"Hi! The Cherokee brought me."

  "Well, welcome to Durham," a highly clad in medals Salvation Army person stuck hands in pockets and propped out an elbow.  

  "Glad you could come," a more casually dressed person said from behind.  "Is that what that stance means? I mean, Are you interpreting?" The Salvation Army person broke into a grin.  "It's flu season.  I've a lot of elders in my territory, I mean community." 

  An elbow bump. 

  Inside some people seated at a round table.  One Forest Service person rose asking, "Did you meet her?  The Cherokee Delegate to Washington?!"  A man put a spiral-bound notebook in front of his face, balanced a laptop on his knees, and put his front teeth "bridge" into his mouth.  Notebook down.  "I need to see I.D. please." 

  Someone else explained, "In our State we databank Driver's Licenses." The man scanned the Identification.

  "You think young men are hard to pin down personality-wise, wait 'til you watch this," a female Reporter held up a videotape.  "Young women?" A Police Officer asked.  The Reporter nodded and said, "But I'm not sure how to describe what they are, uh, were doing." The officer didn't take the tape but instead said, "Let me get two other Observers." And left the area. 

  "Did you get to meet her?" The Reporter asked just as a man in dress pants and an all-black hoodie came into the room.  "What are you doing here?" The man looked over both of his own shoulders.  "We're, uh, trying to get permission to film something." 

  "Really?  I would've thought your people would've heard by now."  The man took a very compact Dictionary from the "kangaroo pouch" of his sweatshirt.  Handed it to the woman who flipped through the pages to get to the "M" section.  A very well-manicured fingernail made an indent on a big word. 

 

Stopped short of leaping into his arms.

  "That's a big smile." The military man noted out loud. 

  "Haven't seen you in a while Sir." 

  "And that makes you happy?" 

  "Not that I haven't seen you, but here you are in the flesh and blood." 

  "You don't have to call me Sir." 

  "Okay." Men normally in long pants and shirts and ties dashed, strode, and just appeared in through doors of the gymnasium.  "Why not?" 

  "Still friends right?!" 

  "For life." 

  "What is the purpose of this exercise?"  A tall man in tiny shorts asked above heads. 

  "Just an icebreaker," the military man who was obviously short stood on toes and threw his voice in response. 

  "No whistles," a door moderator told a group of personal trainers moving as a group towards entering. 

     Grimaces, sighs, yelps, and grunts as the men warmed up.  Good overall health, a woman in a jogging suit commented.  Other military professionals mixed themselves into the room of stretching.  Each with a soft, strip of beans in fabric, brightly colored and long enough to forge a little perimeter around their selves. 

  Pretend we are in Outer Space, the leader of the exercise announced.  One younger man busted into a moondance.  "Pretending," another said with eyes shut.  "Looks dahchk," someone else described.  The military professionals donned hats, each with a NATO flag on the top. 

"We split it." The kid said

  of the one banana.  Repeating what the grownup had said.  Perfect mimicry although the child didn't know English.  Each person had a copy of the U.S. Constitution to ponder.  Little hands tried to re-assemble the banana in the now limp banana peel.  But the fruit was gone.  Trying to imagine the banana back in its peel didn't make it really there. 

  "So maybe it's like, uh, like..." The lifelong fisherman pretended he couldn't think of anything so the ladies would think of stuff.  No one wanted to or knew how even to just talk about it.  "You make a beautiful poem," another man spoke in English, each little word like a little box with a bunch of stuff in it.  A woman re-capped a thermos of tea.  Wiped the tiny forks and sugar cube tongs.  Folded a cloth napkin.  And put the items back into the backpack basket.  Then she sat.  Young body, weary countenance. 

  "Like the little fishing boat caught in the flotilla." She said almost sternly or with a gravity of understanding situation.  "We can use these! No?!" A man held up a Constitution. 

  "No one knows what's going on," a young teenage boy said of the busy port.  "Of course they don't," the father said heartily.  "Or maybe they do," the son said.  "And they just don't tell us?" The mother asked.  "Maybe everybody just knows what to do for themselves," the father said as he reached into a pocket for his wallet. "What if they forget?" 

  "What to do?" 

  "They default." 

  "To what?" 

  "To just breathing and I don't know," the father looked around at everything larger than little humans, "Just be amazed." 

