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’.
“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
— Leo Tolstoy
jawn one.
I saw a watersnake looking at me. He was small, but he was still and staring right at me. That alone was enough to change my day. Common watersnakes aren’t poisonous but they are meaner than the devil and don’t mind chasing a person- or even biting them- merely because the two crossed paths. I was crawling on my hands and knees through the snaggy brush along the trout stream when I felt his heavy gaze first, then locked glares. I’d say he was maybe 12 inches, if that. Not so big for a snake that can sometimes grow to 50 inches. Even so, I didn’t like how this bruiser was so methodical in his chill. You have to watch out for Napoleon complex, man. You need to be on guard for the small but nasty sorts who actually WANT to fight you just so they can prove that their physical stature doesn’t mean squat. This dude didn’t flicker or flinch; he didn’t buzz his tongue or open his creepy snake mouth at me, like water snakes often will. Instead, he just stared at me/ coldly/ with a psycho killer’s eyes. Or maybe not, I don’t know for sure. I mean, I was so scared. I don’t care for snakes all that much. Especially when they have been watching me and I know it. Fuck those snakes. In my preposterous position I began to talk out loud to myself. This is what a man needs to do when he is face-to-face with a savage serpent. He needs to whisper to himself. Little reassurances. Mini-pep talks to turn his ass around slow and steady and get the hell out of dodge a-sap. He’s OK, I assure myself. You’re OK, I murmured at the anaconda. What a stupid thing to tell a water snake. You’re OK. He obviously wasn’t OK or he wouldn’t have been pondering my face with his nine-inch fangs, you know? I crawled back home with my man card crushed up into a soggy ball of sad. But whatever. I was whole. Uneaten. Lived to tell the tale.
jawn two.
I went to a little flea market at a local church and I guess my new meds were really hammering away at my system this past Friday morning because I was a goddamn hoot. I even texted Arle on my way home. I wrote: I just came out of the sale. My God, my drugs were popping in there. I was on fire, talking to the ladies, then talking to the men out front. I was buying hotdogs with barbecue on them and pork sandwiches and cookies. I was asking the price on all the kinds of stuff and they were laughing at all my jokes. It was literally like I was a different person. Ha ha ha. It felt good, as I drove away from the moment, to be passing barns and green fields of cows knowing that I had just been social and happy and chatty and funny again. I used to be those things way more than I am today. Heck, it wasn’t even all that long ago, come to think of it. I had the panache. I had the joie de vivre. I could walk into a dive bar full of jaded classic rockers or methy water snakes and I could understand that they were each, in their own way, electrified with pulsating danger. But I’d win them over. Or else I wouldn’t piss them off at least. And in due time, we’d probably be talking about things they were good at or things they had done because I know that’s key to meeting people. You can’t be talking about you all that much. People don’t want to hear about you, man. They want you to hear about them. The meds have helped me at times, it seems, but they also have fogged me out and gifted me fat. I dream of days when I go off of them entirely, but I don’t think I’m there yet. The other day in the little sale though, it was nice to just be able to be in a place where I was feeling confident and easy and even interesting maybe. I bought some things, joked with some old timers. There was no feeling boring into my skull or my chest that I was being judged or observed. It was almost as if I had been given permission by the sky or something to go into the dark of some strange rectory and be amongst the people as a person rather than as a walking, talking, burning narrative. On and on, us regular people go, and it’s sweet and peaceful and I wish it was all the time for all of us.
jawn three.
Whenever I pass a kid in the kitchen or on the stairs, I feel so many things all at once. Is that normal? I want to believe that I am a damn good dad, but I have these moments when I’m seeing them in real time and they’re on their way towards one part of the house and I’m on my way to another, and they ignore me. It causes me to wonder then, what gives? Like, what in the ever loving fuck is parenting even supposed to be anyways? What is all of this communal living where only the two adults pay the way or do the cleaning up? Is that how it’s supposed to be? I’m not even complaining, I swear, I’m just feeling tripped up lately. Like, this modern family dynamic, what the hell is it even supposed to feel like for a man? And I only say a man because thats who I am, but also for a woman? I mean, I know we are both struggling with many of the same things. We just have to be. Raising children is loco. Watching kids grow up right before your eyes is mind-bending. And loving them the way we love them is godlike. But feeling so disrespected and unseen by them so very often, especially as they sail off into the double digits (where EVERYONE SUCKS!), it’s really, really hard. Hard to know what to do. Hard trying to understand how to be. Hard thinking that you are not alone and yet/ so often/ feeling as if you actually are way more alone than anyone has ever been in the history of the world. I want to hang out with my kids and be a friend to them and understand their precious minds, but guess what? They are more interested in a guy who goes by the handle Moist Critical on YouTube than they are interested in my old ass. Moist Critical? Don’t laugh. He has almost 17 million subscribers. Why are you shrugging your shoulders at that? Do you understand how many people that is? He is a genius! He is funny and he talks in this weird monotonic way that young people love and he’s kind of crass and a little salty, but who cares? Kids eat him up! I can’t compete with that, man. 17 million YouTube followers? I couldn’t get 10 when I tried.
“We are not now that strength which in old days/ Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;/ One equal temper of heroic hearts/ Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will/ To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
— Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses
jawn four.
Henry caught his second trout in front of me the other night. Not his second trout ever, but his second in front of me, the first one since he was just a little kid. The original trout was a state-stocked brookie up at Halfway Dam. I remember it like it was moments ago. Maybe in the grand scheme of time it was. He was fishing a worm and he was wearing his Bob the Builder sweatshirt and he was so tiny like a hanging basket and I saw his bobber go down and no one else could ever care like I care now. No one else is supposed to feel the weight of that boy hanging off the universe on my shoulders/ smiling and heaving his heart into each crank of that cheap Walmart reel. No one else can feel it like I feel it. Along the little creek here this week/ in the evening/ a couple days ago now/ I was reclined on the steep rocks letting him do the fishing when he mentioned that first trout out of the blue. It’s been a long time since you watched me catch a trout, he mentioned casually between casts, his spinner was slashing gold flashes my way as it dangled in the slight breeze inches from his rod’s tip. What was that? A brookie I caught? I smiled. I was caught off guard. He’s a teenager now and he’s armored up most of the time/ welded into his cool kid suit. All tough and stoic. All single syllable responses to my hard thought questions. But this? This was good. Good for me. Hopefully something moving up in him that might remain until I’m gone. His words and recollection: it was as if he was handing me a bottle of whiskey/ something we might share someday/ a thing I see in my head, I guess/ the two of us stood by a tent along a river/ Hemingway bullshit but also true and wonderful/ in my vision he is a man now and I am a man still, an old one. But we are together with the fishing gear and the stream is bustling and the fire is crackling twilight. Evening settles. He fishes the bottle out of his backpack. Hands it to me with his beautiful smile. The same one he has in the photos I took of him and that first trout. Someday, maybe. Maybe not. But I do have this now. The fact he remembers that little brook trout. Us together on the Earth at once. I rip myself to shreds trying to understand the raw power of my dumb pride. My futile attempts at allowing myself to just lie in it all. This love. Our blood. What joy I deny us when I can’t slip through the smoke enough to see us right now. I tell him I remember it all so clear and he doesn’t say anything back. A little upstream a 10 inch brown slams his spinner and he is excited and so am I. In his hand the fish gasps. He unleashes the hooks, a little blood from the gills. The sight is imperfect but then again no it ain’t. He lays the fish gently back into the cold clean creek and looks at me. I have seen him catch two now. So far.
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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.
