"Helpful exercise"

  It should have been an almost "magical" white, snowy white, solsticey, wonderland of a jaunt through Nature's winter splendor.  Instead the smog of war blighted what the universe had become in the lens of humanity. 

  "Well.  Can I at least vote?"  Mink covered and draped in jewels asked. 

  "My dear, you are not a superpower." A neat and orderly attache in only a summer suit replied. 

  "Who is next?" 

  Hands went up as if it was an auction.  Wrists dangling golds.  Fingers beaming reflections of the chandelier, partly uncovered, and plummed with candles.  Jet fuel smells filled the air.  "Next for what?" Someone asked in Swiss and then several people translated the question into four or five languages. 

  "It is," a man screwed the cap back onto a flask, "An exercise to know our place in the scheme," hiccup, "Of things."  

  "We are taking turns witnessing history in the making," another person said.  Small squares had been cut in plywood and covered in muslin to capture the progression of pollution climbing the mountain.  These were already blackened and made perfect little frames for viewing progress in a standoff.  There were note-takers recording impressions. 

  Three world leaders in heaps of coat trapsing around in a thigh high drift.  Scaling a rudimentary ladder into a "tea house". 

  "Any more thoughts?" 

  "Only one believes in my God.  I will stick with him even if this really is the end." Coughing from the roomful of at-large and etcetera people prompted a meter read of pollution and temperature.  Not good, was the prognosis.

"How can I do my job,"

 a bus roared by on a NYC street and bailed a puddle of icy sludge onto the sidewalk, "IF I DON'T KNOW WHAT I am?"  The woman's eyes held the sincerity of the question in between a police officer having his waist belt and weapons put into a brown paper sack and marked with his locker number.

"Twry dee Hague"

  Some journalists, correspondents, and world leaders were kind of caught on the fringes of inside-out.  Some world leaders were refusing to separate themselves from the fighting forces as old-school names for "boss", (I don't want to be a dictator), travel bans and checkpoints were rapidly changing the face of Europe.  Soldiers were cold, civilians were cold, nobody was staying healthy, but the spirit of freedom was not destroyable for the centuries of various "repressions" had gotten a chink in its armor.  Two drops of rye whiskey in a finger of coffee for everyone and joking, Come to my place for more. 

  "Not without Country," Oriana was on a sat phone with the Vatican.  A documentarist was on another.  "What is that half of the team doing there?"  Apparently being shown where Hitler's body was taken at one point, she let everyone know. 

  A folded up to pocket-size wall world map was unfolded, the little breeze the motion created was impossibly colder.  "Where you cannot go.  And," a gloved hand motioned over shoulder, "They will tell you why as the day unfolds."  Watches for everyone.

  Ice crystals on an old pane of glass literally forming.

  "The short.  Government people in our country are not royalty, don't own castles.  And.  This thing we're in right now is fluxing.  Waxing, if you will, quite a bit broader.  Each nation has to," the sound of glass cracking on the shed, "like declare certain stuff.  HOLD ON, HOLD ON," the person waved at a checkpoint person, went towards.  "He cannot go that way because of this."  Person retrieved papers from a breast coat pocket.  The guard read it out loud, Terrorism.  "But I tought all deez," 

  "Don't say people 

  "Deez wuz potential vawr criminals 

  "That's a sticking point for travelers right now."  

"This is no longer,

  Or, should I, we, say like for the time being?" 

  "What is the point?" 

  A suit was last-minute prepping to welcome some of the first people to discuss terrorism.  A military man was trying to ask the girl of his dreams to marry him.  The quiet of the hallway was antithetical to a rumpus-ing in the world. 

  The girl, woman was welcoming youth who'd graduated early from programs and trainings and who weren't sure about best fit. 

  "Hi.  Welcome.  Hello.  It'll be in there," she softly pointed then changed her hand gesture to indicate a room across the hall. 

  The getting-ready guy was an expert at interim and ball in play.  Introducing a new broad topic to establishment was part of "regime change" by necessity.  "Just," she shook the top of her body, like shake it off, the stress, "Do it like you play soccer or a pick up game of basketball." She waved the military man down the hall.  "They're in there." She took an earpiece out and opened a little ring case from a pocket.  "I'm gonna ask him to marry me." Big smiles and way to go, groovy head nods.  

  "The point is," a dry mouth swallow in the microphone, "This is no longer black on black, or white on Asian, or any other combination of racism and profiling, this is about Foreign Nationalists killing citizens in Our Country and theirs." Peoples' mouths dropped open.  Frozen.  The man tapped the microphone.  "Was that loud enough?  How was my tone?"

