Battle-tested to transactional

     "We weren't running," some jetted away unified on message.  "And we're not chasing you," a media rep said.  The airport lounge was dull and the sounds were absorbed into the place.  More talk for the saturated sponge. 

     What was clear to everyone was that every nation was armed to the teeth and monies flowing because of ongoing war were allowing the beast of war to keep building itself. 

     "Talks" could only happen commeasurate to accounting. 

     "We can't make that promise," world leaders were talking about nation's stands as they would talk about being at home.  Neighbor kid wants to borrow the ladder.  Some leaders were like...We're not even home yet.  So?  So, I don't even know if the ladder is where I left it.  And who is the kid?

     A wife of one diplomat cautiously shared a cranberry muffin with the wife of another diplomat.  "That way we can keep our mouths full and talk less." 

     "That's good," a President remarked, "Keep listening." 

     Paragraph after paragraph was moved from the TO BE DONE to the COMPLETED task pile.

     The blood of a captive and a mostly torched beginning to a plan for peace.  The remains of the paper'd thoughts almost weightless to the rumble of tanks. 

     "Tell Mother Teresa to move her ass," a soldier hollered.  "That's an order," a Captain reinforced.  "We'll have to go with only our Christian contentment," a missionary woman remarked of clearing out of a sandbagged plywood shack used to conduct staging of humanitarian aid.

     Razed revealed the crude entrance of a tunnel.  Almost immediately visiting/observing people were shocked and satisfied.  One radio'd a different battlefield, "Vind me a dunn-el."  A Senior Ranking Official held the cord up in the air, plug pulled.  "It doesn't exactly work quite like that."  Guy had a broken nose.  Ever after we came up with a hundred stories why.  The long and the short: Youwa notta spose'd to sneak up on peopwah.  By the time that conversation was re-iterated we could add, especially when they are getting ready to disarm a bomb.

     Evidence strapped to steering wheels of explodable vehicles, children's toys, AID packages...all of it ordinance.

     Allies and Axis had to agree to some topics being "delicate" and some aspects of what had been "lawful" being different then.  That was after neutral peacekeepers had been strapped to fronts of tanks and other fuel-hot sources since they were the documents. 

     It was slow going walking back a bit from the nuclear edge.

     At a Regional Airport that was an ongoing battle to keep open a Catholic priest helped couples renew vows.  And admonished all of us to quit running around the planet airing dirty laundry and having marital spats.  He blessed rings and jewelry in bags for safes.  Words were sparse, but feelings were speaking volumes.

     Somewhere on some Continent someone asked, "How 'bout a song?" 

     A scholar realized that traditional folk music of all variety was "country music". 

     People slept soundly for the first time in a long time.

     Back when.  We realized a lot in having a grace about "language barrier" while being students of real life and being actors in geopolitics.  One thing was that Hamas was an extremist group, a relative "little" to the "big" Islam.  And even "Nato" was a minor to a major war.  So,  because that's more about alliances and liaisons to Allies and Axis.  Really, all gets subsumed by military in war.  And war is unusual times.  Most everything gets rearranged linguistically.  Understanding that helped us plow through a lot of civilian tensions that were ripping us apart.  The language for people and stuff changes as the material world becomes resources, damages, and casualties.  The focus changes into survival of a nation's military.  If and when that survives, only then is there additional life possible.

    Dr. Charles Stanley today.  (1989)How To Handle Adversity.  Brilliantly starts out with the Apostles questioning why a man was (i)born(i) blind.  Stanley quickly dials down on Jesus answering in a multiplicitous way.  Pointing out the (i)assumptions(i) that the Apostles made even in the limited thinking that (i)sin(i) must have caused this. 

     Dr. Stanley also dives right into some adversity originating with God (chastisement so we grow spiritually) and some adversity as the muck of sin.  It's human predicament.  And it's relevant even in the face of adversity the size of autonomous warfare, economic troubles, and humanitarian crisis. 

     It's why nation built on strong foundation of clear right and wrong (law and order) stands a better chance of surviving attempts to destroy it and fend off "evil".  

"Wasn't no funky chicken dance,"

  She said somehow quietly amidst the roar of jet engines and shouts.  Her eyes found the floor instead of kissing homesoil or glancing too long.  Too long we'll lock eyes, she'd told the Tough Talk women's group. 

     "What was it then?" He coo'd a little too loud in her ear as he snuck up behind and put his hands on her hips.  She brushed him away.  "This ain't no bar cowboy.  Cargo duty done, we'll think about that." 

     He looked honestly surprised.  And his buddy looked him right in the face as he wheeled a handcart over his boot toes.  The young man looked down at his new steel toes and smacked buddy's shoulder lightly.  "Why'd ya dirty my boots?"  

     "Even with only two toes in you can get distracted." He looked at the girls in rugged work gear.  "I can see why you would, but," he rolled the hand dolly back over the boots.  "Almost clipped dem dere knees pardner." 

     

     Nooga lifted the leaf burning ban so we had a little fire to heat up beans and rice.  "Cousins brought it North," was said to a thanks. 

The sun was

  The sun was about to split the sand from the blackness like a train making it through a mountain pass tunnel. 

     "Well don't whine about it Jack." 

     "I'm not Jack." 

     Targeted shooting had people creeping around between shelters. 

     "We'll call someone." 

     "And tell them what?" 

     An all-muscle gripped a plastic'd piece of jerky in his teeth and ripped it open. 

     "Don't call." 

     "Taking potshots at the UN flag." 

     "What's the solution here?" 

     "Hold on, hold on." 

Bridge, be that bridge

    We'd been runnin' on some different clocks, the world.  It was a man in a mildew-smelling crumpled ball of a jacket that tapped the other man's chest.  Relief. 

  "She didn't know that," the ex- of an ex- coming back from lunch relayed to end a working strike.  Dumb-faced the man had a round to shoot out of his mouth before cooling off.  "You done?" The woman asked.  He drained his beer and didn't bother to crush it.  "Good.  We can recycle this one," a girlchild hungry 'cuz only mac and cheese for breakfast.  "Back to work," she ordered.  "How could she not know?" The man didn't whine, but more plead than jerk on reigns that only felt to have disappeared.

     "Well," the tiny-framed and straight-backed woman paused long enough for every man to get up, "Did you go home last night?" 

     That just about shut the whole town up, tipping on toes to hear. 

     Inside, settling back into work duties we were silent but each of us turning things over in our heads.  Finally someone just asked out loud, "How can it be a war and not be a war?" 

     "They're not calling what happened a war?" 

     "Was definitely a war." 

     "Can hot wars turn cold?" 

     One man opened a door to outside and growled at some women suddenly looking for something lost.  "It's not any of yer bidness but it ain't having to do with my marriage." 

     "Jeez, like we'd be that nosey." 

     "Oh good.  I'll let the others know." 

     "Would you please.  Call off the dogs." 

     The newspaper news about it all was getting further and further from the front page.

Just four days ago...U.S. Navy finesse

From a piece titled, "What Comes Next for Israel-Hamas Ceasefire?"

By Mona Yacoubian and Will Todman

Published October 9, 2025

Q2: Did the Trump administration play a decisive role?

A2: The Trump administration played an indispensable role in successfully negotiating the agreement. Even prior to President Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, senior officials from his administration were engaged in discussions that led to a temporary ceasefire and hostage release. In the intervening months, Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff made several trips to the region—including to Gaza to gain insight into the worsening humanitarian situation—in pursuit of an agreement. The administration’s diplomacy intensified following Israeli strikes on Doha last month that targeted senior Hamas leaders, who were reportedly reviewing a Trump administration ceasefire proposal through Qatari mediation. The attack enraged Qatar, prompting Doha to suspend its mediating role. Angered by the Israeli strikes, President Trump reportedly leveraged Israel’s overreach to compel Prime Minister Netanyahu to agree to a deal.

In the ensuing weeks, President Trump pushed hard on both Hamas and Israel to come to an agreement. The president combined public threats against Hamas, behind-the-scenes pressure on Netanyahu, and incentives to Qatar to resume its mediating role. As part of this effort, President Trump forced Prime Minister Netanyahu’s somewhat public apology to Qatar for the strikes. The administration also leveraged its ties to Arab partners to forge a consensus supporting Trump’s 20-point plan. This unified Arab position added significant pressure on Hamas to sign on to the agreement. President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner—who maintains strong ties to both Israel and the Gulf—also played a key role in shaping the agreement. He joined the negotiations in the days prior to the October 8 breakthrough, adding a critical voice with close personal ties to the president to the discussions.

Q3: How significant are the remaining challenges?

A3: While yesterday’s agreement marks an important breakthrough, significant challenges remain. Three immediate points of tension revolve around questions of Hamas disarmament, Israeli withdrawal, and a permanent end to hostilities. The agreement aspires to the “demilitarisation of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors,” but is short on details. Major outstanding questions center around the disarmament of Hamas, where the agreement is quite vague with no clear indications of timelines or benchmarks, let alone exactly how disarmament will be accomplished. Nor does the deal offer insights into how to achieve the destruction of “all military, terror and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapons production facilities.” Hamas’s tunnels pose a particularly thorny challenge. Senior Israeli defense officials estimate that Hamas’s tunnel network in Gaza runs 350–400 miles long, stretching up to 200 feet underground.

Meanwhile, questions also remain regarding phases of Israeli withdrawal, with the agreement stipulating initial withdrawal to an “agreed upon line,” but lacking further clarity on the timing and sequencing of subsequent Israeli withdrawals. The plan also envisions an Israeli buffer zone within Gaza, yet Hamas has indicated its expectation of a full Israeli withdrawal from the territory. Differences on these questions can easily derail the plan and lead to the resumption of hostilities.

Finally, over the long term, governance and security arrangements to govern the “day after” in Gaza remain largely aspirational, with significant gaps in implementation. For example, how will the plan’s envisioned transitional governance structure of Palestinian technocrats be constituted? Nor is there clarity on the oversight and supervision roles of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Trump (as chairman of the “Board of Peace”). The creation of an International Stabilization Force of Arab and global partners also faces high hurdles. Unless there is clear buy-in from Palestinian elements on the ground (to include Hamas, which opposes the idea), it is hard to imagine any Arab forces willing to deploy on the ground. The plan’s vision for an enduring solution to the conflict via “a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood” will likely meet strong Israeli opposition. And with all of these challenges impeding an enduring end to the conflict, Gulf interlocutors will remain unwilling to fund Gaza reconstruction, estimated to cost more than $50 billion.

