"There's a lot of trade in the stuff."

  Everyone else had stopped talking. 

  "Goat cheese?"  Lips literally smacked open and shut, parched.  A flask with core sample puddle water was handed round.  "On the Continental Divide?" A dried leathery hand reached for the flask.  Clenched then spasm'd and the brown water sploshed out in ghostly drops on the worn wooden floor.  Air travel size bottles of Vodka were quietly taken from a satchel.  Placed on the peeling paint table.  A head scarf was removed and placed atop the pistol in the sachel.  What skin was remaining, stretched taut over skull.  Bright eyes set on the bottles from hollows in the head. 

  "Are you nuts?  Fly me in that low again and I'll," the man thumbed himself like a cartoon character.  People started fishing into pockets for smoke and knives. 

  It would be moments that felt like hours before the fulcrum of the American see-saw of "freedom" was cemented into war.  

"You have such pretty little toes."

  His booming voice was hoarse from manning the parking lot of the auction.  But his eyes flickered, registering beauty.  The woman seemed even shorter to his tall.  She looked at her feet in sandals.  "Oh thank ya Mr.  Had 'em refreshed at the salon." 

  "Is it local?" 

  The pair worked through gay, straight; married, single;  sober, social drinking...all the how to navigate this conversation cues and pokes against the backdrop of actual backdrops being moved from place to place on the street.  The sun slid farther set and blazed an alleyway into a shaft of keeping on the sunnyside.  So they walked that way.  Both determined not to let "a turning point day" just end. 

  On the other side of the alleyway his friends raised eyebrows at the sight of him with someone.  The more cantankerous men quipped and belched.  "Thought you had more sense than that David." Young kids whapping each other with golf bag towels and removing packed for the thrift shop items from cardboard boxes for mangos stopped what they were doing.  They sidled over. 

  "You still adopting us Mr.? 

  The man looked at the sky, then the dirt of a road only partly asphalted.  The town couldn't just send someone at that time to repair tore up.  "It's runt." A girl in too-big-for-her clothes told of the street.  "Yes it is darling.  Lot of things around here need fixing." 

  The woman did the slightest throat clearing, then asked, "Are all these, uh, yours?"  The man blushed. 

  "Somes." 

  "I'm Nita!" A put-together girl called out. 

  "Alex.  Nice to meet you." A white tee-shirted boy stepped forward and held out a hand to shake.  The woman took her hands out of skirt pockets and shook the boy's hand.  "We've got no place to hang our hats.  You got a house?" 

  "I do." Some smiles alighted faces.  "But it's far away from here."  People stooped, shoulders slouched, at that news.  Everyone sat on the mixture of furniture and farm equipment rustled up by day's end. 

  "I already owe two mothers too much money to adopt any more of ya." The man said it like buttoning the top button of a shirt.  The story to that point a nothing new like no neck tie in the mirror's reflection.  "But we should stick together again tonight." One of the girls handed him a giant Tootsie Roll.  "Did you already lick it?" The man asked.  The girl showed still wrapped and giggled. 

  "It's like your grandmother said." 

  "What she tole ya?" 

  "God's gonnah trouble the water." 

  The person looked very feminine and startled at the same time.  Then withdrew into self for a long moment.  "I'm finding my warrior self." 

  "Hey, are you really African American and Native American?" 

  "Maybe two percent American.  Being honest." 

 Happy Anniversary! 

"Thanks Darvin."

  "It's David." 

  It did and didn't matter to the man that the young women didn't really know who all was just hanging out.  The smiling faces of customers for a third weekend in a row was what was the memory being made. 

  Despite enormous economic challenges and the States' mountain to ocean terrain and with the help of the new tool called the Internet, people everywhere were finding out things like Best BBQ In Town and hidden gems.  And that was breathing new life into "the same old, same old".

"Get local, be present, and..."

  We looked around at each other. 

  "Not much of a gene pool," someone quipped.  Said because it was Spring and she'd been left "in charge".  Of teenage girls. 

  A man without his row of front teeth in his mouth smiled broadly. 

  "Seriously?" She looked right at him. 

  He smiled bigger and nodded dramatically.  "Meat bingo champ baby." He assured. 

  "We're not hookers!" 

  The man guffawed.  "We'll see about that." 

  "I want a different pimp," one girl complained. 

  Finally, the secret boyfriends came back with the slightly stale cider donuts from a band road launch two nights before.  "A case of the Mondays," someone said finishing a soda.  Cut up tee shirt rags were thrown.

  "WHO TOLD THEM TO FINISH PAINTING BEFORE LUNCH?" 

  "She did Sir." 