  Outside a bulldozer and a small crane worked in tandem to block pathways.  A woman acting as a "guide dog" to a blind woman put down her files and gently hurried the blind woman past.  Coming back, the crane dumped its dirt and pieces of cement barrier next to the woman.  The woman got covered in dust.  She retrieved her files and put out her arm for the blind woman.  "It's not okay," she told a peacekeeper.  "It's not the time to get into details, but this is fucked up." The blind woman covered her mouth, shocked, then said, "I agree.  Wholeheartedly.  And," the crane's load made a thud sound, "None of us are leaving until it's better." 

  "I'll settle for better for sure." 

Each "representing" folded the flags.

  And these we reverently placed in a crate under the American flag.  

  A past-youth-because-of-terrorism man's mom had followed him into one of the Pentagon's rooms.  "That's a hell of a thing to be studying." The man was perspiring.  He'd changed out of bloodied clothes and tucked the still stained shirt tails into his tactical gear pants. 

  Lights went out down the hallway and people scrambled to control their breathing.  Some fell into heaps together in sparsely furnitured rooms.  

  "It was this," a woman took a bedraggled and also stained magazine page out of her shirt.  Took the shirt off.  Tank top.  Made way, gun drawn, barely a distinction of human form against the walls of the hallway.  

The ad simply read, INSPIRE. 

"Does he want to stay?"

  Even the good robot dog shook his head yes.  His interpreter confirmed the yes to a translator, and the translator admitted he did not know the answer to the Nanny's question, "Why is my child, the child, the child," she pointed at the top of his head, "This one mine." 

  Since people with more than one home State had to choose stay or go, complicated by Service people the world over with new duties, there were last minute snafus to smooth sailing from here on out.  Some people who'd stuck with an actor's guild despite pressures to strike and quit were very eager to get back to work.  Of course nobody in the world had a "money tree" or even a working credit card. 

  "He's crying because he's a baby." The boy narrowed his eyebrows and stared at his Uncle.  "See, he knows that word." The boy kept the narrowed eyes on the man who tried to start up a conversation to get an idea of what's the delay now.  A very tall, curly-haired man, the perfect Zeus, a woman with hopes of writing and directing announced, joined the queue.  "Make the fish lips.  Make the fish lips!" A little girl requested.  A mother waved a hand being chewed on away from the girl's mouth, "Stop bothering these people."  

  "Now there's board-wide delays," a woman came over and reported.  "We're never going to get there." 

  "Such a pessimist beneath your sugar-coating," the tall man pointed at the small Asian boy and flicked a fake booger at the woman, then he drew a box around his face, and made fish lips.  People started laughing.  "Oh man," said the woman, "Now he'll do the whole routine again." 

  "Whatchya been doing with yourself Smiley?" An actual director joined the queue. 

  "Being a clown." 

  "I should've figured." 

  "At least I stayed working." 

  "Oh.  Oh.  That's not good." Came the voice of a man as he stifled a sneeze that made him cough deep and liquidy.  People got out of the way as a pedestal on big turning wheels uprighted itself and started mowing a path through all the people.

We'd flown into Bermuda, eager

  to shed the dreariness of ongoing winter in the Northeast.  Just a whiff of the salty, vegetation-laden, warm air seemed to wipe away our heaviness. 

  It was a small airport back then and there were maybe five planes landed.  A hospitality crew in crispy clothes met us at the bottom of the moveable stairs.  Smiles and questions about our travel, a lilt in the voices of real Bermudians, always projecting a regality, or, I can make you laugh.  

  The hospitality crew listened to minor complaints and big plans and all the hopes and fears tourists haul to front desks and 

  "WHERE'S THE RUM???" A woman let a heavy shopping bag drop down from an arm also weighted with three handbags.  "Is she already drunk?" A muscled man in thigh covering shorts didn't quietly ask a flight attendant.  A child tugged on a ladies arm.  She bent slightly towards the child, a gold earring twinkle-sounding against others in her ear.  "She's faking," the child whispered.  "Pretending," another child said.  "Ever the actress," a man said.  "Like Lucy." 

  "What is her point?" A flight attendant ready to rest from world travels had joined the group with a smart carry-on.  "She'll let us know."  

  Some people came from the terminal in a spread out little cluster.  They casually surrounded the plane.  "Let's all go to bag checking," the earring'd lady in the print-dress took a child's hand.  The man took the woman's bags.  "It's in there," she let go of the shopping bag but then took it back.  She handed it to the man in the shorts, saying, "The Air Marshall put it in there." Yet another child said, "Mom! You have lipstick on your teeth!" She let go of the bag, pulled a tissue from a sleeve, and said, "Thank you for telling me."