"I am certain you are not supposed to

  be in there."  The woman on the sleeping mat did not rouse.  The tallest woman from the choir easily put a paperweight hand on the head of the child.  Pressed into place like a Pansy in a book.  "Release all weight," the older girl threatened. 

  "Let me hold the camel.  And I will tell you what I've seen today." 

  It's fur was just an iota less real than real camel hair.  Some of the older kids would say "It's real!" Just as a person snuggled the thing into a touchstone with an imaginary "place" away from the brutal sun and the cruelty of no water in a desert and the stiffening of everyone's feather-light into law and order.  The push and pull of mindhearts in play with "reality". 

It wasn't the first pop up

  nightclub shooting.  One person held a meaty hand over the blood  spurting out of "special friend's" neck. 

  A spread out mobile assistance line of people passed word of shots fired.  Medical supplies were discreetly fed back up the mountain. 

  Therefore ALL creatives are considered queers.  It was unreal that this was read aloud as directive.  Unreal, too, that the injured were just civilians and trapped in a bloody shoot out on a friggin' mountaintop. 

  "Tell me a story," the injured person said but with a gurgle.  A grandma crossing the mountain to pick up grandchildren ordered the athletic-looking person be propped up slightly and ten minutes knees up like this.  Others had already bled out. 

  One unsolved crime had led to a serious crime scene being overlooked.  One real commitment "to love" no matter what had floated through the drinking crowd like an ember in a haybarn.  "Was it a political statement?" An authority asked a person just staring at the dead toast maker, person, in a chair.  The killing had happened quickly.  The chaos of getting the hell out of here snarled all traffic in both directions. 

  "Think we'll look back and laugh about these days still?" The paling person nodded weakly.  Lifelong friends and neighbors in America share the sentiment of we have to try. 

 

  Special friend was older than us.  But not fogey.  All the way back to New York special friend didn't write us off.  Once when a spontaneous gathering of motorcyclists from both coasts suddenly bloomed as a sea of metal and edgy energy and we got sort of pinned in and called scrawny special friend totally stood up for us.  "So?  I'm scrawny too.  Whaddaya gonna do about it?" That prompted a buncha girls more her age to get tough and in silent movie fashion "the girlfriends" stilled the chaos long enough for kids my age to beat it. 

  Scram mous ah, one kid remained a kind of magical wizard of chaos and hate when he got tall enough to hang with the girlfriends and not be detected as one of us.  We'd hear adventure stories of "fighting almost broke out" and "cops din't even have to show up".  But the girlfriends weren't really sure what made such surfing in culture possible.  Even though most of them were real smart. 

  "HATE IS NOT A CRIME," the man stood almost taller than the doorframe of the restaurant.  And that was true, so his message had heft.  Especially to the "neo-nazis" not in their "uniforms".  His words were like ghost guns.  Crowding-in people seemed to be strengthened by the reminder.  Like getting enough hate onto the thin crust of civility could overwhelm the normal day.  Could seem a victory.  Just to exist, and by just existing could "shut them up!" People who didn't hate. 

  "It didn't seem to be political so much as just the opposite." 

  "The opposite of what?" The authority asked a person in nice clothes with a fine spray of human blood like spray paint across pants and shirt.  "We'd just come in to use the restroom," a woman explained. 

  "Is there video?" Another authority asked a server.  Apron stuffed with dinner cheques and pens.  Crossed arms and head shaking no.  Mouth saying, "I don't know.  I don't know." 

Poor Buddy the Bee

  "Why is the bee scrumpin' the roof father?" 

  The little little boy was a middle child in a gang of kids.  The father looked down at the boy.  The boy pointed above their heads where they were working on a pass-along team to repair damaged at great heights.  The Dad surveyed the situation and made a ticking sound with his mouth.  Debated age appropriate. 

  "Poor buddy." The father said of the bee.  "Gots pollen and no place to put it." 

  "Why?" 

  The Dad unfurled the boy's tiny hand full of putty.  "We filled up the holes with this stuff." 

  Other people in the early morning launch team area tiredly watched the conversation.  Until they heard the Foreman cometh.  "I SAID don't sweat the small stuff NOT NOT DO the small stuff.  Now we're holding up the whole world!" 

  Sighs.

They dragged the women away.

  The new bikinis were stained dark with dirt and ground cover vegetation. 

  From a place of depression and lack of self confidence the men had decided to be different.  And to be different from beaten down and runned over, bulldozed by surveillance and computers thinking for them, they'd processed the situation, and surmounted downtrodden by getting strong. 

  Without permission they started to re-claim theirs.  Most of the women were shocked.  One had the wherewithall to be a sort of spokesperson in the fluid situation.  "I see y'all have regressed to Neanderthal stage in your process Tom." The man grunted and pulled harder.  "You're giving me a wedgie." He sweatily re-gripped ankles and looked like a man pulling a plow.  She stayed rigid.  

