Journey

We are walking hand in hand through a meadow. I feel your cool, firm grip on my delicate pale fingers.  Your skin is like the touch of an electric moon, passing the voltage of pure white light into the center of my palm. I open up like an exposed portal, your energy flowing into me, brightening me from the inside. The grassy hills are wet from the dark night. We walk.
There was no beginning to this journey, we walk as we always have, your hand firmly holding mine, my fingers gripping back just as tightly. In the far distance is a wall of trees, looking now in the night like a black wall with peaked tips just barely glowing by starlight. Closer to us is a small cluster of tiny things, I can’t tell exactly what they are, my eyes and mind search for meaning and then in two steps we are almost upon them. There is a taut pull of your hand and I jump towards you, just barely avoiding squashing the gathering with the heel of my boot.
What I see now is a funeral for a tiny creature, a small bird with feathers that look as dark as the grass in the dark night.
We keep walking through the meadow, the trees on our left.  We are exposed to the moon and the night sky of a thousand stars. My cheeks are cold and flush, though I feel a deep warmth in my chest, a brightness and aliveness which runs like a channel down my arm and into my palm and fingers which hold on tightly to you.
We come upon a collection of rectangular structures, narrow trailers made of a cheap metal and planted shallowly upon the earth. There are a few dozen, all densely packed together. We pass one, the only one with a bright porch light. Its yellow glow reveals the neglected state of the home, the walls left without sheen. One woman stands by her front door, looking out into the empty dirt streets.
We walk on, the path now worn and without grass. The narrow homes give way to a large collection of military tents. Even without light I can feel the green of their canvas walls. An aroma of campfires and cigarette smoke and alcohol lingers close to the earth, a smell of men in old, worn uniforms. 
I study the tents as we walk, all of them dark and without light or fire to warm up the darkness. I feel you pull me towards the left, just off the path where it is nearly black, you push aside a heavy canvas wall and we step into a large tent. 
It is bright inside from overhead lamps, their light bouncing off the white fabric walls.  I sit on your lap.
There are a dozen people, perhaps a few more sitting in a circle, some on the ground, many in chairs. 
I realize then that you are across the room, sitting on the other side of the circle. There is a girl wearing all black, her shoes, her shirt, her tights, her skirt, her hair, her makeup, all of them are black, all but her skin and eyes. You start to kiss her, gently stroking her cheeks and pushing her hair back lovingly. I see you then kiss others, then stand briefly as you kiss small objects and bottles. 
I turn my attention to the center of the circle. There is a woman dressed as a bird on the ground.  From across the circle I see you looking at her and you begin to sing to yourself softly, keeping your eyes on the bird.
I am moved and get out of my seat and enter the circle, I lay on the ground and start singing. I try and help the bird to fly. I push and pull but the bird will not stand, it will not get off the floor. I relent and lay on the ground with it, clutching it. I wrap my legs around it and hold it like a pillow, like a lover. I sing a wailing song because the bird is dead.
I close my eyes, I watch the melody in my mind, watch it  move like a journey, watch it move through a meadow, down a dirt  path, through houses and tents and into a circle.  I sing until it ends, then I open my eyes. No one says anything, you are turned away from me.

