backpacks, bombs and baby teeth—a gilded dust in a quiet room, they floated weightless. She reached behind her head, twisted her hair into a bun and clipped it at the nape of her neck.
“Let’s take a moment to come into our bodies,” she said.
She seated herself and took several deep breaths.
“Breathing out the day as we’ve known it until now and creating space for something new to arise. I invite you to let go of the expectations you came with and open to the experience of your body on the mat. Imagine a golden light coming in through the crown of your head with each breath, drawing it deeper into you and letting it go on the out breath.”
My shoulders quivered. I saw Credence sitting in a field surrounded by katydids. They looked like leaves but when I ran over to him they all flew away. I thought this must be how it feels to speak in tongues. Right before, when no one knew you were about to.
“Letting it fill up each place that speaks to you.”
Like abandoned airfields broken by weeds and baking in the sun.
“And bring special attention to those areas that may need noticing. Your hips, or your belly, or maybe a part of you that needs forgiving, that part of you that needs gentleness. And create a space for that gentleness to come in with your breath.”
Mom used to say you have to look sadness right in the eye but I’m done with that. My body came alive. My fingers tingled and I could taste the salt in the air. I held my arm up and where once a sharp outline delineated me from the rest of the world there was a gradation. I was still myself, but my edges faded and when I moved I felt the Black Ocean give.
7 New Honduras
Everyone at Rise Up Singing knew who had bombed the New Land Trust building. Mr. Tofu Scramble said it was an intra-governmental squabble. Ed, Logic’s Only Son said it was immigrants.
“They got their own radio station with fucking tubas and everything.”
Mirror said she had a friend who applied for an admin job with New Land Trust and was denied an interview for refusing to claim a gender on the application.
“She could have totally done it.”
Mitch, the cook, thought it was eco-terrorists for sure. Kelly, the fill-in dishwasher, agreed but then they split over whether it was an anarcho-primitivist cell or the Redwood Action Collective. That’s how the betting pool got started. Mirror put each theory up on the “Specials” board as it came in and collected the money. By dinner she had erased the board twice, each time, writing smaller so it would all fit. As the list grew, I began to notice something. Everyone had a pretty good reason to blow up a building. I agreed with most of them. The names on the board might seem disconnected but there was a structural logic if you knew how to look.
We listened on the kitchen radio. A whole cast of heroes emerged. The janitor who could have been killed in the blast and wasn’t. The junior executive who said he would continue to use the bathroom when it was rebuilt. The woman who was the first to see the smoke. Each of them, a bright star.
Meanwhile, customers congregated by the cash register, laughing as more possible terrorist groups went up on the board. Martyrs, bullies and causes in demographic filigree entwined in unpredictable ways. And where others saw fragmentation, I saw a terrible unity. The truth was that anybody could have done it. I could have done it if I didn’t shake every time someone slammed a car trunk shut or think the birds were children screaming and garbage trucks were tanks. If I wasn’t that way, I could have blown it up. It’s not like I hadn’t seen blast coronas paint the sky orange, devouring walls of flame. I see it in my sleep and sometimes behind the heads of people I love like a B movie backdrop. I was glad in a way that other people had to see what I’d been seeing. Even if the New Land Trust bombing was so much smaller than what was in my head, I was glad. They should have to see. In any case, it was another good reason to leave the country. If you were the type. I wish I were.
Credence says it’s like leaving the scene of the crime.
“So have you ever thought