      Only Jesus truly knew what his mission was: the lamb to take away the sins of the world; to go "home" to his father to prepare a place for all the other believers.  For the disciples, though they were lockstep with Jesus, his "end" was shocking and grievous.

     Jesus appeared to them, after. 

     (i)Game changers(i).  

     Battles are such in bigger picture of war.  

     

     Jesus asked Peter, St. Peter, to keep "the peace", the Church.  St. Peter walked his self around and checked on still existing.  Discussed what needed repairing.  Began long-term talks about the alliance between all followers of Christ.  As the Apostles and first disciples fell in the battle of life, the Way was passed forward.

     The woman fired the shotgun.  Into the air, the first time.  "My Goowood," the father said in a thick drawl.  "You taught me."  He just looked at her, then said, "You skinny as a rail." She turned the giggle into a little throat-clearing cough.  "Good to see you Daddy." She couldn't automatically slip out of go-mode so it also came out..."With yer head."

     The man and the women singers were both crying.  About six people had decided to just go.  "Movin' on," one said.  Keep the gun on the sloucher, she'd been warned.  Vines with thorns clung to his olive green pants.  Over jeans, had been assessed of the possible faker. 

     "That's one thing I hate," she wiped the cammo paint onto her forehead. 

     "How 'bout this?"  A man asked another man of proof as he slung the Voter Rolls onto a tailgate. 

     "And that's another," the woman's finger left a paint mark on the already dirty, partially burnt, mud-dried bulk of papers.  "Lying and stealing.  Don't people know about sin?" She legitimately asked as people with oil cloth torches started to make a ring of fire. 

     The small plane outta Cincinatti swung low, circled tight, wide, wider still, then dove.  "They cun't see yah good," an old whîte-haired woman reported of hearing them talk to themselves on the plane's commquip.  A pitchfork being used to roast marshmellows stabbed a fat farming boy in overalls in the butt.  "Oooowwwa." 

     "Git." 

     "Because we don't have a radio." 

     The olden boy squared to beak of his wool cap to his rotund face and squinted, thinking hard on can of weenies or baked beans.  Other cans were knived clean in half and cropping, empty-bellied, in tractor wheel ruts clear to the field.  Back up the path Daddy. 

     "Put a cup of this slush on the ear." 

     "Whathappenedtomy ear?" The usually stern-tempered, steady less it's date night, thin man was wince-screaming.  Over and over.  The antennae was clutch-forged in the hand all shades of red holding the side of his face to the wincing siren.  

     A panting dog brought the clothing to its master.  Lemme smell it, the woman said.  She held off the world at arm's length while she breathed just woods, then inhaled the smells of the white tee shirt.  Closed her eyes.  Mind decided, "It's the kid." 

     People crept close again.  "You'n sure?" 

     "We've got to get him to stop shooting for that plane 'll be able to land." 

     "And get the gun away from him.  Probably scared."  

     The plane's drone sound got loud then.  Yeeeehaw! Somebody on it's little deck hollered and kicked the keg out into the field.

     It bounced.  Got shot.  And rolled like a Chinese swirling firework spraying foam clear to Kingdom Come.

     "I mean, I would be, not scared exactly," the woman's voice was suddenly on the ground walkie talkies and an old truck radio.  "Not scared really," the woman talked to herself on the radios, "More like pissed off.  People wrecking a good day.  Throwing other peoples' heads around like it ain't nothin'." A man threw the walkie talkie close to the back of the boy with the machine gun.  The gun jumped a little and steered the boy's arms.  Bark and dirt poofed up in a little crescent moon shape of walkin' it back. 

     Whoa...whoa...god dammit....

     Sheeeeit.

"How can this be happening here?"

     Of the like twenty-seven people in the know it was a beyond panic that clawed at the plywood standing between hell and the USA. 

     Each person's breaking down was slightly different from the next person's until all the facts that could be gleaned turned situation into comparison to Bible.  A kind of three days of darkness ensued.  And afterward, it was spoken of as, would've been much longer if we hadn't have pulled together.

"What's the dealio?"

     One asked the other in the thin, thin space between a blacker than black zone and a red hot zone.  The sweat dripping off peoples' noses and brows.  Guns cocked not 'cuz, but because the flipping and fever had got to the point of hair trigger.  

     "She wasn't being flippant," I said to mama on a patch-me-through big black desk phone being carted around since angry mob.  "There'll be a breakthrough.  Lord Jesus, we pray, there will be a breakthrough."  The lady held a tore-up fingernailed hand praisin' and thanking Jesus under a gaudy chandelier and then put it on the shoulder of the "any old who" standing next to in the storm.

     That storm had half the city underground for the devil walking mad.  

     Sometimes we seem commander-less, sometimes penned by command.  The most terrible times prove we are not our stuff and You may not care about Jesus, but I CARE ABOUT YOU.  That's at the core of preventing implosion and piecing ourselves back together after explosion.  Almighty God's proof that what we are is soul in flesh, no matter what language we speak. 

     We might as well have been a Gaza in places in New York and Michigan.  What had rifled through us was as difficult as civil war.  And we'd had to start over from ground zero long before 2001.  Again and again we keep pace with each other until...

     We need fresh blood

     We have to have police

     No one can pay the taxes 

     We lost everything

     Faces in shock having lived through "it", having not known.  Some sign of humanity comes back to.  "Can you hear me?" Nodding. 

     "I will NOT LET GO." 

     Whether we know the prayers and anthems or not, it's what Americans of all styles and personalities cry and rally.  We don't let go of nation.  Which means we don't let go of each other.

      It was hard to speak.

     Shenandoah.

     "Where the rubber meets the road." 

     "And beyond," was the Amen. 

     Holding tight to God and family, not by sight, Preacher's words the title-ing on perspective getting farther and farther away.

     Shenandoah. 

     You'll find it again. 

     That holy churn, Jesus himself puttin' on walking beside boots, the blessing in go time keeping all safe on the way.

     Shenandoah.

     The book of ACTS (the acts of the Apostles) closes with St. Paul in a storm and moving on.  He has a story both personal and witnessing of epic.  He needs to tell his story.  And his faith is part of the story and story-telling.  

     I can see where Paul's story is similar to being an American.  Sometimes we come together and experience, but we also go each our way with unique skills and gifts and challenges.

     It's a powerful thing to put faith central. And to realize how much of "the story" is about faith.

Myth and Mach

Tales from time...

    Interesting

On F35s

     It wasn't really stuffing laughter, but if you coun't talk to them without laughing, well, you coud get one heck of an Indian burn on yer arm.  Or have your nose tweaked like a lightbulb.  

   "It was basically the same principle, (i)see(i)," the underwater camera dripped with mollusk-smelling wet.  But it was okay.  

     "THERE'S AN UNDERGROUND CITY NOW!!!!" 

     "SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!" 

     "Same principle as, as," little brain spinning scenes like a Rolodex. 

     "Where (i)is SHE?????" 

     "How do you spell principle?" 

     "Not with a P A L, that's like school boss, (i)you're pal(i) less your in HOT WATER."  Eyes in goggles holding nose up still swinging head slow like a wrecking ball over flippers.  "We'll get them Sir." His hand on mine patting his shoulder.

     Drooping faced aging-earlies, some drooling from the scare and (i)stares(i).

      We'd landed in a garbage dump that time.  When old Fred found out kindasortah our whereabouts he clipped the King short so Oscar could ruminate on how living in a garbage can wasn't really all that bad.  (i)Really.(i) 

     "Something about that jetstream wake." 

     "It's a whippersnapper," the skinniest people we'd seen yet talked about all of this like it was perfectly normal.  Just as natural as could be.  Man wrestling with machine.

     

 

     The little girl's face turned from as bright as the sun to horrified.  "It's about to get worse," the boy said.  "This is soooo bad." 

     We'd been (i)sent in(i) to find the tape recorder in the pile of 

     (i)rummage(i)

     (i)rubbish(i)

     (i)KEEP THOSE TWO APART(i)

     "I'm not gonna lie," the little girl crossed her arms just as the grown ups were pulling her tee-shirt up.  She stuck a foot out like her cowboy boot was still on it and 'bout to pop a cockroach 'cuz that (i)ain't nothin' but a thing(i).  (i)Not like us(i). 

     (i)'Cuz we HAVE SOULS.(i) 

     "That's right honey." 

     One bear was (i)sleeping(i) under a long folding table.  It's claws thicker than my fingers.  A teacher who sometimes dressed as a black-and-white clown who couldn't talk reached the feather duster over to tickle the foot.  It didn't move.  "Help me flip it over," another teacher told Sister Rose's engineer boots.  She also had her arms crossed.  No hint of the kind of humor that had got us around the world in less than eighty days.  "You people have ten minutes to get this mess cleaned up." 

     

     The macaroni man in a safari hat whapped one of the sheetsbof newspaper with a bamboo flyswatter.  "Give it to me," he held out the flyswatter like a hand.  "You've had enough." She'd hidden his shoes when he took a snooze sitting upright and his black dress socks had long pine needles poking in and out the bottoms.

     The newspapers were disassembled and hung in a circle like a topless teepee around them.  "All of this in six months." A tongue cluck.

     "Just dandy." 

     "It's kind of gross." 

     "Everything's going to be just fine.  Fish out the apples." 

     "Someone's coming, hush!" 

     "When we get there I'm going to spank you for telling us to hush." 

     "We'll see about that!" I told the animal carcasses.

Round and Round

  Describing her state of vision for the form.  Round and round, we went.  Out past socked in.  Clouds to Cleveland.  Her man growing muscled again from emaciated swooped over, the antennae on his head, wires down the back of his tank tee.  She started to lose it as she walked towards the record player.  Then mad, fuckin'drugs.  His hand hovered over hers over the groove knifed in rows and rows of sound.  Callouses and gunpowder and oil and grass.  The green stains from him wiping off our knees.

     "Cheers Jane." 

     Stuffy old man, "Keep the calm," she gave a little wave.  "He'll be fine with the gin and cranberry juice," she wiped her hands on her butt and put them together like the church and steeple.  "How are the apes?"

     "They call it," voice lowered, heads magnetized to the news.  "The women's room."  Just breathing and blank looks not looking abandoned, but like midwives feeling for kicks.  "One seems to have a cold." 