  "In sickness and health.  And whatever this is," another woman called out.  Her breasts exposed to the dirt as she was face down in the pull and her bikini top was up under her armpits.  "Not sure this is what I had in mind for girl's day at the lake." 

  Other couples worked their ways from awkward capture into holding hands and becoming "one" in stealth.  Most worked silently to retrieve stashed survival kits and make way back to "real life".  Never again to be as simple as childhood had seemed to cared for children.  

  Decisions had been made between couples that made a casual goodbye impossible.  In a parking area a partnerless man asked to and took a few photographs.  "I can't unsee this and that." He had already explained, first exposure to therapy in a group setting.  "But this is how I'll think of us!" Weary smiles and Org tees. 

"Where did you take the public?"

  The Reporter had come from Atlanta after Minnesota.  Because of "missing money" in the Town's money pot, a new school building was put on hold.  The lease was also up on the container classrooms. 

  Several people would not back down on demanding accountabilty.  A new phrase that came from watering down "protests".  Nobody wanted to get arrested for having thoughts and opinions about the gone money. 

  As the paperwork that wasn't lit on fire was sorted to forensic a "papertrail" the labels on the outside of the pods would occasionally change.  Someone held up a black markered sign that read: 

          The Public 

  It had two corners missing because there'd been a heated debate about the "budget" as a "pie". 

"Minimize the confusion,"

  to "What can we do to help?" 

  The man winced as he stretched to reach for the salt and pepper.  He'd been months without much besides dubious water in his canteen and flavorless food stuffs when available.  Broken ribs.  Not from laying in front of a tank as might have been surmised from popular photos. 

  "I cannot get the AID trucks in.  And my people cannot cross any lines." 

  A pudgy man started digging through crates.  "What are you doing?" A woman put in charge of field desk asked.  "Looking for all the spray paints our friends sent." 

  "For what?" 

  "Well, clearly, some have been wounded for crossing lines but I didn't see any lines.  Did you?" 

  The woman thought back in her head.  It had been a wild journey. 

One minute world wide open, the next

  "Our tour guide is freeeaking out." 

  We were somewhat hungrily peppering a "living book" with questions. 

  One of us whipped a Bible out of a handbag, couldn't decide what to open it to and espouse, started to hyperventilate, and was dragged by friends to a taxi with a driver saying in a thick accent, only to dee airport. 

  "I'm just saying.  Not an expert.  BUT JESUS was confident enough in his own belief system to at least listen to the living books." 

  The tour guide had dumped the safety purse contents on the seat.  Passports and boarding passes and tickets and mints. 

  "I will tell you about the city when we are back home." 

  "Pointless." 

  "Pointless?" 

  "How would I know you're not just as big of a liar as everybody else?" 

  No answer.

  It wasn't long before we were redeposited with our Academic Advisors.  And seemed pretty quick to the time when we were, like everyone on the planet, being matched up to dots on military surveillance, numbers on paperwork, chip readers for meal points, labeled as haves and have nots as marketable consumers, being told there's no, there's no, there's a no, there's not, and just NO. 

  It took only a little while for people to piece together "story" and a quiet shock took hold of personality when a room full of skeptics and will never believe YOUs had truth uncovered.  A "living book" had been dragged bodily, beaten, and wound up in a suicide vest.

  From objectifying humans to weaponizing humans.  

  It would take people a long time to re-humanize. 

Underground containers and luxury pods.

   "We'll still need you to bring us the footage for the splice with the closed circuit tv." 

  We've all met the types. 

  It's always prompted "normal" people, living, working, sleeping, waking, eating to kind of re-up interest in American values.  Amongst decent people there are children and grownups, fully human, and by some miracle usually able to pick a thread of freedom and sacrifice to which they can relate. 

  A lot gets relegated to that must be Science Fiction.  And brushes with brutality, ongoing abuse, really weird people and digitalia, well, some of it gets sorted into the crime and lifestyle piles.  In some situations sequestering and buffer zones only make sense. 

  All in a day.  No matter our work. 

  A head popped up out of the bare ground.  Grass hadn't grown yet.  "Come on in!" It was a salesperson's pitch and it was kind of echo-y below ground. 

  It was a fiancè who, cross-armed, took four or five stiff steps closer.  "Dad, can I go in?" A middle age young boy, maybe nine years old, asked loudly.  "Ask your mother." 

  "She's not my mother." 

  "Are there neighbors?" The Step-Mom-to-be asked.  "There's a whole neighborhood."  People looked around at the trees.  A boyfriend drinking a blendered smoothie licked off a pinkish moustache.  "Yeah, not the first time the world has ended." 

"It's MuskaDEEN."

  "No.  It's muska-DINE." 

  "COME ON!" 

  "What the sock is in my van?" The man held up big bags of powder and buckets for Cotton Candy.  A teenager hollered, "It has to get across the State Line!" 