A Second Later

I find myself standing on a hill of light brown grass and scattered oak trees. It is a place that I vaguely recognize although I can’t quite remember when I was here or why I came. I may have seen it only briefly, maybe in a photo, maybe as I passed by on my way to somewhere else.
It is nighttime and the wind is very cold against my skin, making me shiver. I hold my left elbow with my right hand, hugging myself to find warmth in my own heat. The wind makes a sound like loud whistling as it rides along the tips of the overgrown dry grass. The brown leaves dance all around me, a troupe of manic dancers glad to find some kind of audience.
There is some kind of processing plant in front of me, at the very top of the hill. It is enormously tall and strangely old, marked in black and brown by the passage of time. It towers above me like a giant palace of gray concrete, heavy and ominous and silent, completely silent except for a low drone that seems to slide out from the depths of its underground bowels, a low drone that I can feel crawling up my legs and making its way to my heart.
I recognize this as well, this huge droning building in the middle of nowhere. I can remember the two tall red walls which stand apart from all the grayness, I can recognize the half open metal gates, open just wide enough to let me in. I recognize the twin chimneys pouring translucent white smoke into the dark sky, swallowing the moonlight and turning it gray and thick and poisonous.
I turn around briefly to examine the rest of my surroundings. A wide flat valley surrounds the hills in all directions. I can see vague lights in the distance, maybe a road full of cars, maybe a small town, but nothing is clear or defined. Just tiny lights in the far distance that could be anything, that could be nothing. Here there is only the grass and the night and the large building with its giant tubes vomiting thick clouds of shining smoke.

His words come back to me. I don’t even think of him or wonder what to do. His words are just there, suddenly, without any previous announcement. They echo in my head like a soft melody played against the ambient background of the wind and the drone.
“The way in which I see this… the way in which I perceive it. You had a window of opportunity, a small window just large enough to move through, a tiny moment in which you saw something clearly, in which that something was shining brightly before your wide open eyes. It was there, for that one moment, and then it went away.”

I look down at my feet. By the light of the full moon, I see that I am standing on a dirt path that makes its way up the hill to the place where the metal gates are half open, inviting me to enter. I could easily follow the path and make my way into the processing plant. I envision dark tunnels that smell like the smoke that pours out of the chimneys (smoke which is too far away for me to smell and yet its thick appearance somehow lets me know how it would smell if I were close enough to fill my lungs with its gray chemical body.) I envision narrow walkways, I envision steam and hot metal tubes, I envision large underground chambers full of rumbling noise and the scattered echoes of some dripping liquid in the distance.

“The only thing that matters, the only thing that is truly crucial, is that when you see that small window again, when it is right there before you… what matters is that you move towards it, that you jump through it. This has to happen right then, right when you see it. It can not be any later, not even a second later. Right when you see it is when you have to move, there is no other time, there is no other chance.”

I turn my back to the large plant (now I think of it as a large factory) and I look towards the bottom of the hill. There is a single car parked there. I recognize it immediately. It is my car. Not the car I own, not the car I usually drive, but it is my car nonetheless. I know it. I search for the keys in my pockets but I find nothing there, no wallet, no money, no keys.
I look up at the sky above the parked car and I make a loud sound with my mouth, my lips make the shape of an O and I sing a long howling open vocal that sounds loud and shocking in the droning silence of the dark hill. I make the sound three times and then I am quiet again.

“When I say that it can’t be a second later, I don’t mean that as an exaggeration. I mean exactly what I say. You have to move in that very instant when you see the window opening. To stop to think is to lose it, to weigh possibilities is to lose it, to seek advice is to lose it, to do anything but to jump through is to lose it. And once you lose it, it might be a while before it comes back… if it ever does.”

I suddenly know that I am not supposed to be here. I have meant to visit a processing plant, some kind of large building, something somewhat like the one that stands at the top of this hill. I have meant to come to a place like this, but not to this one, not to this particular one. I am standing by the wrong one. I am at the wrong place.
The clear and sudden knowledge comes upon me with a rush of physical sensations, a wave of shifting tiny dancing rainbows that makes its way down my body from the crown of my head to my chest and down to my genitals and my legs, shifting everything it touches, changing everything it dances with along the way.
Right then is when I see the crow. It is flying in small circles above the car, spiraling lower and lower each time it comes around.
Without thinking, I walk towards the circling crow, towards the parked car. I can barely see the dark bird in the shadows, but the keys that hang from his beak betray him. The light of the moon shines against them and they act like a beacon that lets me know where to go, a beacon that lets me know where to find them.

“I emphasize this because it is extremely important. It is in that singular moment that the door opens. It opens clearly and distinctly, but only right then, only in that single moment. If you don’t cross it without hesitation, the door is lost. You won’t even know where it was or how it appeared. It will simply be gone, lost beyond recovery.”

