"Mr. So-and-So, are you

  a political operative or are you a Christian Democrat?" The young woman was dressed in a well-pressed girl shirt and black pants.  She was not happy.  In college she'd studied law and journalism.  After school, in a flooding job market amidst housing and immigration crisis, she took some pro bono work.  The enforcement agents pretended not to listen. 

  "We were all friends."  Mr. So-and-So took off his glasses and pressed his hands onto sore points on his forehead and temples.  His suit coat was tight on his shoulders. 

  "Write it." The more experienced journalist at the conference table pressed a professionally manicured fingernail onto the table in front of the legal pad and tapped it. 

  Everyone in the room including the agents of enforcement had been blocked in not under arrest, post having been in the detention center to discuss testament, testimony.  A judiciary person had pre-warned, that Judge doesn't have time to deal with a bunch of people who have no idea what they are doing. 

  A kick under the table.  "Are you a victim?"  

  "I don't know what any of this is about anymore." And that was more true than people re-naming the same thing in as many ways as their "angles" or motivations required.  "At what point activism and other job?  Your journalism.  It's not what I learned is journalism.  I came here as a journalist and I am leaving as a journalist!"  The blinds in another conference room went up and people got up from that table.  "I'm sorry that we're all going through this." 

  "Why are you sorry?" 

  "I'm ashamed of my Country.  Sorry that people my age aren't, can't, do more." 

  "You are not who should be apologizing." 

  "It's not his fault either." 

  "Oh? A president's man are you?" 

  "Hardly a man.  And not any more a fan of him than I am of you." 

  The door was opened and left open.  Gradually everyone left the room.

  Shit or get off the pot.  The microtape recorder said over and over in the port-a-potty.  "No place to shit!" A man's voice was a muffled boom.  His briefcase pushed the door open and his toupè was crooked on his head as the door slammed behind him.  A shaved-headed woman from Brazil went next. 

  "Is this the one?" 

  Someone nodded. 

  Someone shook head, pathetic. 

  An Irish brogue called out, "I've never filed this way before.  But I feel greatly relieved." 

  "Pick your poison.  Pick your poison.  What's yer poison girlie?" The variety of liquor bottles ranged from airplane serving size to jugs labeled with homemade piles of bones and fat heads with tongues sticking out.  "We're sticking with the milk," a familiar face smiled and his hand reached a six pack of milk in glass bottles up onto the plywood box containing audio speakers.  "Everything's getting bigger the closer we get to the hangars." 

  "Not you guys.  As whatever I am in this moment, I refuse to let you go Overseas." 

  "You look like a farm boy in those rolled up jeans." 

  "We were obliged to do some local advertising." 

  "Political?" 

  He opened a milk and downed the actual nutrition.  Milk mustache.  "You're wearing jeans too," he stated factually.  "Someone give you the spoiler alert?" 

  "I don't know what that is." 

  "Must be why they picked you and," he looked around the barn area, "Them," he pointed with the empty bottle of milk.  "For what?" 

  "To go west young people.  Or north or wherever 'Braska is." 

  "But..."

  "No."

"But, you gave me the pens."

  Our Dad had spent the whole ten days of us kids being grounded working, and, being fed and sat like Mr. Cleaver in his recliner with slippers and newspaper in the evenings.  His slippers were gigantic, fuzzy affairs with large bear claw appendages that flopped around when he stomped to the bathroom. 

  It was true that he'd gifted me each pen on a birthday or milestone event at school.  But it was also true that he'd conducted a red-faced, lip twisting, almost sweaty raid of every nook and cranny where the precious treasures might be stashed.  Our mother stood apart from him, arms crossed, not really looking at any of us, and covering a couldn't-help-but laugh in her shoulder acting as if her nose itched. 

  "How could you?" He'd hoisted the growing number of pens found into the air.  "WE DON'T need you to write about OUR LIVES.  WE'RE LIVING IT!!!!!!!" 

  A deafening silence followed.  For a full five days.  That was how I fell in with some Asians.  Two of us were both ten. 

  "Pandas don't have pens but they still exist." A big Asian brother told us girls.  A slender hand started to reach towards a face swollen with tears but re-directed itself to a box of tissues.  His sister clutched the box.  Heavy sighs. 