  "Not in my sockin' van." The man threw a bag of the powder hard at the ground after lifting it in sunburned, hairy arms.  "We stayed up all night to make the perfect tequila mix," women dressed in long skirts jumped off logs and out of camping chairs.  "WE HAVE TO STAY IN BUSINESS." 

  "Get your own van!" The man threw a bag of the mix at the women.  The neonish green powder exploded and the dust coated skirts. 

  "Why are all these symbols around the campfire?" A teenage boy held up a block of wood and a chip of cinderblock.  "Don't throw those!" A woman ordered.  "It means you can go into any trade you choose to learn.  We interviewed all the teachers." 

  "Are you in a harem now?" 

  "YOUR FATHER AND I." 

  The storm of shut down swirling into surviving business.  A Christian Conference winding down but mostly unable to fly out, ditched hundreds of books by the side of the road.  "Oh, maybe we should read this one," the teenage girl had got in the van and started pitching the books out a window.  Victory in the Storm sailed by.  

  "Which way is north?" The man kicked a stack of buckets as he made way towards the dirt road. 

Asian shrinks call Americans schizophrenic.

  And a European buzzword right now is nuance.  

  Like we don't all have enough pressure on us with the dollar, dollar bill situation. 

  It can make the guts feel funny, this dimensional "personality" situation.  When you need to exude patience with a spectrum of behavior and kindness like Christ in a stall of kicking hooves. 

  "What part of rather kill you don't you get?" A beaming with lightfulness, rested interviewer had been wrestled into a tent in a lockable basement.  Yes, only lockable from the outside, a nun tried to conjure the import she'd had on the woman when the woman had been a child.  "I suppose I shall sit inside and comport myself," a Marie made a big deal of announcing to a "cue" of actual young people, graduated and with career prospects. 

  "The world was not ready for Jesus either!" 

  "See what happened," a grandmother said in Yiddish. 

  "What's this?" A boyfriend licking and sucking a girl's neck tongued a tiny Jesus on a cross and a chain. 

  "What have they done to you?" To tiny hand smacks back to ass smacks. 

  The trip to Israel had paired Jews and kind of converted to Christian Jews.  Nobody really knew what to say and the exuberance of conversion was washing away like the Dead Sea salt. 

  The reality of reality.  "Don't tell the kids." It's very often not let's cut our losses and/or run.  So we couch our moods and talk in I'm not being a toddler about this.  And, that just happened, now what?  if   there are options. 

  A lot of times there's a set pattern.  Sometimes that's different.  Free will and freedom sometimes refuses to bend to repression and communism.  The fighting has always been intense between authoritarianism and rebellion.  Most compromise.  Not all people have an "easy" time with navigating the subject matter.

  "Yah, there's no raisin bread." The man went back inside the cabin.  A slender Czech woman crouched and a tiny girl grabbed her ear and whispered into it.  The woman asked a man with a walkie-talkie to ask inside the cabin.  A man came out of the cabin.  "Yah, we don't have this Cheerios." 

  "What do we have to eat poppy?"  

  "Actually, this is not where we keep the food." 

  "Is there food somewhere?" Someone called out weakly. 

  "I have grocery shopping in my car," someone else said.  "But no place to lay it out." 

  "I can make a cooking fire." An older woman was staring at the ground but talking to everyone.  "I can help you Babu." A young boy put a pale hand on her shoulder. 

  "Ground to a halt."  An editor explained to a producer.  "Who needs these?" An actress held up multivitamins.  "Let's put them in the cabin," a boyfriend suggested.  

  Down the line of parked vehicles people determined if they knew anybody local.  And who should walk out to see if the rest of the world was in the same state. 

  Life settled people down into grooves.  Until political flip and turned out again riled a sense of co-existence in "American communities". 

  "You are not going to believe this one." The visiting team comported selves. 

  "Was found neked, hypothermic, and babbling

  "About?" 

  "Sparse notes.  Chinese.  Poking holes in eyes.  Surgeries not in hospitals." 

  Some on the team visibly started to back away from the Observation Window.  "Sounds political," one said.  "Why naked?" One wondered.  "Is it an American?" Another asked. 

  "We're not allowed to tell you." 

  "And BEFORE anyone of you disappears, you should know, there are nine more rooms on this hallway AND someofthemare," the nurse swallowed hard, "Are 

  "Yes?" 

  "Okay, most of them are just locals." 

  "Like that work?" 

  The nurse suppressed a Durham hmmmmhmmmmm. 

  "You start talking to potential investors," a tanned arm swiped a glass of champagne from a tray.  The man in the tuxedo looked around at the buzzy room.  Saw a guy in a sweater standing in a grand room entryway.  "What's wrong with him?" The tuxedo'd man asked no one who blocked the easy begin-ing.  Another woman in a sleek business dress not evening gown style murmured talking points.  A young person standing nearby re-interpreted the points into a question.  "So, he's upset that he's been put in charge of an award-winning crew of researchers and developers?" The question hung in the air even as banned "pop stars" crashed into the room and made a bee-line for a piano.