I am standing by the car looking up, maintaining my eyes glued to the shining keys, my ears glued to their light tinkling sound. Just as the crow makes its lowest and smallest circle yet, I reach up quickly and close my fingers around the keys that hang from his beak.
The crow does not surrender them easily. He tries to pull back and away from my grip. I close my fingers tightly and pull down as hard as I can. The bird flaps its dark wings furiously, hitting my arm, scratching at my flesh with fierce claw that move too quickly for me to avoid them. His attack is harsh and painful but not lethal. I shake my head to resist the pain and I pull even harder.
Suddenly the bird is circling away and the keys are in my hand. I run to the driver’s door and unlock it. I jump in and start the car. The motor rumbles and the wheels start to turn as I push on the familiar accelerator. Everything about the car is familiar even if I can’t remember ever having driven it.
Without knowing where it is that I am going, I move westward (somehow I seem to feel where the west is, as if the wind itself can tell me, as if the road has west painted all over it and I only have to follow its subtle signs.) I drive on an extension of the dirt road on which I was previously standing.
The tall dry grass dances on the edges of the road and shines almost bright yellow under the lights of the car. I hear the wind outside louder than ever. I keep my eyes forward, fixed on the road ahead of me, never turning around.

“You can see it as a kind of game, a game where you have to jump at a very precise moment. The quality of the jump is important, you have to jump well enough to make it. But if you make the perfect jump too early or too late, then it won’t matter, it won’t matter at all. If you jump too early, the door will not be there yet. If you jump too late, then the door will be gone and you will just be back where you started, wondering what happened, wondering what went wrong.”

I hear the crow flapping his wings over the noise of the car. Somehow it is still following me, somehow it is close enough that I can hear its loud squawks. It must be flying low over the roof of the car, keeping pace with my movements. I can’t see it. I can’t see anything other than the road and the dancing grass and my own hands grabbing tightly onto the wheel.
I then hear a sound very close to me, only a few feet away. It is coming from inside the car. I hear it again and I realize that it is the sound of breathing. Someone is sitting next to me on the passenger’s side. I don’t turn around or try to speak. I simply breath in time with their breathing. We sit there quietly, breathing together, neither of us saying a word, neither of us turning around.
Maybe they jumped like I did, maybe they come with the car, maybe they were with me all along and I never noticed. I don’t turn around. We both continue to breathe slowly, in a soft rhythm that somehow matches the rumbling sound of the motor and the shaking of the old doors.
The dirt road turns into a highway and we move much faster now but I still don’t around. Not until the time comes, not until I am ready to meet the other’s eyes.

Thunderstorm

The sky grew dark
And thick clouds covered the mid-morning light.
Rain splattered against the roof and threw itself against the windows.
I listened to it coming down.

BOOM!
A thunderstorm.
Moisture in this thick air of summer,
lightning like fire.
I stayed in bed,
Warm, and paying close attention to the music of the storm.

The windows were open.
My eyes were closed.

A cool breeze blew through one open window and out the other.
My nose caught the draft, the damp air mixed with fresh flora and fauna.
I filled myself with the scent, with the newness of the outside.

Just beyond the window was the high pitched drone of tree leaves taking a beating.
Big drops of moisture came down with unrelenting force.

BOOM!
Flashes of lightning lit the inside of my eyes.
The thunder seemed synthetic, like the toy drums that simulate the real crashes of nature…
But it was real.
It was just outside the walls of wood and flesh.

BOOM!
Several seconds passed…
BOOM!
Several seconds passed…
BOOM!

The wind continued to rush across me.
I heard a bird calling.
What was it saying?

I turned my attention to the high pitched drone,
it was light, almost imperceptible in its squeal.
My body grew heavy, my mind receded to deeper layers of motion.

The thunder became scarce.
The lightning subsided.
The gray clouds vanished.