  I sat on the medium-hard plastic packaging the sofa.  Mrs. Asian's decor was very ivory in color with dramatic splashes and jags of deep, dark colors.  An ebony-colored vase which looked almost squashed, like it was standing up almost flat had a spray of greenish leaves sticking up out of it.  Eucalyptis, the girl named the dried out plant my eyes fell on.  An ornate deeply red wooden sitting chair.  The dragons on the arms and legs dumb-eyed.  Mouths wide open.  Soft-edged pieces of jade shades; stone chess pieces on a yellowing bumpy board.  Paper lanterns on a snarled up yarn string.  No patience, the little girl explained.  She and I were the same size, different-looking human features.  But we knew each other as pandas.  

  We'd found each other as such in the woods.  We'd each hidden our bicycles.  Stashed food and pencil bags.  There'd been no paper at my school.  And slipped out of wordly cares by imagining the woods like a still, shimmering pool of water.  We'd glanced at each other feeling tree bark, scooping catepillars into hands, moving crispy leaves to find lady bugs, and finding bigger and bigger leaves.  We just did this.  Without talking because we didn't speak the same language.  She'd shown me in the Atlas:  Cambodia.  

  The teacher having a hard time with all the rules about Catholic school, like us kids, gave me two panda stickers and I gave one to my panda friend.  She opened a big metal desk's top drawer and put the sticker next to the neat row of twisting pencils and click pens.  A feather had jumped up when she opened the drawer.  She tried to smooth it back in place but it kept sticking to her finger.  Then the back of her hand.  She shook it.  It floated and she pointed it into place.  Grown ups were coming so she closed the drawer quickly and opened a square in the wall.  We sat Indian-style in the square.  We saw legs and heard lots of talking in the "peephole".  Then they went out the front door.  And we just did our giggling in silence.  Like a silent movie.

"I do not know if I shall wear purple."

  Right away someone half-heartedly groaned and tsk'd, so someone else clucked.  Some people got up to leave.  Couldn't handle another argument session.  "That is NOT what this is," a stand-up-straight young black woman assured.  "People can disagree without it being an argument." The room fell silent externally. 

  Our agers were taking a beating.  Terrible things were happening "in reality" while money and other resources were being applied to "a public face" in media necessary to survive a "mainstream" that could navigate enemies on all sides. 

  "To whom and when and where?" Puffy-faced girls had pre-agreed as mission.  This was a roomful of stories and experience.  All the people in the room were committed to truth.  The weight of collision of "worlds" was something crushing if we could not rise above impact "somehow". 

  As word of "war" filtered into the general population's minds and life-processing, there were those who were using that as permission to war against neighbor.  Causes were motivating people to extremes. 

  Someone had put RoundUp in pet's drinking water.  Someone had put abortion drugs in peoples' food.  Someone had used old war materials to sicken new people.  Someone had raped someone.  Someone had chained people into a cellar and lit a fire! 

  We were poisoning ourselves into toxic environment and writing that off as well, it is a war. 

A lot of the fighting got

  compressed into smaller debates in wider swaths of pro- and anti- Americanism. 

  Some of wanting a future took to studying the -ism part, as if, maybe that contained "the energy" and maybe it wasn't either love or hate that was the motivation.

I didn't know much.

  I never do really.  Usually having arrived "a day late and a dollar short", or, from the library, or, with the propensity to philosophize (squirm) and ethicate (this is why, we should or shouldn't) but everybody else saying shut up.  It's just the way of it. 

  I don't like fighting although I had to learn the hard way, a time or two, that standing to not cave on "taking a stand" and being caught in an avalanche is not all that smart either. 

  My mom managed the retelling of a Dad "joke" to my paled face and let go of it.  Only to her of course.  There were still many years of having to put on a face, buck up, and "walk the line" in a very public way to come.  The joke was planned to be not all that funny.  And it was about a decent old farmer who'd outlived his kin (probably because of eating right) and he would eat his tuna fish lunch everyday with a little picture of Jesus leaned up against the salt and pepper shaker.  "So what happened?" Mom kind of sighed a little, partly responsible for encouraging college, and mostly the same mom who was always there at the end of the day in her and Dad's home no matter what was happening in the world.  "Guy dies.  Goes to Heaven.  Is milling about up there when Jesus approaches him with tuna and bread and a big tomato." 

  "That's it?" 

  "Pretty much.  Dad added this whole part about Jesus and the guy acknowledging there are a lot more people down there in that mess than up here having lunch.  Here are your people!" 

  It seemed really feasible.  Very plausible.  Yet, so had Academia with it's critically thinking about the mess and it being kind of okay to not always have perfect answers. 

  "So what happened?" 

  Sigh.  "The whole stupid thing turned into a riot." 

  The silence of a reasonable and slightly older person putting youth on the scales of truth.  "We even brought a Bible!"  Mom's mouth squishing together quiet not judgment.  "It got ripped in half!" 

