"My battered woman's syndrome kicked up."

  "Understood." 

  "Guys, (i)look at this(i)." 

  People gathered around a tiny round table. 

  "What are they?" 

  "Fake newspapers." 

  The plane plunged through migrating birds. 

  "Like propaganda?" 

  "Must be." 

  "Like," the Latin teacher gently chided the popular buzzword, "The hijackers found reading material on a flight and used it to ply trade." 

  "Honey, we can't believe in the news right now," a man had called his wife and relayed.  He didn't flip the phone shut as various professors explained (i)what's what(i).

"You know I guess we should

  agree upon some standards about the thing." 

  Everyone just looked at the man.  Put in place as part of a team build design.  Not familiar with the field of work.  Had never even set foot on an Academic "campus". 

  "Where do you want these?" Asked a person with a five foot stack of rounded up books on a hand truck.  This was the first of eleven stacks hauled silently into the abyss of "meeting". 

  The man's portfolio laid open on the table.  A stock resumè on one side and a thin, blank spotted and  highlighted resumè on the other.  One woman started to leave the room. 

  "Where are you going? You can't leave." 

  "And why is that?" 

  "Because I said so." 

  "The restroom." 

  "Me too." Another person said and got up from the table and pushed the first woman out the door. 

  One by one the stacks of books were sorted into (i)knowns(i) and (i)unknowns(i); (i)canon(i) and (i)alternative(i).  The man at the head of the table was replaced again and again by others caught in the uncomfortable process. 

  Before being released from the room each person was required to choose a book that (i)may be questionable material for an educational environment(i).  The man chose (i)How To Build A Bomb(i).  The student assigned to help the man with a first draft of resumè chose one with the word (i)anarchy(i) in black on a black colored spine.  The word had been yellow or white and marker-colored over. 

  While most people held tongues in the darkening hallway some hissed (i)traitors(i). 

It was a long, long walk.

  We'd been cleaning up the camping gear and found a cooler with urine-y black liquid inside.  In the pool of darkness was floating a heart.  Not the kind we draw to make someone smile, but an organ!  

  Another jetplane flew in so low it shook the ladies teacups in the saucers.  "Oh my." 

  "That was close." 

  "Is it (i)really(i) a war?" 

  "A proper war?" 

  "Time will tell." 

  "Nothing really (i)proper(i) about war.  Look what it does to people." Eyes indicated the corner of the clubhouse.  Stacks and stacks of newspapers.  Totally messy hair bulging a hightower of newspaper into an unorderly thing. 

  "Should I go to her?" A girl child asked but the question evaporated into the heavily settling air.

"How can we have a team if there's chaos?"

  The fate of the entire summer hung in the balance. 

  "I think we should vote on it," said the kid holding a roomful of stuffed animals hostage. 

  "I'll think about it," the stubborn mother closed the door.  Turned off the TV with its terribly dark violent "politics". 

"Because you are a radical." She pursed her lips.

  "How do you figure that?!?" 

  "STAND OVER THERE." 

  "To the corner?" 

  The corner was filling up.  Someone put a thesis in front of his face and yelled out, "Is this not a University?" 

  Others wandering around in the hallways ducked into the classroom.  The tall woman and some other people murmured about each one before declaring things like (i)liberal(i), (i)standard Republican(i), (i)religious(i), (i)Academic(i).  The thesis asked, "Are we not all Academic?" 

  A low moaned (i)noooooo(i) had some gasp and the corner suddenly seemed more like a stall of nervous horses.  "This campus has been invaded," said a slightly taller moaner.  "By who? The Beatles?" A man with thick yellow glasses asked.  "Are the Red Coats coming?" Someone else asked.  Some of the moaners (i)tsk'd(i) and some said (i)sho nuff, sho nuff(i).  Someone looking female but with a very deep voice remarked, (i)Sho nuff, my sources saw peoples with GUNS(i).  A medium-sized woman dressed in a smart suit shoo'd that one all the way to a desk.  "Trying to make me the sitting duck I see." 

