Zazen - By Vanessa Veselka Page 0,7

between. She’s gotten so big she can’t sit comfortably any other way.

We were all shocked when Annette got pregnant. She’s famous for saying there are too many of us already, comes from being a public health nurse. I think the whole thing was an accident and they decided not to terminate. Then found it was twins. I was working with Credence on the Wal-Mart campaign at the time. The joy almost killed our parents. Not only were Credence and I to be the Bobbsey Twins of Labor Unrest (300 million Americans watch as Credence and Della try to shore up failing infrastructure while simultaneously reinvigorating common discourse on the subject of THE PUBLIC as a reflection of collective will, as in REPUBLIC and not as in BIG GOVERNMENT), but to also be gifted with actual black grandchildren? It was a miracle in dark times.

Annette dumped the jar of red chips on the floor. We talked about the yoga class. She asked me what the new yoga studio looked like because it had only been open a few months. It used to be a shop that sold custom cut foam and had a huge bas relief foam flag in the window.

“The building’s totally remodeled,” I said, “You’d never recognize it.”

I took a piece of paper and started to sketch it but then in my mind, the foam flag disintegrated. Golden sun and full spectrum track lighting flooded the old shop. The man at the counter grew girlish and began practicing forward folds, clothed in hemp and other organic fibers.

Map of Foam Store/Yoga Studio

1) Foam flag area: territory of patriotic working class, which emerged vanguardless from the masses i.e., without our permission.

2) Yoga studio: territory of micro-populists, who promise to make sure that everyone has forty acres and a mule upon which to build tiny rice paper houses which we shall call Jeffersons, like the democracy and not like a/the black family.

2a) Subdivision of 2—Nowhere: territory of the indigenous black.

Note: Patrons form the middle third, the scene of the battle, civilians and traitors. Torn between two visions of the future—

1) joint-cracking crickets following lucky numbers in red and

2) a glittering Popsicle stick palace, the architecture of a new revolution, tipping this way and that in the gentle breeze—they look at their shoes. Nice cement. Yeah, thanks. I poured itmyself. Have you ever insulated with straw? No, I’m a cob man.

But that’s not the map I drew for Annette. Her map had a box with Xs where they tore down a wall and hatch marks for windows. The real map was just forming on the edges of my thoughts. Flashing before me were new index fossils, like Taco Bell and Payless Shoes. And beyond that a shifting cartography, not like a series of snapshots, but like a hidden camera that never stops, never plays back and goes all the time, a living map.

Up in my room another presidential address came on the radio. It was just before dawn and contained no information. We were to be prepared, but not nervous, yet alert. They tested the emergency broadcast signal and I threw up. Is that prepared or alert?

I finished the map, stuck it in my bike messenger bag and brought it to work. I spread it out on the counter in front of Mr. Tofu Scramble and Ed, Logic’s Only Son.

Mr. Tofu Scramble: Did you draw that, Della? That’s pretty cool, I particularly like the, uh…uh.

Ed, Logic’s Only Son: What the hell is that? A spaceman?

Me: It’s a map of colonialism as a cottage industry.

Ed, Logic’s Only Son: What’s that thing on its head?

The cumulative weight of a dense cultural mesh that prevents us from understanding whether the foundational problem is really race, class or gender? A hat?

Me: A hat.

Mr. Tofu Scramble: Well, it does kind of look like a hat. Now that I follow the, uh...uh.

Ed, Logic’s Only Son: It would float off his head.

Mirror came in the door and walked over to us. She pulled off her knit cap and her pink hair, full of static electricity, crackled around her face.

“Hey Della,” she said, “Franklin here?”

Tiny strands, like pink thread, pink and as thin as a spider’s silk, stuck to her cheeks.

“He was here earlier,” I said.

“Did he say anything about the work meeting?”

“Not to me.”

Mitch, the morning cook, stuck her head through the food window, “He wants to talk about the future,” she yelled.

Mirror handed me a flier for a sex party she was planning.

“I don’t care what he wants to