One way God showed me Jesus was missing in our lives...

  It was a long leg of journey.  There was a kind of madness in Alaska.  The kind that had people who identified as having a "soul" but who weren't necessarily connecting that with "morals" be expressing loss.  Tremendous loss.  "Like maybe," a trubador/interpreter clutched at the thread in interviews we'd gathered.  She let her shoulders relax; she sank her ears through the silence of respectfully listening; she patted her head and tugged on her outer ears.  "I just did that last thing for fun." She laughed.  We stared at her and that made her laugh harder.  "Was gonna say, like maybe how I feel as a retail worker.  People come and take stuff all day long.  And sometimes," 

  "Can I braid your hair?" 

  Her turn to stare for a second but we'd agreed to stop asking why so much.  "Okay, sure," she swiped a "tobaggon" off her head.  "Sometimes I feel empty shelf at the end of the day." 

  Hmmmmm, an openly empathic person acknowleged hearing.  The tea and coffee steamed.  The hot chocolate awaiting a bicyclist coming from the lower 48.

  In a morning people were up early and off doing stuff.  One piece of paper was on the cleaned off table. 

                   Itinerary

   Use the jet ski, follow the path, interview mystery guest. 

  I lit off.  Parts of the path were dotted with lanterns, gifts to bring the note said at one pitstop.  Yellow snow, my mind registered.  "I DIDN'T DO IT!" I yelped when someone squeezed me from behind.  "Sssssssshh, we gotta keep going before he wakes up." 

  "Who?" I was still asking as the gifts were put in a sack, other snow mobiles came creeping closer, and the animal fur covered person hopped on as driver.

  Parts of the path were mini expanses of wide open tundra.  "So we acclamate," the driver called backwards barely distinguishable from the purring motor.  I gave a squeeze, got it.

  Snow mobiles dashed ahead to scout. 

  When we finally caught up there was an exchange of foreign-to-me language.  Different kinds of snow mobiles were making opposite moving concentric circles.  Moving closer, now farther away.  

  A shadow eclipsed the snow-glow of sunlight for a few seconds.  

  Waving snow mobilers from behind slowed to ask about a cafè.  A grizzled man asked to see a tourist's map.  Whistled others over who made a tight circle to compare hand drawns to graphic-peppered.  "I just use this," a snowmobiler held up a GPS monitor but the dangling wire showed cracked.  "Or did.  I guess I used to use this." He threw it in the snow.  It only sank in a little bit.  

  "There are supposed to be flags." A woman's voice said. 

  Nobody said anything. 

  "Where they'll land," she sighed. 

 

The reserves of our collective sanity had been shadowed, shrouded, and precipic'd.  Well, before the clock struck "the twenty-first" Century, we had to get to work. 

 

 

She didn't visibly hold her hand out.

  But we all knew we were expected to do the right thing. 

  Afterwards, the strong personalities mumbled their affirmatives and it seemed as though the Holy Spirit nodded their heads more than they were willing to personally when questioned about "the right thing". 

  A lot of things were true.  Such was the power of propaganda.  "It did a hell of a job on my head," the man said of the shovel.  We'd hidden it like the people of the Book had done with certain artifacts.  

  "Think of it like," other writers and editors tried to fathom what this was like.  "Like we're Counties and she's 

  "A prim-madonna 

  "Like...there are a lot of stages in Hollywood and now..." 

  "We take movie to big stage!" The man's pointer finger shot up in the air and some people got on their feet.  Others had agreed we should turn the script from wild west to Biblical and were wearing "sackcloth" and throwing dust on their heads. 

  "I have spoken to some others," the potential director of directors plied herself as the person for the job.  "There are others?" A woman in a fancy Town dress worn threadbare and beaten for the dusts put her hands together like a prayful school child.  "A whole world-full." 

  "What are they like?" A man in ripped pants asked. 

  "How long have you all been out here?" 

  "Where is here?" 

  "He has a map."  A fairly non-descript, can play any role, person blurted.  Without looking the person accused asked, "How would you know?" 

  "Let's just pool our assets," an editor opened a very small sachel and removed a red pencil and an eraser.  A writer plucked a pen from a shirt pocket.  The director-potentate took a folded up pillow case from a pocket.  Accepted the articles offered as a sign of willingness to give it a try.  Remaining bits of stiff bread, broken jewelry, a feather, people cut off pieces of coat and undershirts, but the pillowcase made its way around the knot of people without being filled up.  

  "Are you gonna make us give you our shoes?" 

  The people without shoes laughed and snickered.  "That would be cruel," the woman said.  "So no." 

  "You mean you're not cruel?" A man asked.  The woman said she didn't say that she couldn't be.  "Vhat is dees kroold?" 

  "Let's figure out where we are so we can not walk smack into any of the battlelines." A man took off a long dusty canvas coat to reveal an Army uniform.

Uncle Tito and the

  surviving members of the Italian Actor's Guild were pissed.  When it came time to discuss feelings about everything, some slunk off.  They'd all participated in destroying the set when they'd found out, not even airfare.