  "Your parfoom stink." 

  "What are we going to do in the dark?" 

  "We are definitely going to turn the lights on." 

  "Yes, you blind people need to see the light." 

  "Ow!  She just poked me with a pen!" 

  "That book you cited in your 

  "I didn't give a lecture 

  "(i)talk, is not in the canon." 

  "That makes me radical?" 

  "To some." 

  "What (i)is(i) in the cannon?" 

  A SECURITY-vested man craned his neck as he stealthed past the door, then reappeared with a handgun aimed at the floor. 

  "That doesn't make me anymore comfortable about those things," someone said.

"God bless you as alloo achtbar; got it." The

man made the notation in a thickening binder on cross-cultural studies.  Dozens of young men and women had que'd themselves to report symbols and meanings.  Children in various states of dressed for the day weren't (i)playing(i). 

  "Looks like we're not going to Trick or Treating," sad kids slumped into the chairs around the dining table. 

  "Big surprise," said an oldest girl rolling her eyes. 

  It wasn't long watching raindrops on the window before the garage door could be heard. 

  "Oh! You guys are home already," said a mom with a Snickers in her mouth.  Other moms mumbled at the sudden halt in the doorway, stifling cuss words at bags of candy dropped. 

  "A little more diplomacy boys."  The man fell back into a wall.  A woman went to wipe the blood dripping from a split lip and the man wearily snatched the towel.  Another man grabbed a bottle of aspirin and a glass of water from a silver serving tray held stiffly by a butler. 

  Almost in slow motion the cultural variety of young men and women fought.  The losers were dragged off the mock tarmac.  Thrown in a pile as recorders fell behind on writing details and photographers numbered numbers.  "It'll all be archived," said a man chomping on half a cigar.  He waved a (i)sigh-yo-nara suckers(i) to the newly minted in a golf cart jitney headed for "a real meal". 

  "Missing teeth." 

  "Probably drop kicked.  Go ask that one." 

  A scrappy young person leaned against a tree by one foot propping him or her alert looking.  Rubbed bruised knuckles while a tiny young woman dug through a tool box.  "Looking for?" Tall boots beside her expecting an answer made her shake harder than a tremble.  She closed the lid and slunk backward. 

  "Ten more to go!" Someone hollered near a whitewashed school bus. 

  "Why are the beatings so bad?" 

  A punk-haired manboy sighed and made a sarcastic girly dimple gesture on his own face.  "Because I'm stupid." 

  An Officer stepped forward.  "If (i)they(i) hadn'tah (i)infiltrated(i) our barracks, none of this wouldah happened." 

"Voodoo shmoodoo is what

  the wasp man said," told a kid who'd been to all the groups drinking church soda.  "Either way Father, we'd like you to come Bless our home."  The priest nodded absently even as he observed the bucket of ground up seashells and baubly beads.  "Of course," he said. 

 

"HE'S MESSYOHGINNY!"

  Startled.  "HE IS NOT!" 

  Silenced.  "And he's headed back into the war." 

  A moaning cry. 

  "And stop sneaking around spying on us or I'll..." 

  "You what?" 

  "I'll think of something." 

  "LADIES.  TITS UP, CHINS OUT." The hot yoga instructor who'd been hanging with some military moms stood in front of the nature walkers and ordered.  Some of the older women giggled.  One commented, "I haven't thought about either of those and me in the same sentence (i)in years(i).  I like her!" 

  "GO HOME YOU little," the man's lips scrunched and gnarled "(i)communist(i)."  Somebody gasped.  Somebody else started quietly humming, (i)getting to know you, getting to know all about you(i).  "Shouldah kept my wanker in my pants," the man mumbled.  Then called out to the woman slowly walking away, "Wait.  I need those," he pointed at her chest.  His hand motioned (i)give them to me(i).  "Those?" The woman looked at the binoculars on a strap around her neck.  "Yes.  (i)MINE(i)." 