  Doh!  cough  OW!  Lights coming on.  "Did she hurt you?" 

  "Me?" 

  "Her?" 

  "Garrison whacked his shin on the coffee table and then hit his head on a pipe."  One person narrated as another took stillshots of the table, pipe, and G holding head and shin.  "My better half." Everyone stayed frozen in active time.  "I see you put the spare bedroom back together." 

An Easter-Passover family time

  lent itself to parents and adult children being real with each other.  In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre low conversational tones.  Some release of stress in being so close to Judeo-Christian landmarks.  Letting history be connection between meaning and symbolism.  Agreeing that it took Christianity a long time of talks to develop Sacraments and processes that safeguard peoples' perception of the Biblical stories with Jesus as the Son of God who came on a world-changing mission.  Forgiveness and triumph over death.  

  Some of a spray of machine gun fire came right through the walls. 

  Curiously, a briefcase was hit. 

  Papers fell out. 

  Cartoonish drawings.  A seminar had asked what kind of person are you?  What kind of person do others see you as?  

  Two drawings were face up.  A wolf in sheep's clothing.  And a Dad as being Christ-like.  Looking a lot like Jesus.  

  A hand reached from under a pew and scooped the paperwork toward itself.  

  "Why rounds of twenty in each spray?" Security had caught up to Security on foot from several other locations. 

  One person was hurriedly explaining twenty point peace plan; sue-ing the Board would take millions of dollars; for PEACE 

  THERE CAN BE NO PEACE IN THIS GODFORSAKEN PLACE, a man gripping his chest huff-pushed the words out of his mouth. 

"We tried their way."

  The lion-hearted peacemaker folded up an ironed shirt sleeve and pinned it. 

  "That was before this." A woman ironed another set of uniform clothing.  "Before this," she echo'd. 

  The "this" was hostages and cement poured into tunnel openings.  The "this" was another generation of commanders without families.  The "this" was navies trapped without air support.  And it was daughters joining the fray. 

  "Their over there for talks." 

  "So the grocery stores are empty again to stock the shelters." 

  "To stock the shelters." 

  We'd eaten a canned pineapple.  Everybody had a ring and a half.  Each person ate the one ring and tried to give somebody else a half to have a whole.  Not fitting into any one militant-about was making for some interesting get-togethers.  And that was lifting spirits out of tedium. 

  "It'll be a problem." 

  "The nukes?" 

  "The Democrats, the Lebanese, the talks.  People of a certain something, economic class or something, same bubble.  And some of the Jews choosing to keep drilling down.  There's always a problem, but this is of particular concern." 

  "Concern," came the echo from his other half.

  "Why do you people keep trying to rip my boyfriend's face off?"  The woman was irate.  The talon'd nails on one hand not holding a lap dog or "toy" dog flickered silvery green  even in the only-emergency lighting.  The tall, hansome man with the golden locks pulled into a bun and wrapped with a grease rag turned his face so everyone could see what "the Korean pop star" had done.  Bright red claw marks were welting on his skin. 

  "Dey say his a trannie." 

  "His what?" 

  "Here focus.  We got a call for an arm.  Here's the number." 

  "Did they say transforce?" 

  "Yah.  Mebbee." 

  "They meant multicultural and multidisciplinary." 

  Body bags on dry cleaning style moving hanger racks crackled and parted.  Gray and black uniformed people were lift-carrying one of the dead.  "Best to shut dah fuck up," one barked.  "Especially if they meant multi-national," a woman's voice said behind surgical scrubs and mask.  "All that's changed now." 

  "Time to find an arm Doctor?" 

  "No." 

  "I'll do it but somebody better feed me after shift," a guy said.

I was hiding in my dorm room.

  The semester was slicing and dicing my brain.  James Taylor and Tracy Chapman music seemed to be the moon between Earth and Mars.  The last solid grip with human emotions on an intellectual mission to: 

     I didn't know anymore. 

  Each keg party was part we're so dumb and part, the hangover part, realizing such was devolving the whole person that family and community had painstakingly raised to be 

                Who knew who or what? 

  Impossible as it was, I'd forgotten that I'd sent a couple fiction stories to an editor.  It hadn't been on a whim.  At the suggestion of someone in the literary world who worked under the Greatest generation and above the relative few our-agers, a kind of trial and error was taking shape to see if anyone could work with anyone else. 

  "What are you doing in here?" She stood in the doorway of the opened-to-knock dorm room door.  I looked around the barrack-style cluttered study.  There would be no explaining how twenty years of living came and went through my study like a quirk in space, sometimes real as mama in her rocking chair, sometimes as unreal as time spent in foxholes.  "I mean, it's a gorgeous Spring day outside." 