  Another man's paint dripped off the roller as he turned, startled. 

  "THAT IS NOT HOW WE DO THINGS IN THE MAN-O-SPHERE!" 

  "They're from the PINK-O-SPHERE Sir.  They don't know any better." 

  "They will." 

Really life is mostly like

  having brothers who take a dump before eating and refuse to spray something better smelling. 

  "Why didn't you spray?" 

  "It's flower smell." 

  "Mom.  Can't you get something more manly?" 

The streams and strains of us.

  The quarters were close for fireworks. 

  Many, many cultural groups were converging on Philadelphia.  Hundreds of thousands of people were brandishing a sense of duty in "showing up". 

  Two military report editors were unofficially observing "the event".  As were all the media networks, some cable news reporters, writers (in and out of associations with publishing platforms), and a burgeoning privately armed public.  

  Practicing technicians were pressed on failsafes and disruptions and hacks.  People in tanks and "bunkers" needed assurances. 

  "Yes, yes, equality." A film director assured a cameraperson who'd done some work Overseas.  "The Constitution supports equality amongst citizens." The pass-badge had to have a photo on it and this had to match up to "credentials" and ID's. 

  "Thees ees because..." The camera person was clearly temporarily blinded by tears held in, but about to brim.  "Can't talk with you exactly as we do in the battlefield right now." 

  It was not the only rocket launcher pulled from the weeds in the garden of America. Select people walked around it to photograph, document, and take guesses as to identifying it.  The ones who knew what each one was kept quiet and used the moment as a "learning opportunity".  Not just who'd memorized what, but also how different people work differently within an overall framework made up of processes, procedures, and commanders' directives. 

Because GW wasn't "perfect"

  Nor was "modern life" exactly like the Bible on its surface.  

  And, situations come up that don't automatically fit in a framework of simple Christianity. 

  Jesus praying in the garden before his death is a similar idea to think about. 

  In the winter of Valley Forge, George Washington was feeling like the idea of the nation was under the weight of harsh reality.  "It" seemed to be coming apart, in crisis, maybe even not what was supposed to be. 

  Jesus was understanding he'd been sold out, his ideas of love and forgiveness (that his Father had created him to teach as the better way) coming up against violence and eradication.  He knew at that time, his time on earth was coming to an end. 

  There's a thread of submission to Higher Power.  Allowing the Judeo-Christian God to lead the leader.  At least admitting, need a little help here, "I'm not God"; there's what seems to be and there is God's awesomeness (not always feel-good or instant).  

  The act of prayer. 

  Can happen for a lot of reasons--from gratitude to pleading, for strength to guidance, even "chastisement" or help me get this thing back on track, better in line with your will. 

  Prayer is an act of reflection and bonding even in the midst of "live action".  It connects people to the Creator and can be spiritual AND concrete.  It doesn't always look like hands folded and head bowed though those gestures have come to symbolize the notion of "talking with". 

  Intricacies arise when we consider "prayer" and the world being made up of many cultures.  

  For instance, bowing head to God, and, combining human action with religiosity.  

  Human interpretation of "God's will" can be very personalized, but it can also be ritualized and shared.  This gets into ideology.  And the mix of religion with other ideas about life can make for complex ideology. 

  I think, in many ways, it's not only the Judeo-Christian worldview that is often stripped down by "believers" to literally Biblical, based on, and... claims of because God made it so.

  And, there are many diverse groups using generic notions of "faith" and "power" to couple with existing traditions and fragments of more powerful. 

  Theocratic arguments.    

  Philosophical arguments.

  Political arguments. 

  Then in the Twentieth Century and beyond, so far, weaponry and technology in abundance.  More so than food and function. 

Forge that pain, forge that rage!

  She'd listened to all of us.  About thirty of us.  Then stood tall in all four foot, eight inches of herself and looked at the sky.  Then at us. 

  "Forge that pain, forge that rage!" 

  About the seventh or eighth time she said it, others started chanting it.  People started to move around, clumsy, stupified into pokes of hands into the air, foot pounds in the arroyo. 

  "What's going on?" A gingerly older man who used to decorate Macy's windows had come out of his house and asked. 

  "We're going to make a magazine!" 

  "FORGE THAT PAIN, FORGE THAT RAGE!" Some people started a Congo line. 

  "We're going to make music!" 

  Forge that pain!  Forge that rage! 

  "And I'm going to make something of THIS!" A woman held up a burlap bag emptied of its coffee beans. 

  "Forge that pain, forge that rage!" 

  Whoops and hollers.  "YES!  YES!" 

  "FORGE THAT PAIN, FORGE THAT RAGE!"