  Even the woman found a place to lay quiet in the Forest.  A vehicle pulling two logs on a trailer nearing covered the minute sounds of rousing.  Another woman reported what seen in the field glasses.  "He is (i)all(i) man.  When I look at him I can see him at every age all rolled into this perfect present man." 

  "Give me those!  What is he (i)doing(i)?" 

  Another man peeked.  "Taking a pileak." 

(i)These colors don't run(i) vied with

  the word (i)LOVE(i) on a tie-dye tee-shirt.  Person gone.  Groups of people frozen in place as Crime Scene Investigation factually recorded every square inch of a large grid. 

  "What's the competing sound?" Asked a world famous Audiologist. 

  "That's (i)drama(i) to us," said an English-speaking scientist.  Fingers ran through lists and lists of words in many languages and in characters.  Somehow "sound" and drama matched up in a popular-speak legacy.

  "Competing sound is a golf game crowd spontaneously saying, (i)eeeeeww(i)." 

  "Why?" 

  "A brother and sister living together, not anything weird." 

  A Detective slammed an open palm on a sawhorse.  "I'M THE ONE ASKING THE QUESTIONS HERE!" 

  "Yes m'am." Someone managed. 

  Back Overseas there was progress (i)towards(i) peace.  But "agreements" had to be reached; political parties had to be political and not one with "militia" which is in many places different than National military; and some baseline on war/crimes had to be stormed towards in (i)legal processes(i).  

  Some countries staged photo ops of citizens making a difference by voting.  Crowds were powerless as cameras were ordered (i)off(i) and peoples' fingers were cut off.  People were dragged around by head hair.  People were denied medical aid.  People were slammed and piled into institutional places. 

  "I can't testify." Someone relayed what was said since everyone was in a contraption of "I'll shoot." Loved ones were snatched as soft targets.  People drank themselves to numb just to calm the shakes. 

  "When you say (i)global(i), what do you mean exactly?" Minds ticked off mental lists of what could be said and what couldn't to save some of humanity. 

Puttings things back into Pandora's box

  As we'd done on Broadway in a maelstrom of popular meets Academic, the civilian journalists slipped network jackets and helped create buffer zones.  In New York it had been a literal red velvet rope.  And the crushes could overwhelm.  Around the world in a 24/7 news cycle anyone, anywhere might be caught off guard. 

  "Blushing" would not be the word for the colors people turned in confrontations and interventions so wiley not even a PR bandaid could keep the White House from reacting. 

  "You ACCUSED ME OF SELLING STATE SECRETS!!!!!" To a (i)just want to know why(i) someone got bowled over in a crowd.  "Have your lawyer call ours," a man or woman could be heard saying nine times out of ten.

Somewhere around mile 317 of 728 we

  took to madlibbing each others' sentences.  "There's real 

  "Stylish." 

  "And you're not it." 

  Moods and personalities centering on the seesaw of real life.  Song charts dissected with a carpenter pencil and the lines of analysis.  Questions shredding song writing as if songs were potatos.  "Let's turn this into Latkah and call it a day," the third person influenced the dynamic. 

  "Do you guys ever have fun?" A tall guy in a crusher hat asked outside a restaurant as the sunset turned objects into silouhettes of themselves.  Nobody answered. 

  "You have the beer.  I'll drive next." 

  "It's just so mechanical." 

  "The actual score?" 

  "Everything really." 

  "Some people are going Indie." 

  "What's that?" 

  "Evolving, emerging, liminal, hard to pin down genre-wise." 

  "Broker than broke?" 

  "Probably." 

  Snoring.  "Honey you haven't touched your food." 

  "Is that person fucked up?" 

  "Asleep." 

  "Can't sleep here.  See the sign." 

  "Okay.  Can we have a To Go box please."