Little Bird

There was no reason in the world for the little bird to light down upon my windowsill. It held in its beak two little twigs , branches from an olive tree I think, or it could have been apricot, honestly I know nothing about trees.
My grandfather had an orchard and I spent summers there, but goodness knows I never did anything but lay around under the trees reading penny novels about cowboys and Indians that I had found down in the musty old cellar under grandpa’s dusty wooden house. I remember eating the fruits from the trees of the orchard.
One season in particular, came a crop of very sweet fruits. Apples, pears, and other delicacies sprang from the trees. The reds and greens were so rich and they may have been an indication of their sweetness.
I don’t know what made them so sweet, maybe it was the extra rain, maybe it was the wind from the north, who knows. I just remember eating the sweet fruit under the trees in the orchard. My lips touching their skins with anticipation for each bite. I often wondered if the birds noticed how sweet the fruits were too. Perhaps they just pecked at the fruits with their tiny beaks and never truly tasted them at all. Perhaps they were able to taste them and perhaps they did notice the extra sweetness this season.
Maybe they were wondering if the farmer put something special in the soil this season to make them so sweet. Maybe it was poison. Yes, perhaps that was it, maybe the farmer didn’t like the birds and was trying to poison them all. Would poison taste sweet though? Maybe it would taste sweet to trick you into thinking it wasn’t poison. If it were poison, then there would be no birds to wonder about the sweetness of the fruits, so that couldn’t be it.
Maybe the sweetness came from the rain. The clouds drifting by some strange cities gathering strange molecules to make sweet rain. Maybe clouds really do taste like cotton candy as I have long suspected. That may be what made the rain sweet.
Or it might be that it was something in the soil. The cows were eating a lot of Twinkies and their shit made the soil sweet, which in turn made the fruit so sweet.
Why those birds sat on my windowsill with those twigs is still a mystery to me though. Were they trying to tell me something?
Maybe I am making too much of all of this and they were just en route to their nests with some nesting material in their little beaks and needed to stop and rest. My windowsill was the perfect spot for them. The dark green paint was flaking off the wood of the sills but it was still a nice place to stop and relax.
Bugs sometimes came and rested on the sill too. Big giant bugs in the summer time. Those yucky green ones that you fear will get stuck in your hair. Japanese beetles I think they are called. June bugs are even bigger and yuckier. I had one of those stuck in my hair once. It was terrible. Every little girl’s nightmare.
Wait…Maybe bats would be worse. A bat stuck in your hair would definitely be worse. I can imagine them flopping around helplessly in my tangled hair, gasping for their tiny lives just as freaked out as I am. Maybe bats have terrible, scary nightmares about getting stuck in a little girls hair. Never being able to fly free ever again. They would rather be flying around using their radar to catch tiny, bug morsels from the air. Being stuck in a little girls messy, long hair definitely would be their worst nightmare.
When I was little, we used to play in the field until dusk. We would see bats fluttering about seemingly aimless. We would take small pieces of gravel and throw them in the air as high as we could and watch the bats dive for them thinking they were tender bugs to snack on. The stone would come crashing down, barely missing one of my siblings and we would laugh and laugh, rolling in the grass teasing each other about the near miss. Those bats DID know what they were doing after all. They could not be fooled by the small stone, they somehow knew it wasn’t an insect. How they knew was beyond me. Aren’t they blind? Later in the week, when my dad would take out the tractor to mow the field, he would be very angry to find all of those pieces of gravel. We hid in ours rooms to avoid the scolding. But later the next week, when the bats came out again, we would do it again!
I never did get a bat stuck in my hair. I think they are too smart to fly in a little girl’s hair, actually. They want bugs and fruit. That’s it! Maybe the bats did something to make the fruit extra sweet that year! They are probably much smarter than we give them credit for. Maybe the bats and those birds on my windowsill were conspiring together. Maybe they were building something monumental. They may have a whole bunch of buildings that we know nothing about where they harvest the sweet fruit and sell it on the black market. And maybe that’s the secret the little bird was trying to divulge. If it was, then it went right past me, just like those summer days when I would lay under trees, reading penny novels and eating sweet, sweet fruit. Gone before I even noticed.