  "By satanic gang people?" 

  She waited. 

  "Oh.  Did I mention them?" 

  She sighed and stooped some. 

  "Actually, that was by these two guys who were just debating God and oil.  They were really getting deep about the Old Testament God being pretty harsh and clear and sometimes wars happening.  And how God, like one day or in his BIG plan, decided to send Jesus as ambassador of God's new plan for humanity." Mom fell into a more relaxed mode of listening to story.  "Well, the one guy really flat out denied that Jesus even came down here and went through all that torture to give lousy people a message from God.  So the other guy kind of hit him in the face with the Bible by way of saying, and he did say, It's all right in here.  You can read it for yourself.  If you can read." 

  Other kids in the family opened the door to the garage and closed it letting us talk.  "Guy starts to walk away." 

  "Which guy?" 

  "The guy who was in charge of the Hall where some old Army buddies were going to have a get-together with a bunch of us fresh faces.  But, see, there was a lot of different groups in the city for like all these festivals and concerts and stuff." 

  "So you girls went off campus?" 

  "Yeah.  We did." 

  My mother unloosened a portable phone from a bathrobe pocket full of tissues.  I didn't ask if she was sick.  I let the terrible weight of us disappointing and scaring them crush my spirit.  Whatever other reprimands would come could not be as devestating.  She stood and I realized she had her Church clothes on under the bathrobe.  She called a friend's mom.  "They're home." Her cold hand pressed a loose though hairsprayed curl springing from the top of my head back down. 

Humans as endangered species was

  met with curious looks at each other.  It was also a "rights" step-up from collateral damage. 

She'd done it.

  Our mother had challenged a neighborhood "orphan" to get out of that outfit.  She'd literally changed her clothes and declared herself a little mama.  It was a start.  The orphan outfit had been taking on too much weight and was dragging her down.  Especially as we swam around as mermaids. 

  Because most of us already had mothers nobody was all that excited about her new outfit.  A meeting was called.  But each place she went had been cleared of kids before the meeting time.  She bust through the leaf and branch covered piece of tin roof "hiding" the tank spot in the woods. 

  One kid jumped and let out a weird-sounding noise.  Other cammoflouged people and dogs fluttered at the edges of the spot.  "What are you doing here?" A voice she pretended not to recognize called out. 

  "This is where the meeting is right?!" 

  A branch being ripped from a tree trunk made a snapping sound.  "Not here whatever it's about." A kid pitched the branch in the path before her.  She left. 

  Our station wagon rolled to a STOP at the STOP sign.  The slew of suction cup bullets/projectiles mostly pelted the vehicle.  But a few with notes attached stuck.  Most everybody in the car had gasped and ducked but not the oldest brother.  "There's a note." He announced.  "What's it say?"  In his changing to lower tone voice he said, AIDS. 

"Existential" because

  you are teetering a democratic Republic's people on the redistribution of wealth "argument" and the old tribal/religious warfare of elimination of-replace with...within the same nation. 

"He has to list the reasons

  for his objection." A group coordinator wrote the judicial-type's suggestion. A fiscal-minded young Republican born and raised in a "blue state" cradled the growing budget bill and carefully leaned to put it back in the basonette.  "OH no, not in there young man."  The Observer pushed a clicker and a door opened and closed softly.  "I spoke." The Observer confessed.  "What did she say?" The Overseer asked another Observer. 

  "And not over there either," the Observer beckoned for the seven pounds of paper.  "Everybody stay away from that corner," the overseer clicked on a PA and called for procedure protocol when an Observer speaks.  The Observer visibly shrunk on the stool and face blazed red. 

  Keys unlocking a closet-looking door could be heard.  Eyes only on each individual in the room.  "What are you doing in here?" The question was asked of the room but the eyes landed on one person. 

  "Waiting for the young Democrat." 

  "May I ask why?" 

  "Because someone in this room is the young Republican.  We're going to meet up with an IT Rep.  Someone modified a version of Sim City to help all interested parties better pace their check writing." 

  "Hmmmmmm." The Overseer looked at the floor.  "Did anyone else go near the table in the corner?" 

  "There's a table under there?"  It was a pile of coats and jackets from floor to almost ceiling.  "I can just wait in the hallway.  Now that WE ALL KNOW I'll never be President."  The young woman left the room. 

  A forseeable future family portrait type photograph had been taken when world-leading contemporaries had gathered.  An eight month old Duchess and someone's kid brother were the cut off point for the security budget.  All budgets not based on credit card power were considered transitory until.  But my own parents forfeited hypothetically.  A gorgeous Rugby player tried to salvage pre-voter age patriotic fervor amongst the rejects.  But there was a disparity in the moment between belonging and being. 