     "Sniffling?" 

     "Maybe just misses you Dr. Goodall."  A surprised look.  "How ON EARTH could you have known that?"  The flask of cherried liqour was passed around slowly then savoring five minutes peace.

      It was lurching into port.  "Protestors" had stolen gasoline under a silent, still sky full of (i)God, could only be(i).  Miracles and bloodied documents.  Some will never attribute it to (i)any(i) God. 

     Israel, like Ireland, had been reluctant to hang dirty laundry on the line that magazines and newspapers had strung across front yards.  And the lawns of "proper administration", well, (i)yawns(i) and quarterlies listing a handful of events. 

     People outside of the city just didn't know.  Parts of buses through skulls and shoulders.  Missing body parts covered with rubble and garbage and the occasional shutter or coffee table.  Like cities state-side, "the Streets" had their own ways of operating.  But nobody was not paying attention.

     Stifling bloody phlegm, reflux, and a cough.  Shattered glass under boots and shoes and barefeet.  "Torn heel, but there was acid or some kind of chemical in a shot glass on the tray.  The waiter's tray."  Stifled, hand shot out from curled up to upright.  Upright man pulls body from tank.  "Get in." 

     "I ca, cah, cah

     "Can't 

     "Deal with this." 

     "You must." The explosion had tore off most of the building's rear.  "I'll stay right here." 

     "What kind of," gulp of air into lung and a clenching of unmoored cinder block, one nostril held closed.  "Now BLOW."  A wilderness "doc" put the gritty boogers in a baggie.  Another pulled the string of viscous until blood seen another color in special glasses.  A clothespin.  "We gotta go for a backboard." 

     Gun grabbed.  Pointed at feet.  "Get in." 

     "We'll wait for 722." 

     On "the horn", a mocked-up field radio, (i)good enough(i), "It's most likely mined." 

     Scribbled note: 

     What kind of offcers don't know a port's a ship in war? 

     "Enough." 

     "There'll be time for that." 

     Guts splattered on windows.

"Ain't glory if we dead"

     "Ready for our glory days?" The man spoke louder than any of us had been whispering.  Eyes opened.  Whites glowing orange reflecting the embers of the sticks torched.  No fire-ring, no rocks circling for safety.  He chucked a message made palm-size spitball into the water. 

     One woman grabbed the hilt of a dagger stapped above boot.  Seashell-pressed decor on a strip of handle.  A sister's hand on her's to calm.  "It ain't glory if we dead."  Someone drew in a breath and put finger on trigger of the gun alongside the wedding ring guard.  The sisters looked at each other.  "That's what mama said." 

     "Glory's when we dead fool." 

     The trees started taking shape.  Someone moved off to pee.  It hadn't been a lecture.  'Bout truth and lies, conveying fluid, keeping up esteem.  A guitar player spit strangly bacca juice into the sand.  "She'll do it," he spoke for his singing partner. 

     The man's hand moved towards the whimpering and blocked the launch of the compass into the water.  He spoke in the direction of another of us, "Don't salute me like you're a pine tree out there." He put both hands around the boy who couldn't make the compass work.  The boy collapsed into the hug.  "How'd you get here?" 

     He slid his snots backwards from coming apart and told, "Snuck behind the sun coming up." 

     "Well then, you've mastered going East!"  The boy broke from the hug.

     "Okay, then I'll be the Pops today," the military mom told the three and four year old.

 

     It was only a little while after September 11th that fareful year.  People were bundled up in black clothing.  Train stations were being patrolled by security with big guns.  She'd tugged my sleeve.  I'd closed my gaping-in-disbelief mouth as I sank onto a bench to sit on next to her.  "Had my back, huh?!" I sighed some.  "Did but,"

     "Why'd I end up strapped to an armchair and sinking in a water fountain?"  A little laugh at the ups and downs of paying attention. 

     "That was a lot longer time ago." 

     "Really can't be buts." 

     "I was eyelevel with the back of those exploding sneakers."

     The train station smelled of coat static and people flash-warming and the screeching of braking not-bullet trains.  A bagel wafting by caught attention.  "Not many buts back then after all that."

     "Like now." 

     "Strapped because wouldn't let go.  And we had to move on.  Was, so"

     "Going Overseas at this time?"

     "Not entirely sure yet.  Ready, always ready to via con Dios."

     "So what?"

     "One of those beyond situation type scenes.  No one was expecting people we'd met Overseas to get tangled up in being uber-commandeered from within our Country."

     "Mmmmmm.  Because 'democracy'."

     "Wretched word sometimes."

     The schedule flickered on the boards.  "I better check that."

     When I turned around, she was gone.  Sucked up in the waves of defense.

     The Israeli Commanders' families prepared us to (i)steel ourselves(i).  "Watch out!" One warned, and looked at nervous-wreck (i)gone Christians(i) and added, "In addition to Jesus saying, (i)Watch(i)".  

     Hamas being "excluded" from "peace process" is part of a longer cycle of warring.  And protesting for peace is not a way to solidarity.  It's (i)with me or against me time(i).  Has to be.

     Peace signs were resting against a concrete knee wall at that point.  Though the crowds were feverish with end.

  "As we go through the work that we're doing, we have folkd that are doing some tremendous research with the things that we saw today and will see in the future.  It's warming to me that we're able to recapture this element of our history that's so important that I don't think any of us fully understand.  We've heard the stories.  We've captured a lot of things [comprehension-wise].  But, as we continue to put these items together, there is going to be times of emotion."  --Ugvwiyuhi (Principal Chief) Michell Hicks speaking at the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (2025) event in Cherokee, N.C. 

     People were still ducking the downbeating winds of air choppers and balance-beaming skinny plank between boats as peace had been declared.  Tears streaming down smiling faces, hands gracefully alive, releasing bottles with messages.   Always loving you.  Time won't divide us forever.  Cheers, friend.  

Interesting Engineering, IE 

  This article seems to suggest the machine is a bit too much for heating a cup of coffee.  Course, I recall suggesting the same of a tank once and sharing a brilliant cup of joe heated on the engine!

      The guy was manning up.  Growing up into a man.  Him and his old lady had stuck it out through all the "fights" as "masks" come off.  "You's rich and I'm dirt." 

     "Well, it wasn't 'cuz we was rich cuzz that we don'put muddy boots on the coffee table, or, palette-thingie whatever that was 'fore your friend busted the other guy's head on it..." 

     "Weren't?" 

     "Naw man.  It gave people more time to make love." 

     "Hmmmm.  Really." 

     "Really." 

     A bunch of us had trailed each other answering (i)no(i) to "You following me?" And found ourselves somewhere outside Knoxville.  Guy was shaving in a car's sideview mirror.  A whisp of a woman, friend, and photographer tugged on my sleeve.  Showed me field developed shots of steam and fog creeping round the city.  "You went in there already?"  Tiny hand flopped my mess of a ponytail.  "You ALL seem to have fallen off a cliff into country bumpkin land.  What gives?" 

     For some city people, love of Country was tangled up in (i)place(i).  And we'd managed to survive on our own, with various helps from others, to date (i)in the mountains(i).  "I am honestly a changed person.  Like all the crust and crap came off my soul." She was considering this as the man shaving caught her eye.  "Hold these," she said as she shoved go-bag-handbag and a stack of scrapbooking stuff at me.  She got into an angle.  Then whispered, "You go ask him." 

     "Ask him what?  The man is shaving."  Memories of lilac water and aftershave and foamy shave creams sweetening the seriousness of a shave flooded my mind.  "Ask him if it's okay to photograph him." I put the stuff on the hood of the car and went and asked.  "Shaving?" He asked.  Then he shaved a row through the foam and told me to ask her (i)why(i).  I did.  She'd studied some WPA photography was the ling and short of it.  I explained that to him.  And he said, "Lemme aks you sumpin'." 

     "Sure." 

     "You think this is the Big Un?" 

     "Doesn't seem to be honestly.  Hot as it is.  But even if it spills into that, (i)we are defending America(i).  Us.  Our generation has truly stepped up." 

     "Hmmmmm," he hummed as he swathed another row through the foam.

From ZME Science, relatively new term "freshwater lens".  Article

Technology Talk, AI and machinery, submarines

  Really important point about humans needing to trust the AI we're working with.

"Did you call her?"

 

     "I'd already aologized." 

     "Honey, I am very far away." 

     I roused myself again, a nineteenth wind.  Oriana unscrewed the thetmos of elixir--black coffee.  I smelled it and realized there were an ocean of storm-tossed satelittes plopping around up there and yes, YES!  I CALLED HER. 

     "DID SHE?" 

     AFFIRMATIVE SIR. 

     "Sip the coffee dear," an older lady pulled at the coming loose button on her homemade sweater. 

     Click.  More clicks, breathsbeing sucked in, Oh noooooos. 

    "Can you hear me now?" 

     Nervous laughter.  "I do Sir."  Shot of coffee.  "She hung up on me." 

     A tiny voice on one of seven phones emphatically yellef, "I'HE CALLED BACK!" 

     "We can't connect all the communications togeth-," A man plucked the talking phone from the line volunteered "-er, until we figure out what the fuck is going on." 

     Phones around the Sat Phone conversation.  "Can you back your satelitte up?" 

     "ME?!!!!" 

     "YOU should do it since they're asking!" 

     "Hey now.  I didn't know I had one.  Do I have one?" 

     "By proxy." 

     Silence at proxy.  "It means YES via your company connections." 

     "Hold on the landline's ringing."  Footsteps.  "It's downstairs but I'll be back," the voice came back and said. 

"IT WAS A TIMING THING!!!"

     They'd put me on a Sat Phone to tell someone why they'd almost got their heads blown off by a missile. 

     As the shut down wore on people in the human chain that really makes up the U.S. started falling down like dominos. 

    Elders were too weak to work for feeding their children.  People were bandaiding situation while they picked up a Mr. or a Mrs. 

  "A gap?" 

    "In coverage kind of, see..." 

     "Just keep talking to me baby girl.  It doesn't matter what you say." 

It was another two days before

  the sun came out.  By brunchtime we'd salved and shaved our legs, stitched up an eyebrow, and assigned one apiece of a sixer.  

     The woman unrolled the newspaper again, and peeked at it like it was an umbilical cord.  Flipped over the stuck together pages.  Pronounced, "It's drier."  