Ohio

It is my home. It is theirs. The dense woods smell of earth and flora. The air is damp, the moisture lingers, reluctant to make room for anything but cool, thick air. This population of trees, thick and overgrown, it has been here since the continent was formed. The same woods were once filled with Algonquian longhouses and brown Native children running after butterflies in the summertime.A creek bubbles happily through the woods. It carries fresh, clear water. Red clay lines the banks of the creek. As a child, I forged pottery from this red clay only to be disappointed, time after time, when my vessel crumbled into a million pieces after the sun had sucked the moisture from the clay and with it, its ability to maintain its sculpted shape.
Sometimes I spot crayfish in the creeks, or tadpoles or other small fish whose names are easily forgotten. After a big rain, the creek stops bubbling happily. It rises and swells, full of muddy, chaotic water and it angrily rages its way downstream, leaving long stains of red clay and discarded shoes and trash above the banks.
I walk quietly in the woods, picking jewel weed and spotting gently nibbled branches of low-growing flora, a deer has been through here. On my right, I see a lightly indented patch of ground, a deer has slept here. There, on the ground, there are small owl pellets and next to it, bits of fur and bone, regurgitated from the owl’s last meal.
In the small clearing, a shadow blots out the sun momentarily, I look above and see a circling red-tailed hawk. It lets out a scream. Is it calling to its lover? Is it warning its prey? I guess at the meaning of its cry.
I move below the canopy of the trees. Thick and cool, the air wraps me in its damp arms. Fallen leaves scatter the ground, each step of my body upon them releases a chorus of crunches and an earthy scent. Soil and decay and water and rock, the smell is like a perfume, as raw as can be. Sprouting from the soil, pushing past the leaves, is red and white polka doted mushroom, just like the kind I read about in fairy tales, only its real, and here, and right in front of me. The stories, once painted as fiction, come from this, from the magnificence and strangeness and wonder of this! Where polka-dotted mushrooms sprout. Where fairies dance and hawks unabashedly sing songs to their lover.
Nightfall comes. The woods begin their transformation. The trees become eerie shadows, but the sound of the crickets and tree frogs comfort me. Tiny lights sparkle all around. Small lightning bugs flash their golden yellow light, their only hope of finding a mate. If only they knew they’ll die tomorrow… maybe they do. Maybe they flash their little lights like beacons in the night guiding passing ships to the shore. The urgency is now, tomorrow is death and the species requires a new generation.

