here’s a blog.

Some thoughts from being a juror…from completing my civic duty.

If you think about fairness, you must also think about unfairness.  What’s the difference, really?  Each one hurts when you get right down to it.  If you believe in the potential of fairness, you’re longing for something that you want–justice, and you must then also accept the potential for unfairness–an altered truth which becomes accepted as reality.  Both are longing,  and longing sucks.  Our legal system is made up of “can you believe the lie?”  If you can, then the wrong person wins.  If you don’t, then the right person succeeds.  It’s a complete mind fuck.  Either way, this is a system based and judged upon perception, taste, and intuition.  Bogus.

So I say, why have any laws at all?  (OH NO!)  Why have any judicial system?  Why not simply confront the person you believe has wronged you, say, “You’ve wronged me” and wait for them to say, “Yes, I have,” or “No, I haven’t.”  Because truly, the legal system seems to me more an exercise of pageantry.  Are you green?  Are you seasoned?  Are you slick?  Are you stumbling?  Because as jurors, what we say, and what we “jure” on–can we use that as verb?  jure?–is the plaintiff’s/defense’s plausibility.  Do I believe what you’re saying is actually the truth?  Or, do I believe you’re diving into a bucket of semi-truths, a bucket filled with a gallon of water and  two caps of PineSol ready to eradicate, maybe even sterilize the lies/truths — we all know that the PineSol overcomes the water…and, ultimately (hopefully) the truth will reek more than the lie.

So that’s that.

In my satchel today, I packed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (mmm, yum), a Wednesday New York Post, whose crossword puzzle I destroyed, and one Klonopin pill.  Which I didn’t consume, until after a reading of  Generation Um (a new indie feature) two seats away from Keanu Reeves (the lead or star or whatever) America’s greatest living actor.  I shook his hand, and it was basically like shaking anyone else’s hand, whether they were Keanu Reeves or not.  My hand perspired the exact regular amount it would have perspired had it been anyone else’s hand, except he was Keanu Reeves.  I’m glad I’m not star struck.  I’m just relatively anxious all the time.

Is it fair or unfair that this gentleman (and he was gentle) has a career that is laid out before him like a perennial nut flush??  I don’t know.  But it is what it is.   And really, it’s not my place to judge.  Even feeling jealous seems a bit like wasted effort, time and thought.  The world is fucked up and unfair/fair and there is no jury for the experience of existence.  So the best I can figure is to get over myself and be as “fair” as I can deal with….

Unrelated, If ping pong was an Olympic sport, I wouldn’t make the team.  I’d make a good effort, but really pro ping-pong seems to not be in my cards.  At the same time, my friend Anna says she would be a good table tennis player.  Huh.  Who knows?

Eat it, or just taste it a little.  Life.  Or Fairness that is.

By the way my case was settled…I never got to pass judgment on the fairness of it all.

–Knoll