     Blonde curly came out a path with two big bass on a stick.  "I can do anything I put my mind to," she quietly spoke the mantra. 

     The man had a twelve pack of his own to last the week.  And was down to four.  "Then what are you gonna do?" The woman would like to know.  His belly hanging out of his tee-shirt 'cuz he was sliding down the slope of the fishing hole shook with laughter.  "Oh she does does she?" 

     "I think I should be the one," the mama tweezed the tweezers in the air.  The man made like he was running away.  The soggy papers were sunbathing on the picnic table.  The man stuttered, "Don't know what your plans might be," he blushed and looked at the water, "But it's bigger than that."  She put the tweezers in her jacket pocket.  "Let's not go in that direction," she said.  

     The man perused the table.  Ate two spoonfuls of baked beans.  Then asked, "What's a two-spirit person?"  

     "It's a sacred Native American thing." 

     "Never heard of it." 

      "Whaddya do that for?" Trading punches. 

     "It's hard to describe," the woman stared at the blank piece of paper.

     "Not today," the man said about (i)turning this around(i). 

     (i)Like a frog(i), one said on "the downlow" (until we couldn't say that word anymore because somebody explained what it meant).  "Launched."  

     All of us were tangled hair and muddy, scratched and bruising, licking wounds without talking to each other when (i)a real mama(i) who'd volunteered "to help" through "the church" arrived.  She tried to get back in the truck depositing her when she realized (i)teenage girls(i).  But curly blonde had spit on one hand and smacked it into her other hand and rubbed her hands together and cussed and told her man, "I gotta new best friend." He looked at her like he was pregnant and standing on the scaffolding of a high rise and jammed his foot on the gas.  The wheels spun and spun for a full half a minute and the gravel and sand and dirt flew.  Covered the mama who was going to go back to town.  

     She stood there after the truck bounced on down the road and curly blonde was still yelling whatever she could think of.  "I ain't a fiddle," she said low and hard at the mama.  Then stomped back to a tent.

     The mama didn't really march right into situation.  She brushed herself off.  Patted her old jean jacket which seemed to have a cloud of settled dust on it.  Dug out a piece of gum from the front pocket, mumbled, that's where I left that, and picked up the grocery bag like it was an old-timey suitcase.  She looked both ways, realized she was kind of in the middle of the road, and hurried to get out of it.  

     The man and woman at the picnic table were a mix of laughter and stifling.  A fish caught before anybody our age was up was rolled out of a newspaper and they ripped off wet pages to get to dry ones.  They put the clump of soaked wet binder pages into the newspaper.  

     The mama looked around at the bottim of the camp stairs.  She daintily put the grocery bag on the picnic table.  "What's in there?" The man had a gravely voice.  The woman offered her the pen.  "What just happened here?"  

     "I need to know who's fightin' who?" 

     "So you can screw us?" 

     "So I can duck when it gets going again." 

     "I'm supposed to be writing what it was like to be their age and at war," the woman let the pen stay in the air.  The mama crossed her arms.

     

"I AIN'T A FIDDLE"

     It was about four days after our men left.  Some of the girls found ways to come from Tennessee.  A woman who'd been all over the Country helping recruit all levels of "soldier" and apprentice came walking down the dirt path to camp.  She had the pail of "genitals" AKA gummy worms.  "That's my pay," she handed it to one of us.  "No one ever said we were ever gonna get rich."  She guffawed.  Shoulders sloped a bit.  "Don't eat all of those at once!" She said.  And gently clapped a hand on a jeaned knee.  She turned to go. 

     "Wait," one of us called. 

     Heads raised from an actual pile of lonesome and full faith and confidence in them, but 

     "Shouldn't we invite her?" 

     "To WHAT?"  One of us disgustedly threw down the dogleash pulling a branch with a stuck lure hanging on it. 

     "Looks like a sad tea party I attended once." 

     "It's sad alright, pathetic," she tossed the dogleash on top of a tent not finished being scrubbed on the picnic table and made like a soccer player kicking a half field goal, but brakef it into a gentle shove of sleeping legs.  One of us sat up like a wrapped mummy and closed eyes against the sunlight.  Looked at the bombshell, put together, slightly older woman, then shut them again.  A big burp.  "She the one who busted us?" 

     "We din't get busted.  Go back to sleep." 

     "You sure?" 

     "We din't do nothin' yet today.  Lay down." 

     "Just ignore Larry and Mo there," the lure-free'r extended a hand to shake.  "Not sure what we're shaking on," the guest said.  "Just a hello.  Welcome to home." 

     "Regular isle of misfits," a South of the Border blanket hurled.  

     "Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?" 

     "I would," one of us got up stretching and yawning.  Jeans, tank, and barefeet.  Tall.  "Nice to wake up not smelling chicken shit." 

  "Shut up.  If it ain't noon, I'm dead to the world." 

     "We're not the world idjiot." 

     "Where's Curly?" 

     "Gone off singing." 

     Dead to the world shot up.  "She did?" 

     "Oh yes," the blonde curly air guitared.

 

     "Dan threw open the door to a wet wind and a sea of slippery, icy English mud.  'Let's get to Group Ops,' he said. 'Briefing's in ten minutes.' 

     "'Jeez,' said Billy, pushing his way out past Henry.  'It musta poured last night.' 

     "'Isn't it always raining in England?' muttered Dan.  'Let's hope the weather officer knows what he's doing.' 

     "They all looked up at the black sky, trying to assess the clouds.  No stars visible and no sunrise yet.  The only lights were on the distant airfield.  Out there, the ground crews were loading bombs and fueling the aircraft.  If it wasn't mechanically perfect, a B-24 loaded with 2000 pounds of bombs and glutted with gasoline was a flying deathtrap. 'God bless the ground crew,' murmured Henry aloud, without thinking." 

           --excerpt, Under A War-Torn Sky by L.M. Elliott

Author's blog: https://lmelliott.com/lauras-blog

The little cigar box

  The little cigar box made its way through the remnant.  Inside was one scrap of paper that had written upon it the decided upon word.

  "Everybody's where they need to be," one girl had peeked, then looked at the ground as she passed the box.

             Lifework

    The Pastor that had come from another state stood still.  The young Officer's wives stayed sitting at a picnic table.  One Officer had stayed, but was standing near a middle-aged tree occupied by wood-boring beetles.  He'd be picked up.  "Like a vice," he described the state of his headache and the cranking sound of the beetle inside the tree.  "Oh, give this to them." He took a rolled up refrigerator To Do pad from his pants pocket.  And a hug.  "Will do.  Take care of you." 

     "Will do." 

     "It's like this every year," a Forest person was explaining to campers about the change of season. 

     "Yeah, but do you really know?" 

     A chuckle.  "Been doing this a long time.  In Montana." 

She put two fingers up

  in a tee like I had the cooties or something.  "A bunch of us have to get back, now." The kid behind me ducked like she'd thrown a dish.  

  "What were you listening to?" 

  "Nina Simone."  Me, afraid to let the silence linger.  Her, knowing a silence lingering gets filled with not just noise.  That's why I like her singing.  She's from these parts you know. 

  "No, I didn't know that."  

  "Why'd you come?"  Sponge-self feeling like a stamp licker, I blinked a few times to steady fluid.

  "There's a lot we can't talk about here." 

  Mmmmmmm-hmmmmm.

  "But, 

  "But what?  Spit it out.  We're all late." 

  "This is deep and I should just write a book like everybody else..." 

  We sat on the edge of a camp bed and looked at our hands.  Outside, voices.  The corklike quality of youth and vigor and uncertainty. 

  "I was there." 

  "Where?" 

  "In our Country.  When they,"

  "Who they?" 

  "The they, I don't like to call any people evil, but, so..." She got up and fiddled with a skeleton key in the thin door's lock.  "But, it was one of those times, when the bad guys," my eyes rambled on the floorboards.  "Did you know those motherf'ers hung the black flag in D.C. when everybody bailed?" 

  "No, I didn't." 

  "Did you know that it was no accident that, that a fire that burned up part of the Supreme Court building, didn't kill anyone that day." 

  "Why didn't it?" 

  "Because us Americans pulled ourselves together and at least stopped killing each other, mostly."  

  She looked at a spot on the wall where the sun had changed a square of paint coloring.  "There was something hanging there," she considered the fact of something missing. 

  "And, it was me." She looked at me kind of cocking her head.  "You?" 

  "I had your back.  Well, at least until you got blown backwards down the stairs." 

  "Stupid shoes." She said it, but then confessed she didn't know why she just said that, so determinedly.  "She doesn't always remember everything," the suit had warned.  "It's like clues.  We only get clues to the whole story..." 

  "As the stories get tangled and twisted and..." 

  "Layered up." 

  A soft knock.  Door wide open.  Here we go again. 

"How can they shut down the guv'mint?"

      "We are the government." 

     A senator's words hung in the air as water dripped off his chest-high boots.

     "I, I, am, I," a woman struggled to word the tornado of the present. 

     "Chased by drones?" 

     "What are those?" 

     Someone fumbled through a fishing bag and fished out diagrams. 

     "It's no time for (i)talking points(i)," a real military Officer held up both hands to ward off (i)coming any closer(i).  "We're not politicians," said the woman who'd helped get the mule back in its stall and who had a hand on the shoulder of the person in front of her.  "What's on fire?" Our Forest leader needed to know.  Directed to two people setting up a folding table.  (i)Records(i), the cammo-clad person shrugged as to (i)no good answers yet(i). 

     Years of conflict and resolution rolling through peoples' minds. 

     "Dig out your rolodex." An older woman pulled on the sleeve of a literary giant and (i)urged(i).

     "You ALL look like a (i)house of cards(i)!!!!" A man in a flak jacket and helmet came from back of the "entourage" of assistants and "concerned persons" of "the people" to say.  He tapped twice with a strong hand on some people, (i)first to go(i).  "From where?" Someone city-dressedbut bedraggled asked. 

     "Sir?" 

     "From where do we look like that metaphor?" 

     The man's helmet lowered like a knight's shoulder to be dubbed such.  "My sources are warning me: From Space, Sir."  A General issued the order: (i)Move this crowd(i).  A hesitant shock held people in place.  "NOW!" He barked.

      Before we really started talking over shared crab cakes and ice water Madeline was distracted.  "Do you smell that?" 

     "The crab cakes?" 