The Goddess of The Birds

The old woman leaned forward as far as she could, wincing in pain with the strain that the effort was putting on her back. She lifted the large heavy bag full of seeds and she placed it on the silver metal cart. She took in a deep breath, grunting slightly, and then she took a second breath. She leaned over again and grabbed the second bag and placed it on top of the first one. There were little beads of sweat forming on her forehead, like tiny transparent pearls freely arranged over a pink desert of ancient skin. The woman took another deep breath and then another. She then leaned forward for a third time and pulled up the third bag and placed it on top of the other two. All three bags were now secure inside the metal cart. She took a couple of steps backward, stumbling slightly, and she sat down on the steps that came down to the garage. She was breathing heavily. She sat there quietly, breathing and sweating, for several minutes. The little pearls of sweat had turned to transparent rivers that now made trails through the cracked landscape of her forehead. She took out a handkerchief and wiped all the sweat away. She stood up carefully once again and pressed a button on the side of the wall to make the garage door open. She bent over to grab hold of the cart and she started to push it forward. She walked out onto the sidewalk, then she took out her remote control and pressed the button that made the door come back down, and then she turned towards the east, letting her eyes wander over the distant buildings and the few stray clouds. She stayed there, in front of the closed garage door, for a few more minutes, as if contemplating her next steps carefully. Then she slowly started to move up the wide cement sidewalk.
It was a clear and sunny afternoon. The wind was soft and gentle, making the trees sway slightly as if dancing to slow music. Cars passed by every so often and there were people walking here and there but the street was mostly silent. The woman pushed the cart slowly, resting every few minutes and looking up at the bright blue sky. She smiled and her eyes shone with recognition every time she saw the blue vastness that reigned above her. Then it was time to move the cart again. When she came to the first intersection, she slid the cart down to the street, walked a few steps and looked in all directions. There were no cars coming but she still took a little bit of time to breathe, making sure that she would not run out of energy in the middle of the street. When she felt sufficiently strong, she started to push the cart again. She moved very slowly from one corner to the other, still looking in all directions. The next block had even more trees, thick with dark leaves and solid branches, and the woman welcomed the shade. She was wearing a large, thick beige coat and a blue handkerchief around her head. Her hair was bright white and her skin was a mixture of pink and pasty white. Her eyes drooped slightly to the side and her mouth moved slightly from side to side as she walked, as if it followed its own mysterious wishes.
The old woman crossed another intersection slowly and then a third, before arriving at the place where she had to turn towards the park. She followed the same procedure as before, but there was more traffic here. As she reached the middle of the street, a red convertible came fast towards her, braking at the very last possible moment, just a few feet away from her little black shoes. The man inside the car ran his hand over his clean shaven head in a gesture of impatience. The woman tried to move a little faster. The man turned the wheel and drove around her. The woman simply shook her head and kept on pushing on the silver cart. Again she moved slowly down a long sidewalk. She could see the tall trees of the park in the distance and the gray cement archway that marked her destination. She kept on pushing slowly, resting more often now, feeling the sweat dripping down her face and starting to sting her eyes. When she reached the main street in front of the park, there were several cars stopped at the light. She waited for the next one, hoping there would be fewer cars by then. By the time the next red light came around, there were even more cars waiting, but she decided to move anyway. She slid down onto the street and slowly moved in front of the waiting cars. Without looking, she could sense that the light about to change. She pushed as hard as she could but it was too late. Some cars were honking in the back and the motors were rumbling. She didn’t turn to look, she simply kept on moving. As she made it to the edge of the sidewalk, the cars zoomed by in desperation. She pushed the cart up and crossed the archway, her bent back straining with the great effort of every little step.
