Summer's Arm

  The clean it up was "our" answer to PR Nightmare.

  "W" was the only one, seemed like on the whole planet, calm enough to stick a fork in it, the spun getting spinnier.

  "Nice welcome home," a soldier said to another soldier.  A young woman had stopped short of jumping into his arms on a run towards.  The soldier just listened.  The woman was all of fourfootsomething but you could see her aging and losing age as she formed what words to say.

  Saying it's CIVIL WAR

  PEOPLE PUT HANDS to mouths to try and cover reactions.

  Now wait a minute son, just be quiet.

  And so it was.  All the professionals and regular people did camp.  It was some time before that particular phrase came up again.  A military person said, "Words are not really my thing." Someone went into quasihysterics waffling between mad at any military, mad, mad at making war not peace, mad, madder, "Just DEATH AND DESTRUCTION that's YOUR THING, RIGHT?!" As she was about to put hands onto his chest MPs stepped between.

  "What about you?" A young man pointed a pen at a man considering a lot of things.  An MP lowered the pen in hand like it was a rifle, 'All the same side at the moment Gentlemen,' he looked at faces, "PEEPLE."

  I'd say it's about even on all sides folks.  The people were looking at each other then back at the man.  But to call it civil war here?!  He looked into a space not far from himself as if it was a book or a teleprompter.  But he stayed quiet and fished his mindheart to word all, all, all that the phrase means, not just implies.

  "LUNCH." Ginger said several times before people broke away.

  The man and I lingered slightly behind in the lunch line.  "What's it not like?"

  "Miss?"

  "Where we're at?  As a country?"

  He looked away from me as if to scan the horizon or check the watts on a meter reader.  'The one word I'm hung up on is fundamental."

  Of course we chewed.  And chewed.  And chewed on that.  I'd try to veer peeps off topic, but no, that was the word, and sheeeewah did people write.  They wrote their ways out of writer's block past our Beiruts and Oklahomas.

  They'd pitch and the tradespeople working maybe as a Christmas gift could afford items explained how pitch was and wasn't "glue".  It was  T'see straight shot on a twisted campaign trail.  But it served to remind animal minds on politics that the battling is ongoing since the founding of our little nation.  And no matter how near and far in the heat of battle, you gotta be you.

  That's it?

  That is all.  Binders and notebooks closing.  It was time again.

  When the drivers leave.

  Like when a foreman goes away from micromanaging your hammer.  Or cattle being left to graze.  Or a snippet of spotlight saw you got eco-pounded...now what?!

  In the Bible we can get stuck at Jesus as Number 1.  Jesus as savior.  Miracle-maker.  Healer.  Conveyor of God's word.  Telling us of greater things to come.  So we're waiting?!  We're watching for signs and trying to time our perfection of self with the perfect union with God.  Look busy Jesus is coming, good people can quip.  Did it, checklists.

  I was feeling like that when it was time to consider being a humanities fellow.  A lot of reading?  Cool.  Listening to other people....well, not going to change me, but I'll try and listen.  Right away it's like why?

  Why should I listen?  Why should I care?  Why am I spending my time and energy here, on this?

  It leads to the question about learning.  Why do we learn about others?  We easily listed the grammar school answers...curiosity, comparison, understanding.  Most everything was leading us to stretch our boundaries (if only your ears) and this implied and proved to be getting into relationship.

       YUCK!  Someone said right out loud.

  The wars of the world were cooling fires.  So it seemed "safe enough".  Even for people already on career paths, safe enough.

  It was always a safe enough because.

  Scrinched lips and dimensions of emotions; can't let go, can't hang on; that Marie.

  Fallaci just up and asked:

  Racing to catch up? Or, catching up to get yourself killed?

  The split second was, for me, as profound as the atom bomb stuff.

  It was what men who'd glimpsed the Riviera had asked a long ago year's new collection of not record albums, but girls and boys.  In the heat of the desert places fake wax body parts melted.  All the dracula teeth had bubbled and dripped all over a dad's five o'clock shadow turned bushybeard.  "What's it mean?"

  "PUT YOUR children away and we'll talk!"

  People dodged in and out from air vehicles and "lounges".

  "Not in the City." A tall stiff as a board leader-leader put the binoculars at rest on the airport's tower radar.  "That is not how we work." People standing in places didn't wonder out loud about "we".  

  "Any takers?" You could see people wanting to leap aboard.  The man saw it too, and gave a version of casual laugh.  "What I mean

  "Yes?" A stewardess showed interest but didn't talk over, just fit her doting into the man's frame.

  "Ees

  "Is

  "Eeyis

  "Is.  Tell us, all of us, what you," she pointed at him, "mean".  It took every ounce of the woman's energy to control voice, not give away double meanings, not ask outright, Are you mean?

  Man won't go near that bi, woman, not in a tank, no one looked to see who was saying what, I better get down there.

  "Go eeesy on the kool-aid."

  No one laughed.  The world had frozen like the great Russian river in those times.  But it was wars in and under wars and on top of wars, conflicts baby, and don't write everything down, remember?!  Gave me his lollipop.  "Look serious people." With a clap of his hands people wooshed into work mode.  I threw the lolli in the wastebasket, just let it drop, thinking of mama's teeth, let gravity help you, US, "US," the soldier had assured everyone there.

  I was able to walk around.  The people were all in regular clothes but had special wallets and purses and file cabinets with proper.  Our job on the layover that never ended was to wait.  Foams were being sprayed, water fountains in the sunsets and sunrises.  "They're doing the same," reporting voices made it through the fumes flattening perspective.

  "Who's your mama?" The man would ask and I would shake my head No.  "Man's got an appetite," the someday-stewardess followed him around.  Until he smacked her on the ass.  HA.  An official was quick to pop up from a desk like a groundhog, "I won't have it."

  Just checking, bee or hornet.

  "And you know who I am.  When I say I, what that represents."

  "Yes m'am."

  "Thank you sir.  You may proceed to lunch."