Mountain Shadows
Said to be the sundial of savages, the shadows where one can read the absence of the thing represented. Only during daylight of course.
Thursday, August 13, 2026
The little cluster of artists did not
Wednesday, August 12, 2026
A string of lanterns on caribiners hung
inside a box truck. Two convoys were converging.
"Listen to me. Just me." A man told a woman. Eyes looked all around, settled on the man's face. "This whole thing's changed again."
"What thing?" The woman slammed down a cigarette purse. The plethor strap which was already torn, broke. She sat on a crate. Put her throbbing migraine in her hands. Hands covered in tie-dye colors. The man took her hands in his. "What did you girls do last night?" She blew out a long breath. "Babysitting for some Officer couples." The man took this in with a gentle but strong nod, (i)Oh(i). "Did the kids survive?" A little laugh. "Not my forté."
"Well, what in here is going to get this stuff off of you?"
"Why?"
"You are needed."
The woman's sharp sarcasm had cooled and she let her eyes look at the truck floor. She looked at the man's dirty pants. "Who's going to do your laundry?"
"I'll have to do it myself. There's some real towns on my itinerary."
"Should I ask you, needed how?"
"I don't have all the specifics myself, but," the woman started to squirm on the crate, "I know, you're not committing, here, now."
The man put his callused hand under her chin and lifted her face. "I think you can do it. They explained it as a sort of linchpin position."
"What the heaheck is that?"
"I'm going to let them explain it." He knocked on the wall to the cab. It opened.
"The tornado guys?" She asked.
"That's not the only thing we chase," one said without looking away from a monitor scrolling hundreds of "mugshots".
"All bad guys?" The woman was drawn in. "Not at all. People filtered out of jobs by algorithms."
"What's algorithm?"
The guy in the driver's seat looked at a huge watch velcro'd to the dashboard. "Got time for dinner?"
"Oh shit!" The woman dug a shoelace with a wedding ring and cross necklace stuck to it out of the cigarette purse. "How 'bout not dinner but beers?"
"I could get onboard with that plan."
The guy in the passenger seat absently shook his head (i)no(i), "Doesn't work for me."
"I'll go get a pizza," the man said.
"Super shined," the boy in a tall man's janitor jumpsuit said dramatically.
"They're coming!" Another boy in a more broadchested man's shirt reported as he squeak-sneakered into the lobby. A deep breath and adjustment of coffee trays on both arms.
The clicking of heels on the sidewalk growing louder.
Louder.
Suddenly a safety whistle blown. Heels almost skidding to a stop. The voice of a woman. "How dare YOU! How dare you, and you, show your faces here. How dare you bring such dark days on our city! On our party! On this sacred place! AOC, GET UPSTAIRS. NOW."
"Yes m'am."
Only one woman passed through the new security entryway and paused. Dropped head, hands over eyes. Smoothing eyebrows and brushing off the devastation of reprimand. Starting for the lobby.
"Go slow," said the janitor boy, "I just polished it."
"Thank you."
His voice boomed,
"Most of mine had a conscience," one young woman
Tuesday, August 11, 2026
A woman pelted a reporter
in the back with a shoe. San Francisco street sidewalk. The reporter later reported being scared shitless, exhaling the stress in a deep meditative breath, turning and picking up the shoe. Of course, it was not obvious who threw it. The reporter looked at the feet of everyone at a bus stop. No solo barefoot.
Two cigarettes on a bench. A bicyclist messenger. A note. The gist: we need to talk, some of us being stalked by serial killers, health department gave out home addresses. Group lunch at such and such a place.
"Wigger don't get mad, don't be mean," a surfer dude with three PhDs and a match to the thrown shoe stood outside the beansprout/lattè joint. "Don't you ever work?" A hand came from behind the guy and beckoned with highly polished fingernails with tiny scenes painted on the polish for the other shoe. "I saw you. You better get better at hitting and running before anyone gives you a gun."
"Me no need gun, me have man."
"Yeah, yeah. At least she did last night."
"That's disgusting. Unsafe and degrading to all women."
"Obviously you weren't watching or you'd know we were safe."
"Somebody was," a shirt and tie guy smacked an envelope against surfer dude's chest. "Bring those inside and tell me how you're political."
"I am absolutely not."
"In." Nobody made a move. "What's the hesitation?"
"Could be you assuming." This drew a chortle from a red headed woman who'd stepped out to smoke and stood there watching like a video camera. "I think she's the political one," a chin thrust towards the reporter.
"Oh, look at the time, and I'm not even at the right restaurant. Nice seeing you."
It's actually most of the time
"I don't care," he said for the fiftieth time.
"But it's the kid's way of dipolomatic solution."
He said it again.
After several days of prayer by himself he came out of the little room. "There's no such thing as interfaith. There can't be."
"None of us are converting." Said a mother whose children and husband were Muslim.
This angered a pastor. Snarky comments to get at debate flew.
Monday, August 10, 2026
"We didn't know." The one tween spoke for both.
"How'd ya find out?"
"So and so's big sister's back from the Middle East! Now we know there's all different kinds of Muslims."
"Stop. Just stop moving the units around metro."
"You can't tell me what to do. You're under me."
"But what if it would save lives?"
An older-looking man came up out of the subway and crossed the road. "You two still together?"
Neither the man nor the woman answered.
Sunday, August 9, 2026
"Had we not worn these wigs," the bar music was blaring,
"We'd be looking like them!" A shorter woman up from Orleans indicated the walking wounded. Slumping and sitting but not cowerint. One pushed self up a wall by muscled thighs and held up hands in front of the injured.
"How'd you know?" Our travel leader asked of the woman with dark, dark circles under her eyes. "Know what?" She got up from crouching. "That we needed the wigs?"
The woman re-crouched. "Look, I been seeing these people fight for weeks. Even before the BM's turned against each other."
"BM's?" A correspondent made a swift move in the conversation.
"Black Muslims."
The leader handed out another round of hard tack. And bottled waters. The woman said to the correspondent. "There's people that have been effectively 'scalped' they pull hair so hard." She winced.
The little cluster of artists did not
want to talk about politics. "Useless squabbling," one said. "Waste of time," another agreed. "Make yourselves...
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