whenever I wade out into the endless comments on other people’s posts. Let’s use a generalized example, shall we? Let’s say I post something thoughtful, something a few paragraphs long about a band I love on Facebook. Let’s also say that it’s fairly obvious that I took a little time to write what I wrote; it’s not your basic “Here I am watching the Eagles game in a bar with a cheesesteak” kind of post. Nothing wrong with those, but the post I’m making is an attempt at sharing some of my writing with folks who might be interested in it on a variety of levels. The comments I desire most are the ones that make mention of my writing, obviously. I’m fishing, unabashedly I’d say, for praise. Maybe that’s weak for me to admit it, but probably it’s not. Either way, some comments will mention the things I wrote and they will fill that hole inside me, lead the innocent squirrel to the needy mountain lion, and tell me that what I wrote is quite cool or whatever. Then maybe they will offer up their own vignettes or thoughts about the band I made the post about or something relative to what I wrote. This is a fairly fluid exchange of energy between me and the commenter, I think. I needed them to offer me a little positive encouragement and they needed to step up to the table here and let to their own voice be heard. But by including their thoughts on my work as well as their own thoughts on the subject they have entered into the unspoken contract with me that seems obvious. I posted something as a forum for me to be seen or noticed or considered, right? Yet, before long there will typically come a comment or comments that attempts, with small odd violence I might add, to wrestle away ownership of the moment from the person who made the post (in this case, yours truly) by instigating something I like to call post-modern hair-trigger dumb-dumb word vomit. Which is just my way of describing these comments that only chime in to tell everyone about their own experience with the subject while at the same time NOT MENTIONING a single word about the words and thoughts I’d laid out in my post. This kind of missing the point is arguable, naturally. Many will raise their eyebrows at my exposing the raw twitching nerve of my neediness, of my overt attempts at eliciting a loving return on my initial investment by admitting that I’m doing this shit for attention. But what of it? Isn’t that actually me nailing everything we are all doing on social media? Shouldn’t someone finally step up and say, Hey! If you want to sing along… at least have the decency to put a nickel in the banjo players tin can! Or… perhaps… I have stumbled into my own artistic black hole here. Sheesh. Jesus. When did everyone become so self-centered?
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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.