  "Not much luck," a batchelor emptied a breast pocket of crumpled receipts and an un-neatly folded map.  The stewardess ticked off flavor of soda on a small sheet of choice.

"There are always dead bodies," a more senior

  Coroner was explaining to a wide audience about his profession.  

  The world's eye on protests had brought a generic potential-to-see-truths to many locales.  People with histories of gathering facts for newspapers, the legal system, and works of writing and art milled about on the periphery of what was largely and loosely being called disturbing the peace. 

  "Disturbing the peace doesn't explain this." A woman held up photographs of various bodies on the ground.  "And, these."  People turned from the Crime Scene Investigators still prepping supplies and gathered around the woman with dark undereyes and skin seeming to slip away from bones.

"It's poppycock!" A man stormed off.

  "A load of hogwash!" Another man declared equally as strong-voiced.  But he stood there. 

  All manner of pre-shower'd young people had formed a line in the street.  Low talking, coughs, reeking of alcohols.  The only way "out" was through a collapsible tube that looked like a sewer pipe or giant Slinky. 

  The propaganda had been a blitz.  "Mindfucked!" A tall boy spoke for those around him since he'd said that several times and nobody else argued.  "They are crushing our innocence!" Someone else in the line announced.  "Honey I've seen you in action for the past week.  YOU are not an innocent," a drawly voice lobbed a truth to the announcement. 

  Eyes darting towards any and all movement on the sidewalks.  Body heats melding as one vibe of stay strong.  "Like we can stay anything of ourselves.  This world is ripping us apart," someone said with a seriousness like entering a church. 

  Sets of parents began perusing the line, spotting mines and there you ares.  Some handed things to theirs.  Wallets and ties and jackets and clumps of money and shoes and whatever paperworks had been left behind in the call to stick together.  "So we can all get clubbed at once?" A firm-boned, hazy eyed young man in a filthy oxford shirt hiccup'd and assertfully asked.  Others otherwise in good general health retrieved stashed sachels and backpacks from behind counters and stuffed on shelves of books and pottery.  "Are we going home yet?"  Males and females acting incuspicuous about romance were timing near each other as they casualized a near-desperate search for schoolmates and knew 'm ats. 

 

"It's only an Anarchy between

  the haves and have nots." A book Publisher had a list of contacts.  "I'm not that old, but it's the same at the start of any warring." 

  "It's a gutfest," said a bubbly drunk on beer guy whose tee-shirt was shortening over his roundening belly.  Some guys were smashing their guts against each other.  "Like a beer brotherhood?" A young woman asked.  "Eggzaxly!" 

  "Where are you coming from?" A nurse asked people as they filed in and out of what was still open in Greenland.  "What news?" 

  Some Belgians and French were seen huddling together.  The young wives informed of scientific prize, "seed money" for startups and investing, and crates of stolen military equipment.  "They don't have these," a plain clothes U.S. military service person rattled the few bullets left from hunting food in a thin cardboard box.  "Does he have a gut?" A young lady asked a woman.  "What kind of question is that?" 

  "There's a bit of a beerfest in there." Was said and indicated by a slight turning of the body.  "Why I'll..." the wife stalked towards the keg room. 

ALL OUR SLED DOGS KILLED BUT WE'LL BE THERE

"That's not PC.

  And that's not morally correct either." The man winced.  Another man came back into "the room" that was being packed up and asked, "What is he bubbering about?" 

  Nobody wanted to speak for anyone else just then.  Geopolitically it was do or die.  For Christians it was "spiritual armor" head to toe.  As human beings on the poles of planet earth, it was the fragility of a bodily consciousness without applying some might to win against death.  "Let me ask you something sonny?" The older man said more like a demand than a question.  The younger man still with darts stuck in his winter clothing bitterly responded, Shoot. 

  "What do you call your ass?" 

  "Excuse me." 

  "Your buttocks.  What do you call them?" 

  The younger man's jitters seemed to dissolve in a shoulder stress to floor little laugh.  "And don't tell me you call yours a dare-ee-air," the older man said.  "That would tell me something about you, I don't wanna know."  The mild front of the younger man was already tiger minding, feeling for intellect still in tact even though captured.  "I guess a sister or some cousin once called my ass a hine-y." 