The trees and bushes in the park were looking specially bright green, and they outlined the clear sky with their greenness. There were a few men and women in roller-skates and music was coming from a small black boombox on the side of the road. The old woman smiled and a young woman smiled back at her, as she danced to the muffled beat coming from the small speakers. The old woman reached the corner and spotted a green bench. She pulled the cart over and slowly bent her body down to sit. Cars were passing by in here as well, and people in bicycles and joggers with little white wires coming out of their ears and couples walking hand in hand and a few kids running back and forth and ahead of their nervous parents. The woman breathed slowly and deliberately. She closed her eyes for a moment and the cars became suns that traveled through great nebulae of purple and green and the people were like great birds that traveled across the empty wastelands of space, where their voices had lost their meaning and had turned into complex songs of silver light and solid cold stone. She opened her eyes again and there were more joggers running by her and an old man wearing a gray beret. The old woman sighed and pushed herself up once again.
She pushed the cart down the angled sidewalk, letting her eyes wander over the curved tree branches, the bench where a family was laughing and having a picnic, the statue where an old homeless man was asleep, his sunburnt face helpless against the sun. She reached the final intersection where the street was very wide and it was impossible to know when cars were coming. She slid the cart onto the street once again and she made her way over to the other side, as quickly as she could. A couple of cars had to wait for her but there was no honking and that allowed the old woman to breathe easier. She reached the corner and she started to push her cart up the curved slope that led to the lake. Here there was no sidewalk and she simply had to trust that the cars coming behind her would spot her in time and slowly move around her. The woman moved even more slowly here because of the slope and because she was now feeling very tired. The sweat was stinging her eyes fiercely now and she didn’t want to stop to wipe it all away. Slowly, ever so slowly, she made it to the little parking lot and the wooden building where people rented the boats. She turned towards the left and pushed the cart up onto the cement path that surrounded the lake. There she rested, standing up, supporting her weight on the handles of the cart. She brought out her handkerchief and wiped the sweat away from her face. The water was calm, shiny and smooth. There were several couples out on the boats and many people walking up and down the path. A man in a light brown jacket walked by her and nodded in greeting. She raised her trembling hand and waved back. She smiled and started to move once again.
She reached a long stretch of grass that ran parallel to the edge of the lake. A trio of ducks was swimming just a couple of feet away from the muddy shore. There were tall light green leaves that sprouted straight out of the water. A little white dog passed by her, exploring the path and the grass with its tiny nose. The old woman took a very deep breath and then another. She looked all around her and nodded, satisfied and ready. The woman then reached inside the cart and pulled out the first heavy bag. She ripped up the top with her little wrinkled hands and she walked with the open bag towards the grass. There, she slowly flipped the bag over, walking on the edge of the path as the seeds started to fall from the gaping hole. A great cloud of dust was formed as the seeds poured onto the grass like brown and yellow rain. Immediately, the birds started to come: great flocks of pigeons and large seagulls, gray and white. They came in waves upon waves filled with enthusiasm and they collided with each other in great masses, forming a complex moving carpet of constant feathery excitement and eager hunger and need. The woman let the seeds rain down slowly, walking from one edge of the grassy section to the other, making sure the food was spread as evenly as possibly, in a long dusty offering of yellow and brown and black. As soon as one bag was finished, she came back to the cart and opened the second. The birds were now three layers thick and the sound they made was like a great orchestra of madness led by a crazed invisible conductor bathed in the waters of desire. The birds jumped deep into the mountains of seed, without fear or hesitation, grabbed some on their beaks, jumped back, swallowed, then jumped in again, ready for more. And even as the second bag was already empty, there were more flocks of pigeons coming over the green calm surface of the lake, called over by silent, invisible beacons. The woman opened the third and final bag and repeated her calm and methodical procedure. More seagulls came and more pigeons came, and even some other wild birds that were hungry enough to dive into the loud and fierce chaos that surrounded the mountains of seed.
The old woman stood back and watched the eager birds with a great smile. She nodded her head and looked up at the sky, then at the mountain, then at the lake and once again at the birds. For a moment her skin was not as cracked, her face was not as pasty, her hair was not as white. For a moment, the intense hunger for life that sang voraciously in a thousand voices flowed straight into her old weak body and, in the great open mirror that was the shining lake, she could see that she had returned safely from the deep pits of darkness once again. She laughed softly to herself, a little laugh of simple triumph and victory, and then she turned back towards the cart. It was getting late and she had a long walk home.