  I glanced at the brash sunlight beyond the curtains.  "Who are you?" 

  On the way to the Meal Hall since offered to buy coffee and had enough points left for at least one, the editor complimented my grammar skills, it helps me read through faster.  I get A LOT of submissions.  "Is it a magazine?" I managed to not spill any coffee as I handed her one.  She brushed the back of a long skirt neat and sat on a retaining wall.  "It could be.  But I edit pre-swamp.  Peoples' writing could go to a magazine or into a book." 

  "But did my stories make you feel anything?" 

  She bit the inside of a cheek and stared forward.  "Not sure I felt anything but, 

  Scrambling in the mind for the moon, unsure Mars or Venus, maybe some constellation somewhere, anywhere but here 

  "It's probably because I've read three books, a History, and six thesis-maybe works in nine days." 

  "Oh.  Well.  They were stupid stories anyway.  One was trying to reconcile the Biblical and secular worlds.  And one was trying to put narrative to video games." 

  "TRON!  Now I know which writer you are.  Thanks for the coffee.  We didn't realize that you're still a student at this time."  Walking away.  "It disqualifies you from our, from what we're publishing at this time.  I, uh, do editing on the side but I don't have a business card for that and don't give out my personal number.  Yeah, your stories made me think! But, the topics, okay, I'll tell you that I've read you in newspapers and some other, you've done some readings, right?!  Well, what I'm trying to say, is that the industry is changing but you've, you've got what it takes to...I don't know, your work sparks others to keep going." 

  "Wow! Thank you." 

  A tiny watch face soldered onto a tennis bracelet on the perfume side of a bone thin wrist, the talked-about indicator, gotta go.  "Thanks.  Thanks so much." 

"How was your day?"

  The little boy beamed a toothy grin. 

  "What made it so good?" 

  He thought.  "You didn't tell me there was gonna be a Grandpa!" 

  The woman who'd raised the boy patted a spot to sit beside on the cushioned bench.  "I see.  Yes, it's a family, so even though I didn't know, it makes sense that there is a Grandpa."

  Some sun screening behind the bench rattled raspily and a voice bellowed, There.  Tel Aviv is open for business.

 

Back home...

  It did and didn't matter that the guy had said faggot because he didn't know the word hustler.  It didn't matter because we'd battled across Continents to work for the Americans, the Patriot-Americans to be exact.  Bathing and Confession wasn't the sum total of our needs once the talks were over.  It did matter to the Nation's blood supply being rapidly organized into Types. 

  It did and didn't matter that spoiled, grown, "children" were fussing and fighting over who gets what and where.  Jewish mothers had already picked younger children up from schools and made a point of being "clucks".  That mattered because people could be seriously reprimanded for giving away any and all information about military.  So the mothers, some too tired to stand, others almost instantly bereaved, decided to talk loud about the Jewish soldiers already back Overseas.  It didn't matter that some people can't put anything but themselves first.  And, "to be fair" a mother-to-be from the Metro world had explained, everyone's individual priorities are different in moments like these. 

  It very much mattered that inside the trailer there'd been built a special 2x4 triangle.  That a mother-in-law and daughter were determined to learn how to fold a flag into a triangle.  That they were learning this to support a then-one-armed brother determined to support other Veterans and survivors.  Like it had mattered that without knowing exactly how, our generation had stepped into the traditions of the United States of America.

"I need to find me a

  "BRIC, it's all about the money stuff right now!" 

  Back from War College, back from assignments, back from Court cases, back from Odd Squad and Transforce meetings and ignores, back from Cadet training, back from vacations and drunken escapades...        D.C. into war stance. 

  Don't budge.

  Don't cave. 

  Don't look at me. 

  Do bring this over there. 

  Don't stay.  Don't say.  Anything?  Here rearrange the desk. 

  High and mighty among civilians is standing on an ant hill when military commanders are surviving a military that is at times the only "thing" between freedom and other forms of nationhood. 

  Besides winning scholarships and scraping by on less and less, people don't have good options without systems that function for a future.  Men and women in dysfunctional relationships and collapsing houses of cards financially had to pull up the bootstraps or lose it all.  The Chinese had sucked the money away from us in a hot air balloon of debt and chintzy product.  It was said to be a last straw.  The finer points of how our Country was already collapsing, well, not everyone can stomach the same knowledge.  

Some of the locals had said,

  We're on it. 

  Now the health care tech under observation by State and insurance technical experts on procedure was picking up hypodermic needles and dropping them one by one into the Needle Ball. 

  "Don't you even care we all went to school together?!" A frantic girl started at the Tech but stopped short of interference.  "Maybe that's why they sent me.  I'm not from here." The Tech responded cooly. 

