The artist was dancing with herself.  Though she had a tissue-paper man attached to her soft worn shoes.  "He martyr'd," the woman said.  She seemed in a trance.  Observing women said she'd be like that for hours.  Dancing with the ghost of her loved one. 

     A passed section of a religious book made its way to me.  "Where did this come from?" 

     "Same place we did." 

     We'd been so many places and my head was so full of scenes and happenings I couldn't really place where I'd left the book.

     "Listen to this," I read from the section.  It seemed apt.  (i)Culture of disdain, culture of deception, culture of disconnection...(i).  

     "Someone's called it 'cancel culture'." 

     "Like what they do to women here." 

     The clouds of dust in the sandy expanse on the border out past kibbutz and bodega seemed the material proof of their existence.  But you could let your eyes gaze and let go of what we knew, about religious difference, about politics turning into violence, and people hating people, and just pretend...(i)pretend it's just sand(i). 

     "It's really about anti-forgiveness, cancel-ing someone.  That's really at the crux." 

     "Because Jesus was about that." Another woman took a tiny Bible out of a skirt pocket.  

     "Yeah and match this up with submitting to Islam." I read more.  (i)A coldness in feeling towards each other; and in our dealings; isolation and disconnection; shame driving people inward; bullying driving them downward; hatred driving them backward.(i). "People have really been put through it.  And then the weight of war," five or six of us looked at each other in the natural light. 

     "But we don't say hell on earth," one said.  "That's defeatist." 

     "Okay then." 

     "Some days just suck," another said as the section of book was snatched and sat on.