In The News Today

"Can you believe it?"
The newspaper crackled as the man stretched it out between his hands and the light breeze made it swing lightly back and forth. The man was seated on one of the many green wooden benches that stood on the edge of the lake, right by the concrete path that went all around its perimeter. His skin was reddish white and his hair was black with wide patches of white. The man was wearing long light brown shorts and a white shirt. He was also wearing large reading glasses and his blue and gray backpack was resting on the concrete floor, a few inches away from the bench. His legs were bent back so that his feet were pulled back under him. His arms extended outwards and the thin wiry muscles in his forearms were tight and tense.
"I can’t believe they think they can get away with this!"
The breeze blew softly over the calm lake which surrounded a small man-made mountain, a large island in the midst of gentle placid water. The mountain itself was crisscrossed by dirt paths and covered in trees, plants and thick bushes. There were tall water plants growing right by the bench, obscuring half the view of the water. The same tall bright green water plants grew here and there all around the lake. There was a large dead tree trunk that acted as a clear barrier between the bench and the water.
Next to the sitting man, there was a small, slightly thick woman. She was sitting on the bench as well and her body was just a few inches away from his. Where the man’s eyes were pointed down to the thin newspaper, the woman’s eyes were looking out towards the mountain in the middle of the lake. Her eyes were soft and round and they spoke of a hope that still clings to life against recurrent obstacles. Her small hands were pressed together on top of her lap. She was wearing long beige pants, a flowery shirt and a small jacket. Her skin was white, like the man’s, but her hair was blonde and it fell down to the edge of her shoulders. Her forehead was pressed tight, in an attempt to protect her eyes from the sun.
"It’s terrible… after all that has happened… that they would be saying this…"
The man shook his head in disgust and shifted the paper up to continue reading below. The woman nodded and simply said: "Yes, it’s terrible."
"It’s not just that… you know… it goes way beyond… after all…" The man was shaking his head more intensely now, his face becoming a bit more red, tiny droplets of sweat sliding over his temples and under his chin.
"Yes, I know what you mean."
A pink flamingo rested its longs legs on a dead trunk that extended into the water. Every once in a while it would dip its head into the water itself, catching some small insect in its beak. There were a few boats roaming back and forth on the lake surface, wooden row boats and hard plastic pedal boats for couples, slowly making their way around the mountain. Echoing whispers traveled from the boats to the edge of the lake, snatches of conversation, a word here and there, a sudden loud laugh.
"It’s just unbelievable… the things these people would do… you know, it’s just like I’ve always said…"
"Yes, I know."
The woman’s eyes turned up higher towards the edge of the mountain, where there was a colorful pagoda that poked out into the water. The pagoda was round and open, its pillars were deep red and the round stylish fence that surrounded it was white. The round roof was a deep green and it pointed up towards the sky like an old lost antenna. At the very peak of the roof, there was a small green sphere, the green paint only a little faded. Long tree branches extended over the pagoda, half covering it in dark green and brown. A single thin dead trunk was standing up straight out of the water, just a few feet away from the fence. The pagoda was empty now and as her eyes wandered over it, some kids walked by it, on the dirt path that surrounded the mountain. Their thin voices were so loud that their words almost made it all the way across the surface of the lake, only to become isolated syllables and broken bits of song.
"Nothing really changes… it’s just that… you know?… I can see that… but after all this? C’mon! Right? How can they do this? They just have no shame!"
"Yes, I know. It’s very true."
The woman turned to the path momentarily. A woman in a white shirt and long blue shorts was jogging in their direction. She had earplugs on and a hint of music was seeping out from around her ears. Her face was covered in subtle wrinkles and the tanned white skin of her shoulders and neck was covered in shiny sweat. Her eyes were focused on the path and on the effort of running. She passed behind the bench and the sitting woman followed her with her eyes. Then she looked at the lake once again.
"After all, what if it was the other way around? Huh? Would they say that? Would they even dare?"
"No, they wouldn’t," she said, with a slight hesitation.
"You don’t think so? I bet they would! They have no shame!"
"Yes, I think you are right."
A flock of pigeons rose up from behind the tall water plants, spreading outwards to the sky like living pockets of gray and black life released from the breath of a sleeping underwater god. The woman looked up at the birds as they disbanded and she saw how they almost darkened the clear sky for a moment and how the sky reappeared from behind them, outlining their flapping wings, their upturned little heads, their soft feathered bodies. A boy called out to the fleeing pigeons and a man laughed, his voice deep and hoarse. Then the boy laughed too, in light explosions of air and tiny squeaks.
"What can we do? These people can get away with anything!"
"Yes, they can."
The man nodded and turned the page. The man with the deep hoarse voice laughed once again and there was the sound of light feet running on concrete. A man on a bicycle rolled down the concrete path, accompanied by the sound of a little bell. Then there was only the sound of gentle waves caressing the muddy edge of the lake. The woman looked down at the moist leaves of grass that stuck out from the mud, bending back away from the sun.
"See what I mean… now they… can you believe it?"