Half-Staff

There's no wind and the flag is at half mast.  It's halfway up the pole, hanging down, tugging at a tight string.  It's quiet too.  If you're sitting there, you can hear cars parking and planes flying eastbound. People walk past you and their pockets jingle.
Otherwise, it's quiet.

On the bus, earlier this morning: it's how she walks up onto the platform, smiling, and says "Good Day."  She talks about the weather, about how it's perfectly warm, but she's wearing her sweater anyway.  The bus driver nods, but, "it was cold this morning," he says.
"Oh was it?" and she smiles.  "Well, we need the cold," she says.
We sure do, he agrees, "and the rain too."

The difference between Is and Was

Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head 15 minutes ago...
It was headlined on my yahoo homepage.  I clicked on it and now I'm writing a blog.
The yahoo article's been shared over 500 times via facebook, after being published precisely 13 minutes ago.  Her wikipedia page is already past tense.  It begins, "Gabrielle Giffords (June 8, 1970 - January 8, 2011) was the U.S. Representative for Arizona's 8th congressional district. She was a member of the Democratic Party."
There's no time to digest the happenings, it's just fast food consumption that's skimmed in a blurb, on top of a homepage.  It scares me because one moment you're present tense and the next, some anonymous identity is editing your wikipedia page, changing "is" to "was."

UPDATE: Wikipedia re-edited Gabrielle Gifford's page back to the present tense.  She's currently in surgery and the digital world awaits further word on her current condition (which is, hopefully, stable).

Colonization- a post that was written three days ago

It comes in untimely huffs and forced yawns.
My lungs are tight and my chest is crooked and my back is hunched.
It started in class this morning.
I noticed it when the bald Canadian was lecturing on American Art; I was sitting in my chair, palms on my thighs, being extra conscious of my breathing.  And then, when I was driving home.  And then again at yoga class.  It was in yoga class when I couldn't breathe.  Just relax, she says, but my shoulder blades are tensed and raised and I'm yawning and can't stop thinking.
I come home and everyone's in the living room.  "Tomorrow," they say in unison like a Greek chorus, "the house is going up for sale."  These molded peach walls and long slabs of wood.  Tomorrow.  "Okay," and I give a thumbs up and yawn.  And that's it, right there.
And then, everything continues spiraling down.
Breathing's a bitch.  And I'm reading about the British colonization of America.  About Ralegh and Barlowe and Grenville and White.  About the skinning of Indians and shipwrecks and gold plates and spoiled foods.

And tomorrow my childhood home is on the market.

Cactus Plant

"My cactus is dying in my room."  And she's devastated.

He's in the other room, on his computer, and the sound is muffled.  "What," he barks.

"My cactus."
She waits.
"It's dying."

"Oh," he says and he goes back to typing with his two index fingers.

For Sale

Home.

I think it's because we weren't expecting it.  You can see it, driving up the hill.  Actually, it's the first thing you see and as you near and your silver SUV creeps further up the hill, the sign grows taller.

It's this big white post and this narrow white sign.  It's staked into our green lawn, piercing right through the soil, balancing straight up.

And for a very small second, everything becomes quiet.  The radio stops.  The car stops rattling.  Our nostrils clear.  And then everything begins again.

"It's okay," she tells me.  Yeah, of course it is.  And we park on the street and walk up our oil-stained driveway.  And that's it.

Clean Lentils

The New Year begins with a bang and a buck. 

It begins with us cooking around the kitchen, the girls, with blue flames on the burners and tarnished pots spilling over with bubbling liquid.

Ziggy's from Eritrea.

She teaches me how to clean lentils properly and what I like most about Ziggy is that she cooks with her hands.

She turns on the faucet and water spills into a glass bowl of dry legumes.
"This is how you clean lentils," and she uses her hand as a stopper to block grains of orange lentil from tumbling out the bowl and down the drain pipe.
She turns the faucet back on and repeats the process over and over until there's no more foam.
 It's that simple, but I like watching her do it because there's something very maternal about the process.

This is going to be a good year.

Injera, the sour sponge bread, and brick-red chili powder and cloves of peeled garlic and neon yellow cumin.

It's the tart fumes that lift from the stove-top and waft throughout the house, down the hall, and up the chimney.  It seeps into our fingernails and thickens into our hair.

"In my country, the women cook and we talk and share stories."
Around the stove, stirring lentils and spices and minced onion.

The next day, the house is full.

Ziggy rolls the injera and organizes them onto a white serving plate so that they look like moist towelettes.  People sit cross-legged on the ground, talking about their New Year's resolutions, eating this food that boiled for so long.

Witches and Water

"Let yourself melt away," she instructs the class.  We abide and melt away.  She walks across the studio, stops, dims the lights, and walks back to the front.  "And breathe." 

Melting away feels funny and it tickles my stomach.  I'm seeping into the cushions of my flat mat and boiling through the wood floor like acid--- all the while, breathing rhythmically, in tune with the rest of the class.

"Clear your head."  Our heads are clear.

"On your next exhale, I want you to fall even deeper, and melt away even more."

We melt like popsicles.  And this is nothingness.  Peaceful, good old nothingness.