  The Tech deposited the Needle Ball back in a Hazmat container in a kind of ambulance and took off gloves and face shield.  She walked to a nearby car and blurt-yelled at friends, "I used to care.  But that may have been the millionth." 

  "What time are you done?  It's beans and hotdogs at the Bat Cave campsite!" 

  A piece of paper drifted toward the ambulance-van on a light ground wind breeze.  A form.  Observations.  The script wildly bubbly.  "What happened was that the guy whose missing now told everyone around the fire that they'd been told they could try out to join, but we can't be faggots anymore. The guy that was told this said, okay." 

  "Then what happened?" The Tech asked while handing the page back to the frantic girl.  "Write it.  I'll turn it in." 

"The man could not stop

  "Saying faggot?" 

  "Said it like it was coming out a machine gun." 

  "More often than he quoted the Bible." 

  Other people in our generation but hardly old enough to vote let alone drink lit cigarettes. 

  An already-real-writer drove up to the campsite rambo-quiet.  Perfunctly donned his backpack, tucked his keys into a fannie pack inside his shorts.  "YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE WHAT ALL WE'VE SEEN SO FAR," a people pleasing but somewhat domestically abused young woman stealthed to him and practically yelled.  The writer didn't flinch.  "Toldya." 

  Most of us were not yet committed to Service and Corporations and spouses and children.  The fact that we'd only seen so much of the world-in-action lent itself naturally to discovering.  Almost right away our minds started comparing multicultural to wars, and, we fought vertigo to debate...when do we write? 

  On our own, at first, in our minds anyway, there was a free-for-all on how something should be written. 

  "So.  What did you think about assignment?" 

  The fire crackled and taunted can't just live in the forest.  "To be honest, I felt lucky to not be living in that State.  And among the many things I can't tell anyone I feel like I should tell you that we hid our Black person under clothing to get back into this one non-violently." 

  "I'm not yours," the Black girl grumbled from a sleeping bag surrounded by chairs facing outwards.  "I didn't mean it to come out that way." 

  "Then you shoulda said it different." 

Informal questions and answers led

  to teams having "handlers". 

  "Why did dey have peace talks in Pakistan?" An Indian asked. 

  Guy fires off an answer.  "They owed us one since Osama Bin Laden was holed up in there without them knowing." 

  "Let us proceed to the main room!" A host cheerily urges. 

  "But why? What does it mean to call a staunch Catholic leader weak and liberal?" 

  "I heard a football team kind of fake insult a faggot not tied to the bleachers like that once.  It's like, I guess, how men sometimes navigate as Velcro when all kinds of sticky stuff is being thrown around.  I mean, it's not like defenses that are in the Middle East and Eastern Europe can save somebody in a funny hat on a different Continent if some guy offends another religion.  Jeez." 

  Good thing technical experts do their thing so well.

The first thing that happened

  at an attempt to have an interfaith meeting of the minds was two different kinds of Christians hitting each other with picked up protestor sticks. 

  "Come on.  Let's just leave." A group of Academics did.  Wound up at a fast food joint sliding into a conversation anyway prompted by a ham dish called something like Moons Over Miami.  "Speaking of moons," one pensive woman, who'd been a sole family survivor of war where she came from, said, "That's how they know when to get pregnant." 

  "Now I've lost my appetite," a man said.  He sipped the glass of water that had had to be asked for since a lot of water had been being wasted. 

  "There are reasons the Mooslims disagree too." A world travel woman harkened back to what had prompted us to leave and be here. 

  "Everyone's interpreting the holy books their own way!" A student roused from deep thought space. 

  "Yes!  How did you know that?" 

  "Kinda obvious I guess.  I pay attention." 

  The food came.  If Grace was said it was internally.  Private gesture in public.  "Just knowing about the world doesn't solve anything," the student directed the complaint at the world traveler. 

  "That's true.  Yet, it seems to help people stay out of the way." 

  "People will do whatever it is they will do," the man drained his water.  "Hungry yet?" Someone asked.

Wars have many battles.

  In the years of our own Civil war, many battlefields.  Not only the fighting was decisive in coming to union.  Some moments in history are pivotal.  Now everyone in the world is thinking of what the world is doing now. 

Romans 9-12, 

Acts 11 

  Both readings show a relative few believers approaching regions where Jesus was not well known and the culture was very different than notions of loving your neighbor, using your freewill to follow God's Commandments, believing that man/humans are not omnipotent...our attempts and efforts to forge "good" are noble, but not mandate-able.

  I am proud of the Trump administration's perseverance, innovation, and odd-squad way of making progress in this much survival in a weirdly violent world.  And grateful for our service people. 

Robeson singing,

  while someone is peephole camera-eyeing factory workers from the top of a building.  The "footage" will have to be spliced into going films of the day.  A view into the reality between State-made fake "news" and a developing documentary witnessing of the world. 

  Some of the still caring "freaks" cautioned the "popular" kids. 