  A neighborhood "friend", before the world split like an atom into blue and red, caught up.  Framing people on the Lawn with hands like a film camera.  "Are you a reject?"  

  "Why?" 

  "We're doing a postVisit Survey," the other girl turned and saw a knot of pre-teens far behind her.  Blowing Bazooka gum bubbles and giggling.  "Well we were a we, now it's just me I guess." 

  "What's a Survey good for?" 

  The girl took some typewritten and scribbled on notes from a Bermuda shorts pocket.  "Were those mine?" 

  "What these?" She found Survey on a Process List.  "My mother bought them for me." 

  "My mother gives some of our stuff away.  And/Or uses some stuff in Art Projects." 

  "Like what?  Says here that Surveys are not truly Sources but it's a way to gather opinions." 

  "Like old socks as stuffing inside Sneaky Snakes." 

  "That's a mouthful." 

  "Washed.  Old socks." 

  The knot of teen energy was like a magnet sucking all kinds of people to itself.  Glances over shoulders.  Some don't be so obvious warnings.  And the trading of Baseball Cards, postcards, gum, candy, broken cigarettes, and ticket stubs began. 

  "But it's not dinner anymore!" A kid broke into a crying, choking, hyperventilating fit.  Men in tuxedos but shirts hanging out, ties askew or missing, just pants and white tees were offering bills of money for things women keep in their purses.  Alkaseltzer? 

  Our mother was making the most money.  Our father was still neatly shielded in his tux.  It had been his elegant finger that poked the lapel of the winner of winners.  His expressive Trumpian lips flapping out the Golden Advice.  He'd had a Bible brought into the area.  Suggested the men put up the whiskey for this round.  Asked for a confirmation of being in agreement: God's in charge.  And poked the advice into the man's lapel, "Don't forget who put you here!" 

  "We're going home," he told everyone.  Our mother mumbled, I just told the other mothers we would stay.  "I need aspirin." My father sat in a dainty stiff chair.  Mom poured out two and ordered whichever of her kids had come into the room to go get Daddy water. 

  Walter Mathieu frowned and said, "I need a water too." Kids stared up at him.  "Please?" 

Birds of a feather and

  I only shoot squirrel. 

  The Queen leaned towards a grandchild and expressed a question.  Will they explain? 

  The youth had prepared some artistic reflections on how the world was seeming.  

  "She cares." A child said loudly to a wall of grownups who didn't seem to be paying attention since, first, we needed to overcome shyness. 

  "Everyone.  Get out of bathing suits and changed into dinner clothes." Some of the pre-teens groaned.  In a Lawn Party, casual clothes, there'd been a relaxed mood, a release of tensions, even a more general just people having fun. But Eppstein and his foolish friends were en route. 

  Now.  A young mother sternly told the oldest children. 

  "Because, it's not a kingdom.  More of a, a," the pager in pocket vibrated.  "Our White House Lawn is more of a Commonwealth!" A peppy teenager face full of braces assured. 

  "What did they do to these shoes?"  A black man's bloody hand had shaken from it into a medical bowl, the carbon blade. 

  "It's illegal." The man said as a basement orderly shoved a needle into his buttock. 

  The crush of people on the Lawn started to back into the window of the sitting room.  One kid was turning purple.  "Control it," came the mom order.  "First of all it's not anger," the kid who habitually listed all factors of strategy-needed before action rose above drowning in panic as he meted out the reasoning of what's happening.  

  Men of all age groups in suits and polos popped into the room asking "guests" and "vistors" to get serious.    "Well, who is he?" 

  "Well, you've heard of the most interesting man in the world, right?" 

  "That's who El Epp is?" 

  "God no." 

  "None of us have 

  "Presumably 

  "Well, Epp's Epp." 

  "Like Liverachi?" 

  "Whose kids are these?" 

  "Not really a musician, no. Though always around.  More like"

  Everyone was looking at the head-full-of-curls librarian.  "Like the Most Popular guy."  People absorbed the information.  "On the block.  Yeah, like the most popular guy on the block.  Which enfuriates the other guys." 

Along the way as

  Cultural Anthropologists and Independent Journalists we were primarily cautioned about two things: 

  You cannot change people. 

  Sometimes it's better NOT to write. 

  "Anything?" 

  We had long discussions.  Critically thinking about life and values and layers of culture on top of Republic.  The same as we had done abroad.  The same as we had done as school children in the USA.