Scroll of Jawns/ Ep. 12

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

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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 okay, I assure myself. You’re okay, I murmured at the anaconda. What a stupid thing to tell a water snake. You’re okay. He obviously wasn’t okay 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.

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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.

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