ain't gonna sit, ain't gonna stay

Day two of this experiment in juror-dom. I remain aglow.

I made a friend yesterday who lives not eight blocks from me and generously offered to drive me home and back—no minor boon when our county courthouse is located in bum-effing Egypt. Of course, once I hopped into his nondescript finance-man's car, I realized that A) he could have been an axe murderer and B) abduction and violent mangling in the immediate aftermath of jury service would be a pretty damned ironic way to go.

No such problem arose. This whole business is overwhelmingly tolerable. You'll never convince me otherwise.

My new buddy was selected for a wrongful death case this morning, and I am on my own once more, parked on a vinyl bench with a view of the Q43s chugging down Sutphin Blvd, and the lawyers and drifters who orbit the building and constitute this little courthouse microsociety.

They've put on the afternoon movie, 13 Going On 30, but—plugged into my reverie—I'm reliving last night in a series of flipbook images, sore feet and stiff hips. I practiced, paying excruciating attention to torsion and balance. I danced.

Confused as I am, I'm starting to calm down. Allow myself to be amused. Because who could possibly predict the twists of this unnavigable nightmare? The flighty peaks and flesh-eating valleys have a life all their own; they ebb and they flow.