Zazen - By Vanessa Veselka Page 0,50

the Elect Boulevard. All the way home I hummed a song Grace taught me about soldiers and sailors and the shining North Star.

21 Geode

The next morning I crossed the river lit by smaller fires. In my bag were the remaining rat family cell phones. I went to the Central Transit station, which was full of displaced workers thrown from their schedules by the bombings and scrambling to adjust. I sat down on a long bench in a crowd of people and pulled out the phones. Busses came and went on either side of me. I picked up the grape cell phone belonging to Jupiter Rodere and set it aside without turning it on. Saturn, Poseidon and Uranus I switched on and programmed to call-forward to their targets. Then I sent them off on different busses and walked two blocks north to a busy shopping plaza.

My whole life I had held back. But at that moment, I threw myself into the arms of an invisible collective and with all my heart, leapt for the sea lion.

I called in the Happy Day Corporate Charity Center first because I felt the hand of Jupiter should strike it dead directly. Lightning bolts of hate. Then I called the strawberry cell phone, Saturn, which call forwarded to the Oldies Station, KGOD and told them they were going to be bombed. I didn’t explain past that. I figured that if they had to ask, they wouldn’t have understood. Next was the blueberry cell, Poseidon. It forwarded to the Central Library. Then Uranus, which hit the Cine-Tower. I did it fast then threw the Jupiter phone into the flatbed of a passing truck.

I crossed back over the river. On the water, the city upon the hill wavered, an inverted reflection, and broke into scallops of stuttering light as the sun set. I went to a de-paving party once and watched people tear up a parking lot. I cried and cried because I’m a sap and it was so fucking hopeful I felt ashamed to even be there. I never let myself believe things like that can happen but I finally admitted that hidden in my scientist’s mind was a dancehall that I had kept shuttered. I forgot the prettiest fossils are worthless. All the important material eaten by crystals. I felt like that was what was happening to me.

Two days went by and no new bombs went off. The security subsided and people fell back into their patterns. During that time I saw Jimmy twice. Both times it was awkward. She was somewhere else. I was someone else.

The first I heard of it was from a woman walking her dog. She said, stay away from downtown. Three more bombs had gone off. I asked her if anyone was hurt. She said no. It was a miracle.

Over the next twenty-four hours more fires started. Some of it was organized and some of it was just kids throwing Molotov cocktails. And no one was hurt. I know. I asked several times and not just the same person. They all said it, Milagro! Milagro! I broke open like a geode.

I know someone whose gratitude practice is centered on appreciating every object from the day it comes into his possession until the dystopic collapse of society. Vacations (soon nobody’s going to be going anywhere, man), new cars (what the hell, we’ll all be walking before long), guitars (how else are we going to have music without electricity)—the guy was a Zen master. I walked in the golden autumn light thinking he was more right than not.

I stopped by Rise Up Singing and listened for a while to the coverage with everyone else, huddled around the kitchen radio. The Happy Day Corporate Center was decimated. Boxes of irregular Nike shoes melting like butter. KGOD went down, a burning bush, a sign for all to see. Look! A new star in the heaven under which we shall find the baby—oh, maybe not. What’s all this charred cinder block? The Cine-Tower, a lighthouse, a beacon on a hill.

The last thing I heard about were the two AM radio towers south of town. They exploded like timed fireworks, dancing around like sparklers on the Fourth of July. It was a beautiful thing about the towers but there was only one problem. I hadn’t called them in. The AM radio towers were on my original target list, not on my working one. They were alone on the border of town near the spinning cell phone and