  "Okay," the older man put a hand on the younger's shoulder and plucked at some of the darts stuck in the man.  "So, I need you to consider this, right now, as the alternative to one nation under God." One of the darts was more embedded than the others, where there was not protective covering of "bullet proof" vest over flesh.  The younger man had felt that one.  It had messed with the strokes of his skiing.  He thought through an hour or so of sixty minutes of world power in action.  Brushed off feeling pain.  "Do you think you could get your hine-y past those robot dogs?" 

  The silence was not silence to a "room" only hushing heavy, icy snowfall and the top of the hierarchical world's most powerful people clamoring to have a war because that's what they do, activating that part of the perpetual cycle.  

  "Guy's all muscle," the older man told a woman sticking head into privacy to make sure cleared. 

  "We'll follow you," the older man said to the far-away gaze at life-and-death-war and slight nod.

"Until I'm dead," the elder of

  the Conservancy group huffed out the words because tiring.  A peaceful morning coffee had broken into a rigorous schedule of appointments.  The people of all ages hanging on for every word spoken were un-phased by the minor cussing at aches and pains. 

  A sock, bloody at the heel, had been hung on a tree branch.  "It was probably a hiker's sock," the elder announced.  "Doesn't look like a bloody massacre." 

  "True," a middle-aged, mild mannered man who cares agreed.  "But with everyone on one channel of 'public' communications we had to do due diligence." Others nodded solemnly. 

"I guess I wasn't expecting

  them to look like that." The man looked shocked. 

  "One's in a hot tub," a sexy woman in fishnet stockings and heels told a little tape recorder. 

  "Did you call us 

  "Yes," a drunken man blubbered. 

  "The moral police?" Another sexy woman walked past seven men standing against the crispy dry bamboo partition-wall.  Behind were safety people with the last of the young kids ordered up by the pedaphiles.

  "Put that in your files," a lady flashed the Polaroid camera in the leader's face.  "What is it?" The dazed by blitzed-and-exposed Epstein asked.  "Your mugshot."  The lady took another.  In fact she piled up the photographs of the power people in a binder a skinny guy was carrying around like a pillow with a ring on it. 

  "Shrunken and shriveled now," one woman told the taperecorder and all the opposition -- men and women wanting such scum cleared off "the stage".  A wizened older man with a dispassionate interest came from within the widening perimeter with a stack of towels.  A Detective smacked a towel into the chests of each "stalled" partier.  "Might want to cover up." 

  "I assure you Sir, my lawyers are on the way."  The Detective thought to himself for a few seconds then reflected to himself, "No doubt.  But you," he got in front of the man, "Have no right to call me Sir." 

  The flow of all kinds of trafficking in the world quieted momentarily while these people in a motel were being filibustered.  "The cops are onto us!!!!!" A young boy with a fat, gold chain and no front teeth yelled from a balcony to the parking lot.  One set of car wheels squealed and burnt rubber.  A Squad car pulled in front of the parking lot driveway. 

  "Those don't look too powerful now," a woman traded heels for Service shoes and said of "the dicks".  The motel deskman had woken his family and all of them sleepily busied themselves behind the desk and wiping the dust off the lobby-size potted palm trees.

Christ didn't have a flag.

  I can definitely see where Christianity teaches a "love" that transcends nation even whilst nations get bogged down in the trappings of superiority. 

  And how it is that people feel compelled to attach beliefs to the flag.  Why we glorify certain aspects of previous warring.  And why there is much debate about correct path for nation. 

  Because all earthly "power" is a slippery slope, Christian-based people constantly check each other on motivation and meaning.  And that's something that can get lost in a Cyber-based world.  It can get really twisted in a political-based world.  And, in a weaponized world, phew, there can be no need at all for diversity of thought to war as the answer to all problems.

  I also understand campaign and victory mode as a mindset.  But, is it precluding Jesus Christ? 

  The moral issues around warring to win are many.  We see a lot of us already in this territory of thought-process.  And we're human beings with machinery, not algo-rhythms that just get tweaked and funneled.  

  I think threatening to rush Greenland for it's potential treasure is not the same kind of gathering the masses for the defense of nationhood that the Greatest Generation experienced in the second World War.  While the Allied Forces as opposed to the Axis Forces need to figure out how to function as a "unit" with pomp and circumstance, it doesn't serve the purpose of survival as a species to coerce people into warmode.