     She dialed into the restaurant and zero'd in on the source of the smell.  "I'll be right back," she said and wiped her mouth with the cloth napkin and tucked it under her plate.  Then she crossed the room and approached the piano. 

     A man was standing near the pianist, talking and smoking.  "Excuse me," Madeline said.  He didn't turn around or stop talking so she tapped him on the shoulder.  "Excuse me, but"

     "Ye-ass?" The man turned and asked.

     "But this is a no smoking zone." 

     "Oh it is?" The man took a drag and asked in a mouthful of smoke. 

     "Yes, since Thursday." 

     "Oh, I see." The man sucked hard at the cigarette. 

     "Look around.  No ashtrays.  Nobody else (i)smoking(i)." 

     "Well, I guess so," he said when he looked around.  "I'll see you there," he emphatically taped the top of the piano with an open hand like it was a baby's butt.  And left. 

     "Just a fan," the pianist said.

     Madeline came back to the table and put her napkin back on her lap and explained how she hated that people smoke.  Because people die from smoking.  And they'd worked really hard to get the restaurant to agree to no smoking.  Later in the night she had a visit from the chef who went and got the GM who crossed his arms and said, "No, we really haven't lost all our customers," as Madeline considered the bill and tip.

     She reported to me that she was receiving "strange reports" from down South where we'd all been.  I slurped my water to get down a bite of crab cake and think to myself, "Hmmmm...what should I say or not say?" And kept drinking the water as she started peppering me with questions.

    "It saddens me," she said as I stabbed at a crab cake with a three-tyned fork.  "It does?" 

     "And," 

     "Yes?" 

     "Do you know where the mule is?" 

     "I did." I stuffed most of the crabcake into my mouth and chewed real slow.

     "Did?"  She folded her napkin slow and tucked it under the plate again.  "They're moving it around.  Like a lot of things.  Drugs and women and children, weapons, and, and," she was waving a man in a suit over to the table, "And even our Nationsl Guard!" 

     Both people looked at me out of a quick greeting embrace.

"They have sports, we have school."

     "Here are your shoes Madeline.  At least, that's the bag that was in the backseat."  She came out of the restroom tucking her slippery shirt back into a skirt.  "I think I'll leave my sneakers on." No one said anything.  "Keep up with our youth!"  A finger point into a sweater vest.  "We do still have Academia in common, correct?" 

     "Yes m'am," he looked out the window at the City. 

     "Can you imagine if nations talked to each other like that?" Still processing going for Victory "like hogs at a feed."  

     "Well, to be fair," my mind struggled with exhaustion, "In the bitter end, the ticket's whole and most people stormed off (i)to heal(i).  That's what my own Daddy said to Mom's (i)the truth will set you free(i).  Daddy said, "Let the healing begin." People plucked hot dogs from the grill left behind by a couple with ten years of stuff they haven't seen in ten years." 

     "I want to hear about everything, but we should eat.  Then people who need to sleep, can." 

    "What do you make of this Mr. W?" He jumped at my loud, interruptive entry, and his pen slid and "now it looks like I've flubbed.  Which I have not." 

     "Yep, it looks like you did, so I guess you did.  Of course, you can blame it on me." 

     The Pastor's face frowned a little.  "What are you asking about?" 

     It was a passage in Ezekial.  Chapter 12ish.  He read it.  He blinked it into the dense prophecy stuff he was studying and writing about in a stare over the kitchen table.  "It's not the same as worshipping false gods.  More like," he thought.  "Like God saying that because Israel is the Promised Land and where things will culminate (i)in the end times(i) some of the Jews were feeling entitled." 

     "What's that?" 

     "I just learned the concept myself." 

     I let that justify, (i)can't explain right now(i).  He frowned.  A lot on the plate.  "All right, so what I mean it as is," the Eight Day clock hit high noon.

     "Being ingrates?" 

     "Hmmmm.  Sort of, or like taking God's previous promise to them for granted.  Kind of assuming exceptionalism." 

     "Like lawyers and politician's (i)above the law(i)." 

     He put his glasses back on and didn't want to confirm that analogy.  I pressed on.  "Mr. W., We've got a problem." 

     "More than one looking at all these thunders-to-come." 

     "We're training people up to fight evil and a real enemy.  One of my friends just went over to and came back from the Middle East.  But we are becoming very violent." 

     "What did you hear?" 

     "Somebody's grandmother Linda Mac-Manned her husband." 

     "Not familiar with that phrase." 

     "She clocked him or cleaned his clock or, she punched him!" 

     "Really?" 

     "Nobody's sure if it's Alzheimer's or just fed up." 

     "I'll ask my wife to look into that.  Make a note on this one." He handed me one of eight writing pads.  "One for each thunder," he winked. 

     "That's not funny." 

     "Wasn't meant to be." 

     "Seriously though.  My reading is telling me, God's Word is no peace and that's in part because people took the gift of Israel and being chosen or blessed for granted." 

     "That's a good start.  Maybe you should write a book.  Your own book." 

     "Too many prophets not enough days left until (i)the end(i)." 

     "About that," he took his glasses back off.  "The End?" 

     "I know you signed up to do a reading at Church and I appreciate that, but I'm worried about that too." 

     "I've practically memorized it." 

     "Oh you have?! You'll do fine then I'm sure."  But his brow furrowed.  "Something besides messing it up?" 

     "It's new material for lots of folks." 

     "And it matters (i)how(i) people learn about such big stuff?" 

     "I think it does." 

     "Well, if you think so then..." 

     The clock ticking was making me feel sleepy.  "It's the same with the war stuff, I think." 

     "Hmmmm?" He'd put his pen to paper again.

     "I'm glad, (i)you've got this(i) Mr. W." 

     And I was.  The vibe of one in a high energy current can be extreme.

      (i)Just about(i) turned into did and done.

     "Not gonna lie, I beat the fuck out of her."  That was pretty much the whole statement.  (i)Case closed(i).

     The loss of momentum left a bunch of people with an on-steroids attitude and no focus.  That was why an advertising person was like, "Hell yeah, I let them watch sports." 

     "Because they have nothing better to do?" 

     "No.  Because if they don't get their downtime and have something to talk about that proves they have something in common, it'll be (i)bullshit(i) all down the line."  

     An actor visiting parents was staring.  He'd come prepared to decline eating someone else's meal, but be unrelentless about TV/Radio.  "If they'd justa played my song man," was the sorrowful (i)told you so(i) to an older generation having to bail out, resus-i-tate, and otherwise forestall losing their own children to " the madness".  "Were you at that fight?" A girl Detective water-coolered in the host's kitchen.  "Whhhhooooo-we," he kinda shook his head vaguely (he'd been sleeping), "Some nasty bruising."  He inadvertantly lightly touched his own ribs.  "They're calling it, air quote, 'male machismo,'". 

     "Do you feel bullied by my relatives?" A dusky-voiced Latino asked. 

     "Not exactly.  I feel like the Jews are messing us up." 

     "Said the generic US citizen?" 

     "Pretty much.  Like everybody else.  You have 2.5 children and ten seconds to respond no matter the topic." 

     It had almost been a loss of momentum.  A few weeks of PT for a man who'd been on the threshold of retiring had us hunting for ways to ease the burden of stress on middle age bodies.  A different saw, better ladder.  "It's got to be adapted," a lifer-buddy barked about the cable TV wires.  Standing on the ground us Carpenters finished and saved sips of coffee and ice, looked at the mess of wire spine, (i)a blotch on precision(i)?  "Mebbe," the man spit.  A tug on a baseball cap and hiding eyes from.  A support person, woman, moved in closer. "Na-ah," she flicked his cap up in a "I'ah, I'm gonna love you," kinda way.  "No secrets.  We don't hide from each other." 

     "Okay." The gentle giant looked at his feet.  A nose-bleeding concussion was still fresh in our minds.  The young person talked through (i)crisis in the field, here(i) with engaging "jokes" and multi-disciplinary scramble.  After the Emergency Services were (i)on the way(i) the same support person had dug through a musician's purse and dug out little packs of pepper.  She put it on the running mental list of (i)things to talk about(i) at whichever campfire her "tired ass landed at" as the sun sank low. 

     "Thank God you all are here," the young person was about to crumble into viscous-disturbing crying relief of stress.  She held eye contact and called for more "funnies". 

     "Or a good story," she moved her finger in front of eyes.  "Fluke we were, are here." Mostly middle-age but serviceable Americans kicked at mulch and oil in dirt on the off-road.  "You gotta do better than that," she called over her shoulder.  "What? No pay, no gab?!" 

     A man with a beard in a braid said, "The traveling Pastor's back overtah Rugby."  A shock tremor passed through the young person's body.  "Come help me steady and watch the nostrils."  

     "Am I gonna die?"  

     "Now, son, there ain't never a time fir that kind of talking 'cuz if you can ask, you're (i)probably gonna make it(i)." 

     "Darn."  

     "Let's do this," an off-duty EMperson had pulled a roll-on luggage from a car.  He flipped open a knife to quipping (i)that's not a knife, that's a knife(i) and blessed and volunteered the baggage.  "If we can get this handle out, it'll serve as a back brace type apparatus." 

     (i)Shit(i) "I just got that one." 

     It was spared by the no sirens, lights on Ambulance switchbacking down 

     (i)inside(i) the scene.

Mary Gauthier's "Bullet Holes In The Sky" 

"Tipping Points"

      Back then there were enough people in the room who remembered the games like "Contraption" to strike up a conversation about "culture" even as we were loading cargo planes.  We were suddenly all (i)on the go(i).  The scales were being held sway by us people--civilians and military.  We had to chuck the metaphoric scale-holder in the middle.  I'll explain why later, but when people started blowing themselves up and being blown up we realized "language" was more than just "a difficulty".  Humanity was embodying warfare.  And technology was increasingly "the assist".

Not really missing.

  Some of the creatives were just getting louder and louder.  And the Rumanian girl was literally being passed back and forth as translator until they found a more quiet spot.  The real point of the story was that just like everybody else's parents, theirs were (i)in charge(i) while doing all this other stuff.

     Think campaign and battle and all of us in that mode.  Centering on God and family and getting through each thing that comes up.  There are a lot of American ways of doing that!

     For a lot of creatives there's been a lot of time spent on tuning understanding and diplomacy.  It's not that creatives don't have objectives.