  An ear full of earrings and studs.  "You know who's not here?"  Sometimes a question disarms, you can maybe get closer to the foot of "the walls".  Kid sloppily, nervously poured orange soda into a paper cup.  Asked: "Who?" Other kids in oxford shirts and collar-tees gave looks like, oh shit, someone talked. 

  "Just so your people know," the freaky-looking girl addressed all "the sheep", "Simon Michael tried to kill himself since y'all made it clear he's not good enough to be one of you." 

  The soda bounced out of the cup as it was put back next to the giant bottle of the bubbly.  "Um, where is he?" 

  "We've got him."  Eyes grew wide. 

It's not a Louisiana Purchase, but

  it is also NOT a "war of choice". 

  In all the rhetoric you can really hear influencers putting their slant on the speaking floor.  Perhaps that's why, in order to stress the importance of issues, people use circus-advertising language in these matters.  When really we are just humans deciding what to do next.  And what to do now.  And what then? 

  Of course if we could agree on some factors we might be able to co-exist.  This is where we get to in all relationships.  

  It helps us to re-forge ourselves to solid in nationhood.  And meet each other as we are.  And maybe honor the basics but not much more at first.  So we can keep working on stuff as we go. 

At first everything was awkward.

  True to our alpha and follow-pack natures we were all momentum. 

  Thinking of ourselves as new men in new clothing, that of living by faith in the Jesus piece, and trying to abide the Ten Commandments was really in friction with the pyramids of what politics and culture had become towards the end of the twentieth century. 

  The stumblingblocks were huge and microscopic.  Would appear in any encounter or in isolation. 

  There were habits and addictions, comfort zones, and obligations.  "So different from us," people clung to each other and acknowledged by way of fear.  

  "Protect each other." The generations meeting us in the liminal places, the thresholds, were adament about that.  Though people couldn't really agree about hardly anything past next step in one foot in front of the other.  We were under orders as surviving next generation; as Service people; as future world leaders and participants; as forging beach heads and bridges and boundaries. 

  There were astounding crashes.  "That was a miracle!" Some said rather factually without as much wonder as acceptance--comes with our God's package.  That God in which we can trust.  "Remember when we scraped the hurricane mud off that old bent up license plate and saw that phrase anew?  We had nothing again." 

  We nurtured each other as fellow Americans through collapses, personal and public.  And kept proving our generation will not cave to too hard.  Navigate that he or she couldn't. 

  Couldn't save everyone. 

  Couldn't seal the deal. 

  Couldn't stay sober. 

  Couldn't say. 

  And pass the baton as we can. 

  One of us opened a backpack briefcase to reveal a multitude of actual batons.  "No backing out.  We exist." 

  "We won't be bored." Final assurances.  One of us closed the airplane's door and locked it against being sucked away.

It's that point...

  Isreal has to be careful not to lose its nation status in this crush of "disruption".  Going back to its permissions to be a State and Nato which was complicated by Allies/Axis split as worked out by World War II.  This brought us all to a different kind of brink way back when as we all started seriously talking about anihilation or survival.  Hezbollah is not a State.  So the world tangled with "terrorism" and two state solution as a peace move and tried to explain capitalism. 

  Back when we talked about layers of politics and culture.  What to call stuff in the air? How to place a humanity into a place-centered situ?  

  As changes in global trade and money flow bloc'd and channeled we had to have deals and negotiations.  We needed treaties between enemies to survive hope of survival.  Violations then needed law enforcement and dealing with.  People scrambled to mount into thinking/action groups that were as tall as toddler tyrants ripping up pieces of paper. 

  As hedge against total loss in the case of world war, America developed that point-peace-plan put forth regarding Gaza (also a layered place).  So even if the elevator shaft of two-state bickering with war machines collapsed the antiquated title of MidEast would be the big pillow of region.  

  As a great nation America has to tend to itself as a nation.  One of some allies.  In a world where resources and ownership create "enemies". 

  It's that point again!

  Which world do you want to live in? 

  The tank rumbled forward.  We were down to a small extraction team, the very tip of a fertile crescent.  When we found the war-crazed husband that would never surrender until all the hurt was avenged a lady took the speaker's mouthpiece. 

  "I see you're still alive." Boots on crushed glass and smoldering ash stood to ATTENTION at the sound of her voice. 

  "They killed our baby, our future." The man shout-wailed into a megaphone. 

  "YOU KILLED OUR BABY.  THERE IS NO BABY IN OUR FUTURE." 

  "HOW CAN THAT BE?" 

  Silence from the tank. 

  A diplomat's pouch attached by handcuff.  Barely legible writing: How can that be?

  It took a couple minutes to find the file.  Classified information showing what was coming at the area from air; what was fired from the ground; where the women had gone through a toxic nuclear cloud of gas and crud. 

  Gorbachev started talking. 

  W started listening. 

The picnic table v

  a fury of yeah, we were attacked. 

