Victory dance

We pour from the stadium and from our homes, into the streets and bars of the city, tumultuous as heated atoms, for we've won the game. Triumph crackles underfoot, in puffs of air and smoke, in the hearts of men, vicarious triumph through the sweat and bruises of younger men from the university gained from young men from a farther university. In the Stone's Throw the splash of a clumsily handled and overfilled mug precipitates a trip, a shove, a shout, a countershout, an elbow. Cheery and anonymous, the brawl expands and men fall into it joyfully, bloody good, bloody—good! This is the abandon that others feel in lovemaking, in speeding or in death; no longer self-preserving and single-bodied, we rattle and shout, blur all edges, and become a larger pulse.

Lodge

The deserted mill was long ago reduced to heaps of rubble and broken rebar. Cracked grasses obscure abandoned construction tools. There is a path alongside, hint of the development that will overthrow and then landscape these acres as soon as the Economy turns around and men resume their habit of expanding. There is only a little faroff morning traffic, and the air is motionless—but for a bit of steam rising. Two unobtrusive mounds, each the width of a truck and the length of two, are tarped in green plastic, weighted with stones. Between the seams, still the steam is rising. These two could be mistaken for smoldering piles of leaves, but for a passage of cut plywood, like the door to an igloo, and for a smell riding on the steam, unnameable but suggestive of southern states, of dampness, of childhood hideouts. The dog walkers do not notice, though the dogs do: this desert has a fruit, and a flower. This desert has a purpose; this wasteland is home.

The Dalai Lama laughs

It is September 11, 2002. The National Cathedral in Washington, DC, United States is packed to capacity with Sisters of Charity in white and blue stripe, Buddhist monks in saffron robes, Catholic priests, and hordes of laypeople on folding chairs. Fans oscillate weakly across the audience, and programs are flapped in vain at sweating necks and faces. Outside, additional hordes bake on the lawn while squinting at giant video screens relaying indoor goings-on. There has been some singing, some praying, some talk of interfaith dialogue and tolerance, some mention of the tragedy one year before. It is all Important. The Dalai Lama is the featured speaker and so speaks, in English but mostly in Tibetan with his translator. After he has concluded his remarks, a fat bishop approaches with something red in his hands. He informs the Dalai Lama that he, as a representative of his diocese and of the Catholic faith in general, is presenting his Holiness with a small gift. And here is the ground zero of this August gathering, the moment from which all others spring forward and back. The Dalai Lama looks at the bishop as his translator echoes the words. And he laughs. He laughs the purest laugh this generation will hear. It is not joy at receiving the gift; it is joy that such a thing exists, that it has surprised him. The laugh flies at the speed of sound, free of the weight of mockery, bitterness or greed, from a soul fallible yet somehow perfect. It ripples from his throat, tickling first the rows of dignitaries and clergy, then on back to sisters, monks, general seating and lawn squatters. It cuts like a gamma ray through humidity, moods, dinner plans, note taking, and cathedral walls. The entire congregation laughs with the Dalai Lama, delighted and surprised at their involuntary but purifying laughter. In a few seconds it has faded and the ceremony and the sweating recommence until dispersal. Perhaps only a few notice that their lives have been bisected by this languageless round performed en masse, or that a mushroom cloud of joy rising from the nation's capitol has left an invisible pinprick of light at its epicenter.

Pink

A lot of paper money has lately been observed to be stained pink. It's green and white, and girl-toy pink. The reason is unknown, but the theory exists that perhaps we are turning into a game of Monopoly. Next, other bills will turn blue and yellow, and miracles will begin: favorable bank errors, a new railroad boom, equal opportunity jail time. The day we awaken as metal shoes, top hats, and thimbles, our daily dance of commuting, working, shopping and meeting will be forever transformed, especially near magnets... Of course, the theory also exists that someone overturned their juice while robbing a bank, but experts agree that would be a rather extreme explanation.

Ozomatli

The man holds a thumb and two fingers midair, motionless, aiming toward the crowd. There is a voice unlike the sound you would expect from such a man, and it is coming from him. The spell knits from his fingertips, mouth, from his skin, organs, from the heat of his body. There are other musicians, other instruments, the sea of crowd, the late hour, the lights, all feeding the sorcery, but here and now he holds the reins, is the prism through which the harnessed power sets the people and the atoms to dancing.

Cosmos and dog

It’s been a long supermarket night of many How Are Yous, Thank Yous, Have a Good Ones, much bagging, scanning, smiling, joking, cleaning, counting money. Thus the hours have gone, and it’s cold, black, nearly bedtime, and I am out collecting abandoned shopping carts from far corners of the parking lot. I lean into metal, crash them together, drag them along under floodlights. Things are moving, making noise, par and normal until I happen to look to the sky: The universe unfolds straight up and outward forever. It swallows earth and all its shoppers, putting our blue marble in its rightful place floating in a backwater intestine. Suddenly the cashier is gone and I am a microbe swimming in Why am I here? What is this? and How did these carts get into creation? My chain of metal keeps rolling toward the warm, glowing store, pure inertia, and I’ll soon be swallowed back into the mundane— but not before the eye of a doleful yellow retriever catches mine. He sits politely in the backseat of an idling hatchback, tilts his head. His eye blinks placidly and says: I know, huh.

Wherein the bearded lady gives thanks and makes a wish

Coins.
Curtains.
Hydrogen peroxide.
Hot roasted chestnuts from Benji at the gates.
Thirteen years of normal girl memory; a before.
Ramojah's tiger eye, open even as he dozes.
Novels and other tunnels.
Candles that smell of home.
The payphone ringing home.
Home:
A hearth, a shedding cat, a boyfaced man, and a cupboard full of brushes.