     The woman with the shoes, she, (i)ran away(i).  Some of the guys helped her.  I was kind of afraid when I stumbled upon her.  In her own tent, own camp space.  She let me look in there.  Very cozy.  Tennis shoes and treadmill shoes and slippers.  Jogging suits and pens.  Lots of pens.  She said in a gentle voice, "I have some ideas."  She also had a quash of friends who were her support and because everyone was still young they all were working through the minutia of (i)fighting fire with fire(i).  Creativity can be a fire.

     The Rumanian and I just got along well.  Found common ground in...seeing the ordinary and striving to "see" or understand how that ordinary is imbued with God/"magic" in terms of inspiration.  Being oldest children had us able to step outside of big picture and assess what needs to happen (i)according to(i) and why that may or may not work.  And we drank, a  soda toast to America as, like, going at different paces because we're all individuals though we team up for mission sometimes.  Just like "family". 

     The pastor wrote more than one book.  When he got his strength back he helped Briefcase Boy and me be less scared about wars and plagues by faith.  And hearing that from a God's final witness (long arguments about "only" prophet, "ultimate" prophet....) helped us each ground our own creativity and business acumen in a timetable.  The fact that we'd heard stuff like, "you only have one life," wasn't dictating our paces.  Very individual types but deeply spiritual.  I made him show me the tree was okay.

     Me? I'm trying to get my truck fixed.  Finish up a carpentry job on the other end of the mountains.  Working at Wendy's.  Same old, same old.

     As things get (i)tense(i)er and tenser, the battling gets point for point.  At the end of that day so long ago, our moms and dads won the day on (i)family safe(i).  And Father Hen was able say, "No, Linda, it's not a circus." 

Listening to, Melissa Manchester, "Ain't That A Kick In The Head"

 

On the way, way up north

     (i)Looks(i), "So what?" 

     "You can stick that where the sun don't shine." 

     "What'n the hell (i)is it(i)?" 

     "It's a smokestack."

     One to explain hardware.  A little icebreaker laughter.  "Called a digibyte." 

     "Honey, only thing I want a bite of is steak and eggs." A look up and down.  "And your ass.  I'll take two of those and call you next week." A retreating look but standing still.  "Here's our business card." 

"What are you still doing here?"

      "It's like a Country Music song I can't get out of," Briefcase Boy's eyes crossed and that made him look really weird.  "Don't do that." 

     His truck was mashed on one side.  Not mangle mashed but like side-swiped.  The runner board peeling up like a sardine can.  "Oh man." 

     Inside the bartender was wearing a nice sweater, jeans, and almost dress shoes.  He'd dug out the bigger chili pot and was tasting both.  "Does this taste the same?" He scooped some into two shot cups.  "Are you crying?" 

     "Must've been a spicey bite," he wiped his hands on a bar towel apron and moved off to square pans of cider.  "Those friends of yours are really something." 

     "What'd they do? And, did the Briefcase guy hurt anyone?" 

     "To hear tell the trees fared better." 

     The Pastor's wife came into the kitchen in a bathrobe and towel on her head.  "You're still here too?!" She gave the bartender a ten dollar bill and he scooped out two bowls of chili for her.  "He's gonna try." 

     "That is so good!"  She went back out a back door.

     "What's gone on in the four days I was camping?" 

     (i)Whew.(i)  He moved off to wash dishes.  After about five minutes he said, "And a whole lot of good music.  I mean really good.  True talent." 

     "What's the Pastor gonna try to do?" 

     He rested a wet pan on top of some cans of applesauce.  "Write a book!"  He lifted the pan to a rack.  "Wish I could do that." 

     "Start small.  That's all I'm saying.  The whole book part comes and goes."

     

    "Where'd you find each other?" 

     Eyes darting around, unsteady sparkles catching moonlight, (i)letting it go(i).  Light drags, deep drags, whole packs of cigarettes minus one (i)tossed(i).  Speaking out loud, (i)trembly(i).  Sleeves pulled down farther and farther (i)stretched(i). 

     A lifelong friend leaping forward, a bit, to say, "It's a little weird." 

     "I wanna hear it.  I wanna hear (i)everything(i)," an oldened young man sweeping the horizon with a hairy arm.  (i)Tough, they're tougher(i).  "Assessed, but don't take off for about a week." 

     "Weird how?" A tiny man with shiny gold rimmed glasses, hands propped to hold something but nothing there. 

     "Weird like life, I bet," hairy arms whacking tiny guy's shoulder.  The thing not there, not falling.  "Don't do that here," she whispered sharply.  "No betting.  No drinking.  And no sex Romeo.  Romeos." 

     "What fun." 

     She'd found her uncovering something in a pile of leaves.  One of them burped.  (i)Tequila(i), a breathy giggle and an (i)oops(i), "Didn't," (i)hiccup(i) know ab (i)hiccup(i) out that rule.  (i)hiccup(i)." 

     "Well, catch up, but get gone."    Nobody moved.  A French couple rubbing each other's ears laughed gently.  "Oui, the but-ter-scotch," her breath steamed when she said it and tipped the thermos at his lips.  The liquid dribbled and he lapped at his own lips.  She pressed hers to his.  "Okay, I'll be the first one to get gone," the woman said in a library quiet voice.  She turned toward the parking lot, hard heeled boots crunching gravel, then turned back, "But, I'll be the first one (i)to you(i) if you need anything." A few more steps away and a hand up, another turn back, "I live pretty far out, so, maybe make a list.  That's what we do.  (i)We make lists(i)."  She got into the car and backed out of the spot.  So short someone laughed and said so, and "Is she even in there?" 

     She'd rolled down the window but it got stuck at half down.  She raised her mouth to the open space.  "I'm in here.  Don't forget to call people.  Let them know you're home." 

     "What phone?" 

     "Is there a phone?" 

     "I have one."  

     "Who are you?" The hairy armed man blew cigarette smoke out while asking. 

     "Just passing through," I unattached my flattening numb butt from the railing.  "Come on in," I opened the bar door.

     

     "I'm (i)leaving(i)," he said and waved a hand like he could make us disappear in a cloud of dust.  "Don't take this wrong," he pointed at me then walked towards the other guys and said loudly, "Not a friendly crowd tonight." The other guys started towards him and hooked his two arms and carried him backwards to the doorway.  "Just stand there then," one said.  "We've got business inside," said the other.  "I think all y'all should mind your own business," I held the door open and said while they went in  first.

     Inside Cupid scooped back to the table.  And the guys walked up to the beautiful woman.  They pulled out the two barstools on either side of her and stood with an elbow each on the bar.  One smiled and one looked so concerning.  One flipped at his hair and told her hers looked...he searched the air around her for the word...(i)gorgeous or fabulous whichever you prefer(i).  "Who's drinking what? And don't tell me to put it on his tab.  I fell for that once," the woman bartender had her arms stretched out onto the other side of the bar like a masseuse.  The blonde boyman had stepped inside and stood against the doorwall still holding his briefcase in both hands.  He gave a little wave when they all looked his way.  "I made it in!" He said in a puney voice.  "I have this thing," he told nobody else even looking.  "Germs." He rocked his head a little to the music beat and then visibly clutched his briefcase tighter.

     "What I miss?" Cupid asked.  "In the story." 

     "What does it matter?!  The past is the past." 

     Cupid folded the corner of the cocktail napkin under his Scotch.  "Well.  That's true.  And it's not.  You know these guys?" 

     The Pastor was gently pushed through the door by the sweaty tee shirt.  Briefcase boy hissed at the woman helping him get back to the table.  I got out of his seat and the bartender roused from half asleep on his arms folded on the table.  "He needs water, please," she told.  The Pastor looked at us.  "It's getting closer," he could barely talk strong.  The bartender got up and asked, "Warm or cold?" 

     "We don't have any money." 

     "Would warm or cold be better for him?"

     "I'm not really sure." 

     Was only a couple minutes before the bartender came back with a tray of ice water, steaming water, and several cups of chili.  "I'da brought more but it's the endo."  He looked at the floor realizing the pun then went off for forks.

     The girl got up from the barstool and held up the corners of her tee shirt as she passed by on her way to the bathroom.  (i)Kick Ass, Take Names Later(i) the tee-shirt said.  The letters weren't perfectly straight and the glitter was more of a rocket shape blob than outlining the ironed-on saying.  "What's in the briefcase Dirk?" She asked and bounced the Women's Room door open with a knee.  "It's not Dirk," Briefcase Boy called after her.  

     "Maybe it was because of the young people.  We were young back then."

     "Still are." 

     "Young at heart," Skip raised his hand.

     "Somehow that speaker cord got drug out into the area where everyone was (i)taking sides(i) on everything.  That wasn't planned really.  I mean we'd all been making up our minds on political issues.  And it was like worlds collided."  

     "I hate it when that happens,"  Skip said.  "It can get downright hairy." 

     Briefcase Boy kind of followed the girl coming out of the bathroom but stopped at our table.  He put the cellphone on the table.

     "Aren't you going to say, (i)here's a quarter, call someone who cares(i)?" 

     "When did you get so bitter?"  He walked over to the others.

     It had been about a decade since Father Hen had stood, hands empty, arms at his sides, the tired weighing down his shoulders but him fighting that too.  The tug-of-war had sobered everyone before he'd arrived.  People had different kinds of music playing on about five different speakers, (i)something for everyone(i) a going-deaf guy with a passionate understanding of how important music is to people peacefully took over as DJ.  Some couples grabbed each other and tried to remember ballroom dancing and the (i)tango(i).  A support person was losing voice but (i)holding attention(i) with questions to force participation.  "If I say (i)abortion(i), which side of the line would you be on?" She pointed to the speaker wire in the getting muddy grass where it had been dropped.

     "Is this a political thing?" A woman with longish, reddish hair polished off a shot and a soda chaser and asked. 

     A still chubby young man burst into tears.  Face exploded into sob-wailing.  The support person rose from where she was poking a finger at the muddied wire to see if it was "hot".  She stood in front of the boyman and her hands covered her mouth and reached towards him but pulled back and covered her mouth, then reached toward him again, her own face contorted into almost crying as she asked, "Did I do it?  Say the wrong thing?" The boyman's face was flaming red and wet like the sand slapped by the tide.  He nodded slow and his breath got caught in his chest and he sucked his air in and blew it out.  "Anybody got an inhaler?" The redhead had thrown the cups and bolted to his side too.  Nobody touched anybody.

