Archive for April, 2017

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Coal-hearted

April 16, 2017

The signs they carried read the same as if they’d saved them from a march in 1953. All these years later, there has been no dissipation of that same bright, hot anger. Why does that hate never go stale? she asked her friend.

They’re afraid of losing something they never had the right to take in the first place, her friend replied.

So many of the marchers’ faces glowed as if on fire. She stared at each one as they passed, reading their statements of hate, imagining the coals smoldering at the very heart of each one of them.

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Losses

April 15, 2017

From the BART windows, passing through West Oakland, I spotted a man sitting outside an RV in a trash-filled yard, a set of empty deck chairs around a glass table, forty retired dusty mailboxes lined up in the corner of the post office’s back lot.

If everything goes wrong, most people might not miss these things. But I will ache for the liquor store at the intersection of 7th and Center, for the rumbling line of trucks awaiting containers of cargo at the port, for the multi-colored loops of tags on the wood siding of houses glimpsed from above.

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Despite it all

April 14, 2017

She pushed through a curtain of beads into the room, leaving a swirling clatter in her wake. It’s Friday, she announced. Let’s find a way to forget all of this.

She had something outrageous in her purse, she whispered, and she didn’t care what they did with it. He found that confusing, but he also liked her style. He liked a woman who could look in the face of disaster and laugh.

There’s nothing left for us to do, she said. We’re going to have to have fun despite it all. Come on. Let’s go.

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The most beautiful cake

April 13, 2017

At the end of dinner, we eat cake. Maybe we have some champagne—mostly for the ladies, because they love bubbles, am I right?—but we have chocolate cake like you would not believe. I know the pastry chef, and let me tell you, he makes the best cakes.

Everyone tastes the cake, and they say how great this cake is, and then we all talk about that icing—no one makes icing like that pastry chef. Sometimes we bomb one of those countries over there, but mostly, we eat cake. The most beautiful cake. Believe me.

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Briefing book

April 12, 2017

That afternoon was three parts cloudy, with spatters of rain landing like spittle launched from a high balcony. He waited for the barista to make his coffee, the lines in his face deeper than usual.

For days, he had worked on the briefing book he hoped might stop the impending invasion, sleeping on his office sofa in a rumpled shirt and khakis for a few hours at a time before diving back in.

No one would read the book, but he wanted, someday, to be able to say he’d thrown words in the face of the the oncoming storm.

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The wall between us

April 11, 2017

There might be places where one can slip back and forth from Mexico like a jackrabbit in the desert. There might be letters about eminent domain arriving in poorly located mailboxes. But here, in America, we long ago built gerrymandered walls between the ones who think we’re getting greater, and those who gnash their teeth at our demise.

Far from any boundary, I walk past a car bumper decorated with a particular sticker. The barrier between us is so real, I could put up my hand and feel the cold steel of it along the curb between us.

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The chance to cross paths

April 10, 2017

At the play for preschoolers, another mother and I commented throughout, giggled at our children’s behavior, shook hands at the end, introduced ourselves last, as if we needed to go through all the rest before we moved beyond the label proscribed by birthing.

I murmured her name again and again on the way to the car, defying my exhaustion-addled memory, committing it so I might retrieve it if I see her next season.

And yet, in the car, I remembered the weekend’s news. I wondered if we’d have the chance to cross paths again before everything goes to hell.

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