  The arroyo quiet, early morning, sun stuffed into a velvety coolness quite the opposite of it's late day blare. 

  "What kind of art do you do?" 

  "Sort of, uh, not sure how to phrase it really. Someone called it Applied Community Arts." 

  "There's no money and very little food here.  Realistically." 

  "I still write and document life.  Other peoples'.  I don't really, I'm not like 

  "A real artist?" 

  "Yeah.  I've been being very philosophical and into critical thinking and governance in a, um, kind of wild environment." 

  "Maybe this would be a good fit." 

  A wirey dog ran by panting hard.  "Guy calls that one Toilet Brush." 

  "Gross." 

  "Can't change anything." 

  "The war and all?" 

  "People are going to do what they do." 

  "There are some others here now who said they might pitch in to a literary magazine or some kind of something.  Could be interesting." 

  "At least something to do besides war." 

  "Yeah." 

  Time, no time.  The exact opposite of regimental.  Fifty shades of gray, so one hundred and two shades of caring and tending to.  Adjustments in the build up to striking back. 

  Clawing for Catholicity or some semblance of moral footing.  Out past even the discernment of friend or enemy in glances and ignoring. 

"You can't have your ass on

  two horses at the same time." She said with all the weight of being a child survivor of World War II but the admonition came light as air because it was advice to someone else. 

  "Not like I'm holding up the line," the writer snapped back.  And it was true that the "crisis" had Godsmacked the whole financially co-dependent world into the righteous-enough-to-proceed (pay to play) and the cast offs.  A young person just deciding college or other path was being pressure-forced to decide what to do with your life that was a muck of entwined with world. 

  That so many had been directly involved with sudden warfare and grown up quickly in some ways wasn't somehow magically solving the crunch crisis of who should do what next.  The most qualified had kept cover or been exposed as the Cold War dissipated into diplomacy and striving to be pensioners-some-day career professionals.  The latest baby boomers were gaining in Academic and professional acumen.  And the warriors who'd come together as allies were re-entering global workforce. 

  "Make up your mind." 

  "About my life?" 

  "No.  Dummy.  At least about an appetizer." 

  "Maybe some fiction for a bit." 

  "And for your main course?" 

  "Have your lawyer call my lawyer," men's conversation rose over "take aways". 

  "Sorry chica, gonna have to skip to the special Hungarian dessert and more strong black coffee." 

  Two other sometimes special correspondents slid into the small table seats.  A hand squeeze for a goodbye without tears.  "What's that supposed to mean?" One answered for the other, "War correspondents don't die, they just fade away." 

  "Want coffee or tea or something?" 

  The underground on the late afternoon sidewalk spilling from place to place was getting louder.  "They're going to pay us to escort them back to Europe." 

  "Who is? I thought 

  "Our boyfriends!" 

  A toast of coffee and air-raised imagined drinks.  And the two went out the back way to the train station. 

Unpenned, the women

  were still "crazed".  Seven were crawling and making animal sounds.  One did so, but was faking.  She'd stayed awake.  And somehow had managed to contort her body so the cattle prod didn't stun her into shock.  She'd been around the world as a Correspondent covering combat. 

  Men in dirty farm work clothes and grocery shirts had been deputized for the manhunt.  One headbutted the finally lasso'd hunted man, accused criminal.  Another withdrew a pistol from oilfield jeans waistband and pointed it at the ground.  "You got ten seconds to respond to the Sheriff's question." The hunted man spit but the broken teeth bits had already been swallowed, so just backy-colored juice and blood spewed from his black hole mouth.  "You just used up the ten." The man shot the man in the foot.  Hunted man didn't flinch. 

  Some of the women went into law enforcement and justice theory.  Either by marriage or solo.  

  The instance of change to life, sudden violence, forced people to grapple with questions of human nature; conduct of self vs. navigating others with different character/values/lifestyles; faith in a world where reality can and does change. 

  For my generation witnessing that phase of people pulsing between a safe world and a violent world allowed a peek into the cracks in Establishment.  And started us pondering voids, lack, resilience, tumult, and faith.  

  It wasn't long before people started creative grappling too.  An at-first awkward effort to express healing and permanently "broken" and measures of caring and involvement, Post-Apocalyptic literature marked an intellectual processing of a world that is everything all at once.  And, heroics or no, still existing as it all plays out. 

  "We're okay."  One girl texted back to a far away parent.  "This is what we are doing right now," she said allowed to the others.  They'd all survived being outdoors in the hurricane.  A man smacked the water with a rafting paddle.  "Need attention?" A woman asked.  He chuckled.  "Trying to wake my brain up without coffee."  A heron silently sailed overhead.  "It's a sign!" Someone shouted. 

  "Awake now?" 

  "Of what?" 

 

Support Local

 

Really good chicken biskets! 

At Nantahala General up slope in the Gorge area.