     The woman with the shoes in her hands started running toward the pile of purses but tripped over the amp's string.  "You can do it honey," a worn from singing all night little high voice called out to her.  "My skirt," she said to the muddy grass, but she picked her palms up and wiped her hands together.  The mud got on her sweater cuffs.  "What's (i)she(i) doing?" Million dollar smile guy callef over the heads of people rushing at him saying, "(i)DO SOMETHING!(i).  More support people broke off dancing and picture taking and sort of made a semi-circle around the woman on her knees rubbing and rubbing at the (i)dirty(i).  One called out, "It's mud.  Hard to get off ya." But others started chanting, "You can do it.  You can do it." She lifted her head, her bun sliding backwards and said, "It sounds like a choir of angels.  You know what?!  (i)I can do it(i)." She pulled a leg towards her front and it was slimed green and brown but she got it under her center and jack knifed the rest of her skirt up from under her other knee and was on both knees hoisting that skirt up higher when  (i)he's here(i) started to go around. 

     Nobody ran.  "I (i)need(i) an inhaler." The redhead was holding up the kid bent over trying to catch his breath.  He came run-waltzing through the little crowd.  "Where is she?" 

     "Skip," he didn't look away from the story hanging in the air.  "Yeah." 

     "You still slap?"  

     The guys were turning speakers this way and that. 

     "They're right over there," a boringly handsome skinny kid had his feet up on a tree stump, sitting in a director's chair, nervous habit had his new leather boots rocking side to side.  He casually waved in the direction of the pile of purses.  We'd seen three ladies there.  But they were gone.  Father Hen smacked the booted feet off the stump.  "(i)Where are they(i)?" 

     He stood up tall and partially turned away from the kid in shock.  He crossed his arms and the seams on his suit coat stretched some.  "You were supposed to watch over them.". His face was hard and soft at the same time.  He walked over and held his hand down to the woman on her knees.

     "You know," the briefcase didn't slide across the dull table but more like plopped next to my writing pad.  "We're not all that different from each other." 

     "I doubt that." 

     Standing behind me, started reading over my shoulder until I tried to look at him, then he ducked to the other shoulder.  Skinny tan hand reaching to the pad.  "Don't you need a comma there?"  I slung that writing pad almost to Kingdom Come.  It slid to where the bar bar used to be. 

     He picked it up.  Leaning over, said, "Don't look at my butt." Held it out to me.  "I'm not great at grammar either."  I pushed the chair back in a scrape that rivaled the band tuning (i)together(i).  "I need (i)outside(i)," I told Cupid.  "What are the arrows for?" He asked of the quill full resting on the table.  "People that show up out of the blue." 

     

     

     

     She was throwing all (i)their shit(i) out of a camper.  "First day of fall y'all," her voice sounded high and tight.  She'd worked another twelve.  He'd laughed at the question, "Did you drink all day?"  Then he was walking with a bow and arrow down a winding road.  "Buzz wearing away?"  His foot slipped on some wet leaves tanglemashed into some mud.  He cussed.  "Why you taking up the whole road with your truck?"  

     "It ain't mine."  He felt the outside of his jeans pocket for a lighter.  "It's (i)my(i) boyfriend's.  But here's a smoke for you." She lit two in her mouth at the same time.  "You really should have white clothes on Cupid."  

     "I don't want to be seen." 

     "Doing a good job at that." 

     The moon was a full half again.  Stems of leaves snapping and finding ground sounded a little like rain.  In a way. 

     "Not so good in love." 

     She shook her hair side to side and let it fall over her face.  "Who is?" 

     At the bar there'd been a scare.  Even a good Pastor was having trouble swallowing a big scoop of (i)end times(i).  "It's a problem for me." 

     "You people." Half a rum and coke drank in a gulp.  "Just show up and toss your religious secrets out into the wind like a goddamn eviction notice in a Chicago winter." 

     It seemed like almost everyone was having an opinion about Tribulation.  "Like God gives a shit 'bout our opinyuns on dat stuff," an Island family stranded by a sudden and significant upcharge in ticket prices heard their mama say.  She made a noise with her mouth like sweeping leaves off a porch.

     People came and went.  The music ticked through the Top Twenty and angry (i)not Tops(i) kicked the table legs some.  Bitched about "Big Town." 

     "Where is it?  This (i)Big Town(i) you speak of?" The young girl shook a shiver of whiskey down to her toes.  "At least it wasn't somethin' worse." Older middle aged men swallowed dry mouths, parched for (i)something stronger too(i), "days gone by", and (i)chances(i) "people have these days". 

     "To work at Subway like stupid Jared?" A young man was hiccuping already.  A guitar was laying down on a seat beside and he plucked some notes to be remembered (i)no matter what(i) with one hand nicked from clearing brush, stained yellow from butt after butt while the girls  poured through notebooks.  "A treasure trove," one stared at words jotted in a blur of years.  "Found it!" 

     "This is called (i)Sandcastles(i)," an unsteady voice said into the practice mic and Gorilla speaker.  "It fell apart when you guys left," a still young looking thirty-something explained about sheet music mildewing in a backpack with a moldy water bladder.  "Oh sure, blame it all on us.  Sounds like a backslide in the making.  Get out the buckets and the rope!" 

     

     "I'm having a problem," the Pastor said about an hour and forty-five minutes after he'd said it the first time.  Someone crushed up a stack of cocktail napkins and threw the wad at him.  "People like you don't have (i)problems(i)".  A glass bottle broke outside and a bartender bolted towards the sound with a broom and dustpan from a dollar store.

     "Oh no?!" 

     "FINE!  YOU JUST LEAVE!" The bartender told the bar.  The glass breaker didn't follow.  "He's a three-dollar bill," a woman with kerosene breath bent over the table and whispered loud enough to wake a going-to-sleep bear.  "But, sweet as toffee and a Christian to boot," her lips waved what she was saying like etch-a-sketch.  The pastor raised only his eyebrows.  The bartender put the broom up but tossed the dustpan on top of a pile of jackets.  Then he threw a worn out stuffed animal onto the empty "dance floor".

     (i)Remembered when it was the Barbara Mandrell muppet(i), I wrote on my pad.  But said aloud,  "Some sort of bridge between; then and now; sliding between old fashioned and DEAD.  SEEMED LIKE everyone was dying."  

     

     "Give it back.  (i)My God(i).  You're going to hell just touching that taboo!" One man had grabbed the Devil mask off someone else's table.  The woman looked after the grab, said clearly, "Use it. Dat's for dat." The man held it before his human face and bent low behind a cigarette lighter, swayed back and forth.  "Did you say something dear?" 

     (i)Seems like a conspiracy(i) Cupid had come into the bar with his arrows wrapped in a ribbon, (i)the condition(i).  He brushed a hand in the air and the lighter went out and the Devil floated off.  "What is it with these women?" He asked the table.  "That's (i)not(i) my problem," the Pastor's meaty hands were flat on the table.  Cupid snapped fingers in the air and the bartender brought over bitters and soda water on ice.  "Only old friends can bark at me that way," he wagged a finger, so (i)don't try it(i).  "The muppet was dancing on the bar.  Holding the other muppets in a country dance line 'cuz no one knew those dance moves.  Smacking boot heels twice and a clap.  Do you remember?  The other muppets got frustrated and kicked that muppet off the bar.  It slid across this very dance floor.  And got kicked around some.  Does anybody remember me?" 

     The bartender made Shirley Temple dimples with his pointer fingers on his face.  "Did you sing into the Voice Contraption?  I still have some of those," his hands swung like a Conductor's baton into air quotes, "HITS!" His voice grew loud as some denim from head to toe kids came in clamoring for hamburgs.  I laughed.  "Do you really?" 

     "Oh yeah.  Most of the stars of those, well, I don't talk about people like some people."  Looking around at the few tables of a few people each, it occurred to me it had been a snipe.  Being called a three dollar bill.  A one off.  Though the Devil had strapped the mask to his face and was swaying his hips more than his face in front of a speaker, the scene was mellow like a Reservation Casino or somebody's living room.  "And that politician guy he was steaming mad, convinced I'd called him a lesbian." 

     "Girl, I have no idea what you're talking about, but it sounds interesting." The bartender pulled a chair up to the table.  Cupid pushed the bitters and water at me.  "It was interesting times." No one said anything.  The Pastor got up and went into the bathroom.  "What's that guy been drinking?" 

     "Nothin'."  

     "What do you think his problem is?" 

     "Dunno." 

     "Silly Skip.  Come sit with us." The Devil complied.  The Pastor put his hands in his pockets and ignored the Devil.  Sat back down.  Stretched legs out.  Pulled them back up.  Put his hands on his knees.  "Did you call him a lesbian?"  The bartender asked.

     A little laugh.  "Somebody called his wife a thesspian at the parachuter's party." The bitters felt good in my stomach.  "Everybody, well, almost everybody, was sipping the same bottle of champagne for like four hours.  You know that bottle that never runs out.  And somebody knocked into somebody and somebody barked (i)Watch it Dooschbag(i)."  The Devil took his mask off and laid it on the table, (i)listening(i).  The bartender got up and got a metal wastebasket, dumped the ashtray into it.  "Dooschbag," he said like a New Yorker.  "A woman jumped at the barking and threw her champagne onto another woman.  (i)That(i) woman's girlfriend was ready to throw down."  

     The denim kids had gone for vending machine snacks, bright orange puffy crunchies, and told that took all their money.  The Pastor turned out his pockets absentmindedly.  "Whipped off a Seven or Twelve or Twenty-three Mountains Climbed coat and bulled over to the champagne thrower.  A woman in a skirt and heels.  Fancy type, but down-to-earth and funny as all get out.  Looked her up and down and looked confused as a man, also well dressed with a million dollar smile, stepped in front, to block." 

     A woman came in to the bar.  Not fancy, kind of rugged looking.  She sat at a table in a darker corner.  "So they didn't fight?"  

     "No.  It came close and it's hard to explain.  Everything's always hard to explain.  That's why I'm going to grad school.  Get better at writing.  Well, understanding and writing or something.  If I can get there." 

     "Where is it?" 

     "Way up north.  But you just go for like a week, then live wherever." 

     "You're not staying?" 

     "I want to, but.  They didn't fight, but.  It was like an ice skating party on a frozen pond.  People all (i)postured(i) to be perfectly, I don't know what, like perfectly perfect.  But all of a sudden the ice got that sound, that one that sounds like an iceberg underneath." 

     "Like cracking?" 

     "Yeah.  Like, I have dreams and visions and this was like that but just a real day too where there's all these other people who are doing whatever they are doing. It was like thick ice cracking and the crack coming up in a split second and knowing, like, even thick ice is still ice.  Like it's thin between the spiritual and reality." I drained the bitters.  "Want a soda?" I nodded.  "Where you staying tonight?" The bartender came back with the soda and asked.  "Not sure.  I came here with some singers." 

     "THAT'S MY PROBLEM." The Pastor said and it sounded loud since he'd been so quiet.  "You got a problem with singing?" Cupid asked.  The Pastor looked at the floor and shook his head (i)no(i).  "I do when it's really about other things," Cupid said. 

     "I'm traveling with some serious singers.  One does gospel and the other, well, it's only the most beautiful (i)real(i) stories in music anyone's ever heard." 

     "You think so?" Cupid asked. 

     "Yeah, but, what I think doesn't matter.

     "Why?" 

     "It's like the ice breaking night." 

     "How so?" 

     "There we were all wrapped up in (i)going for Victory(i).  The people there were accomplished.  In all the ways.  Some had battled in actual wars, some had overcome addictions to drugs and money, some were kind of confused about (i)what next(i) and all those twitters, doubts, people get, but...(i)decision makers.(i)" Cupid had taken out a crumpled up homework notebook and was writing.  "I'm listening."  

 

     "Is he ahright?" The Pastor was still looking at his feet.  The woman who'd been sitting in the corner came over and said, "He's in a vision." 

     "I'm remembering.  Just telling stories." 

     "Everybody's okay," Silly Skip said slow and steady. 

     "That girlfriend looked ready to kill someone.  I mean really.  Like she'd surfed the world's oceans and been told to sit down and shut the fuck up and the ice crack was about to split us like an atom.  And the guy stood in front of the woman and put his hand out like, like his dandy hand could stop a freight train.  I prayed.  For Jesus to just show up, right then.  Or, for the nukes to just land on us."  No one said anything.  "Is that weird?" The woman had taken a tee shirt off of herself so was in a tank top and wiped the sweat off the Pastor who'd started sweating profusely.  "Look at us," she said.  "Honey, there's nothing you can say that's (i)weird(i)."

     "Everywhere we went back then, and now I guess, but we're not all together, it was like..." the juke box started playing in addition to the speaker music and a man and a woman were smelling each other and then started slow dancing.  "Like cinderblocks coming down." 

     "Real mouthy?" 

     "Excuse me?" 

     "The woman." 

     "Well, she wasn't going to let her man be out front alone, (i)no way(i), so she took off a high heel, red like Dorothy in Oz, and she held it up over that guy's head and she pointed the heel as he was like forcing a (i)stop, stop(i) to the whole thing falling into another fight." 

     "She hates fighting?" 

     "She does."  The couple kept dancing even after their song was over on the juke box.  The bartender went over and put another quarter in it and played their song again.  "And, if I remember correctly, well, see, around "power people" you never really know half of what they're talking about or doing, see..." 

     "Ah-huh." 

     "It's like their power is stacked up like a plate of pancakes or something stacked up, but they have to be careful making decisions so as not to let the stack fall.  And when they get in a group, (i)phew(i), it's like, like..." The couple danced real slow, kissing and enchanted by each other, to the door.  Somebody called out, "Hey! Get a room.  There's empties right up the road."  

     "11:30 and I'm still working," a guy shifted in his seat.  "Think they'll get a room? We got a quota to meet." A high five from a woman at his table. 

     "Did she throw the shoe?" 

     "Not at first." I swirled the ice in my soda.  "It turned into a tug-of-war.  Really."  Silly Skip whistled low and serious.  "The politician finally got there.  Somebody threw the champagne bottle aiming for the woods and it clocked that woman in the forehead just as a (i)new guy(i) who'd had to be convinced to help with the campaign because 'it's been a zoo' and they were gonna lose the Conservatives and maybe even the Moderates, being so (i)New York(i), which was taken as an insult (i)totally(i), and maybe getting fired before even getting the job, but what the politician meant was, see, the wife put a hand over his on a makeshift desk, and said, "We need help." He looked at her like she'd just burnt down the house, (i)shocked(i).  But, after a (i)pregnant pause(i) he just said, 'I'm not used to asking.' She smiled." 

     

     "Tug-of-war?" More people started coming into the bar.  "The relief bartender" was a groovy woman.  Lit incense and put little tea lights on each table.  "It's good for love," she leaned over the table and Silly Skip looked directly down her frilly blouse.  "The rulers," he said.  "In our world it's all about those mommies.  They really had a tug-of-war?" 

     "'Nother round?" She asked. 

     "Just soda for me.  (i)Thanks,(i)" I said to the table.  "It really got like that, but it was kinda funny because the issue kept changing." 

     "How so?" Cupid asked. 

     "Like there were people on the sidelines.  (i)Support(i).  That's what they were naming themselves.  Support people.  Who didn't want to be in 'the spotlight'. A sort of band had broken off playing Spanish music." 

     "Like Mariachi?" 

     "I think but I don't know a lot about music." 

     "What happened?" 

     "Yeah, those kind of guys don't quit playing for nuthin'." 

     "Well, some of the support people made an (i)uprising(i)." 

     "Went on strike?" 

     "No, this was different." 

     "One 'put a foot down', and literally snatched a bottle of wine out of somebody's hands and dumped it out, all of it, as she was tyrade-ing about all the work it took to (i)get here(i) and (i)Spanish music?????(i) is 'ethnic' but the politician's wife (i)is not(i).' The whole time she was going off the bottle of wine was being dumped over the speaker but right onto the cords, see..." 

     

     "SHE'S NOT SPANISH!" One of the children of that family broke out of catatonic and belted out.  "AND I'M ROOOOMANIAN." This just as the speakers made a really high pitch noise and pops.  Some people hit the deck.  Some stopped fake dancing, 'cuz the music was hard to dance to really and so they were just fake dancing like treadmilling.  "What's that mean?" Somebody asked suddenly loud.  "Roooomanian?" The woman with the shoe had gone around and around the other speaker looking for the shoe that somebody forced her hand to throw on account of (i)standing up for something and not being so wishy washy(i).  "I don't want (i)anyone to get hurt(i)," she'd whined as an old football player threw it and almost her whole hand like it was a pigskin.

     "That's why you don't have any (i)feelings about this(i)?" The beautiful smile man went to her side and didn't touch her but moved his hands about her like he would rub her shoulders or he would slap her on the butt like football players do, or maybe like she was a paper doll, (i)but(i), "There YOU GO, putting (i)HER(i) on a (i)front door(i) pedi-stool again," another woman went to his side and tried to (i)get inside his head(i).  She rolled up her sleeves and half boxed but in slow motion and half swirled her hands around his head.  "Think positive (i)for her(i)!"  

     "About what?" The man asked.  "What are we really talking about here?"  She lowered the shoe.  The other shoe which she'd hopped up and down to take off even as some lady was yelling, "Your stockings!  You'll ruin them!"  

     The girlfriend that was ready to throw punches got rushed and smothered in, like hugs.  They were telling her, at least, she seemed to be a her until the wig came off, then nobody was sure.  The woman wagged that shoe back and forth, side to side and pointed right. at. his. heart. with her other hand as she ripped him a new one over (i)cheatin'(i).  People ran to their cars to get cameras and different speakers.

     "I thought she threw the shoe." 

     "Well, see, you have to understand that (i)somehow(i) it was going in slow motion and with starts and stops.  Like all the energy of the world was being filtered through these people but everybody was also starting and stopping.  Like just being themselves but then.  Doubts and (i)you're messing me ups(i).  Plus, some of them had a lot of (i)drama(i) experience." 

     Cupid shook his head a little.  "I bet.  Please excuse me," he rose from his chair and ran a hand down his stomach but stopped himself from re-tucking his shirt in, crossed the bar and asked if he could sit beside a beautiful young woman on a bar stool. 

     "I seen that," Silly Skip said.  "Famous people just taking like breaks.  Like a Director said, (i)Take Five(i) or sumpin'." 

     "Yeah, that's how it was happening.  'Cuz we knew we were all under a microscope.  And that made most of us, well, anyone with a heart, (i)squirm(i)." 

     "Speaking of squirming," the woman mopping the Pastor's brow said, "Can you help me walk him around?  Sometimes that helps him (i)come back(i)."  Skip said (i)sure(i) and asked, "Where do you think he (i)goes(i)?"

     "Says it's like to the edge of a field.  I'm his wife by the way.  We travel all over but we're," she did a little cough, "Having some money issues.  Taxes and stuff." Outside the nightsky was clear and just a few jets on flightpath.  I lit a cigarette.  "I was hoping to go camping.  I can't get enough Forest in my life.  Just work, work, work."  

     "Let's sit him here," she said of a barrel on its side resting against a tree.  "He doesn't really leave his body, but," she waved a hand in front of his eyes, "Just gets real," she thought of a non-scary word, "Quiet, I guess you could say."  I walked out past the parking lot and touched a tree.  Still as a compass needle.  

     A cough got my attention.  It looked like part of a pine tree trunk separated from itself.  The figure spoke.  "Sounds like he's getting ready to go."  The figure was shoved but didn't fall, just weaved and bobbed like a ship's mast.  "YOU!!!" 

     "Yup." 

     "Sneaking around, creeping up on people in the woods even." 

     "Yup."  The figure lit a cigarette and leaned one leg back against the pine tree.  "Yah, I'm (i)going(i)." 

     "You people make me sick." 

     No response.

     "We just got here." 

     No response.

     "Damnit." I chucked my cigarette at the gorgeous leaves and soil.  Went back towards the bar.  A blonde boyman was blocking the doorway with his briefcase and stare.  "Whaddya come in a group?"  No response.  "Move!"  Before he sidestepped the entryway with his briefcase in front of his "family jewels" he pointed at the Pastor and made a wondering gesture, mouthed, (i)What's going on here?(i). "Why don't you just ask them stead of standing there like you're not asking?!"  The Pastor's wife hissed like an angry cat and asked, "What are you looking at?"     

     "I'm (i)leaving(i)," he s