My Tin Soldier showed up again. He'd cut his hair shorter than ever and it looked incredible. We played a game, using his house as our territory, climbing in and out of windows, using the pool, climbing up the walls and onto the roof.

His sister was there, too. She's never been in the dreams before, so now I'm wondering if she was one of those unlucky in Northern Israel.

I'm thinking of going again really soon if I'm able. Maybe next summer instead of Ireland. Maybe I'll apply to staff seminar or something. And it's weird. I suddenly feel the calling. To do something active about all of the shit there. The only downside is that I'll have to go in the army. Well, my heart and lungs might keep me out in which case they're a blessing. But perhaps Aliya is near for me. I never thought that would actually happen for me, but maybe it's time.

I'll see how it goes. You know I'll continue to look in every soldier's face. Every guy's face, probably, just to make sure. I'll probably run into El-Ad at the Kotel. Haha. It's true. All Jewish roads lead to Jerusalem and all Jerusalem roads lead to the Wall. Maybe I'm on one already.

New light shined from the morning's opalescent sky.

I hid in the scaffolding, molding my limbs to the contours of the platform, waiting, waiting for him to come.

I saw him enter, a brief deviance in the background. He scanned the room, the ceilings, the floors, the corners. The scaffolding. But I didn't move.

He walked to a spot directly under me. I took it as my cue to jump.

He sensed me a moment before I hit him, his hand drawing back to retrieve his sword. Mine, already drawn caught his hand with the tip and I felt him scream inwardly.

We fought swiftly, smoothly, invisible to the untrained human eye and to most of the trained. We were nothing but a background, chameleons. Onlookers would make nothing of us but for a slight blur of the air if they were so inclined to catch even that. Our sounds, however, would ricochet off their minds, sending them in the direction of ghosts and they would scatter.

I pinned him up against a wall, reached out my hand and yanked off his hood.

"You win," he said.
I didn't speak, but activated my voice cloaker.
"You win," he repeated. "I have failed."
"You never fail," I said, my voice coming out thick and foreign to my ears.
"Before you check mate, show me who you are."
I dug my sword harder into his neck.
"Please," he begged.
"I will not check mate," I replied.
He tried to swallow and stared, wide-eyed at me.
"But you are the Black Knight. You kill each one. You never let anyone survive."
"Perhaps the Black Knight can be surprising," I said, calculating my words.
"From everything I've learned of you, I should be dead already."
I deactivated each of his protective devices, including communication. He watched me do this, resignedly.
I tossed his sword to the floor and all of his gear.
"Now you," I said. "Show me yourself."
He deactivated Chameleon.
"What is this?" he asked. "I have studied you long and hard and you have never done this."
"It's different this time," I said through the voice cloaker.
"What is?"
"My victim."
"How?"
I deactivated my own Chameleon but kept my hood on.
"Goodness gracious, great balls of fire," I said. "Does he not understand?"
He gaped at me and went pale.
"You're twelve years old," I said. "Same as me. Don't you know, Mac?"
"You? You?" he screamed, pressing himself deeper and deeper into the wall.
I let my sword drop and pulled off my hood.
"I'm sorry, Mac," I whispered. "They made me."
For the first time since I'd known him, the strong, the brave, the brilliant MacKenzie Lawrence fell to his knees and cried.
I knocked his chin up with the dropped sword.
"Don't cry," I ordered.
"But Alyson...I trained with you. You were my...my..."
"Friend?"
He nodded shakily, still crying.
"It's been a long time since I've heard that word spoken and even longer since I've spoken it myself," I said. "They tricked you. I would train with you, pretending I didn't know."
"I see."
I stared down at the ground and put my sword back into my leg.
"You know they took me from a playground? I was one of the first of the new wave. We had parents. Did you?"
He nodded.
"They took me from a friend's backyard. I was three."
"So was I."
"Are you going to kill me now, Knight?"
I looked him in the eye but my vision was blurred with tears.
"No, Mac. You kill me."

I've never heard of a tree collecting dust but I suppose anything is possible.
But I've never heard of a mind cracking open the sky, either, although mine did today.
Perhaps this was the imminent disaster as your mind and my mind and our minds cover each other like the folds of a half-born leaf--or unti lthe end hatches a beginning where neither of us exist.
I'd like to say that darkness covers me but it's only the light of a street lamp that enfolkds me made possible by the lamp's engulfment by darkness.
In reality, the only thing that covers me is humidity and the promise of heat when the sun comes up, and ebcause of the combination my own irresistability to blood-sucking insects and the slight discomfort of an itch along the edges of my skin in the morning.

A storm is brewing and I hope it rains. It rained yesterday but not for very long. The storms haven't been very good this year and the storms haven't been much at all. We're under water restriction again and to tell the truth, I'm very tired of being in a drought.

I suppose the storm has hit all over the world in one form or another, though, and instead of raining water, it's raining human lives and propaganda from every millimeter of the circle.

I have officially given up on humanity. But I will not give up on individuals. There is hope there, I believe.

Sixteen days until I'm out of here. The room is almost done. And I know that I'm not alone, although that what it seems like at the moment. And that's my hope, and I guess hoping in itself gives me more reason to be hopeful.

Hope is the only thing I've ever possessed more than loneliness. And I guess that's a good starting point.

We Don't Sing No More

I don't sing much anymore. I can't bring myself to it. The past few days, I've tried. I've tried to create music but I can't. I've tried scrounging up some of that stuff we used to call hope but it's just not there anymore. Not for anyone. Not for me or you. Not for the Americans or Europeans or the Israelis or the Lebanese. Not for the Asians or the South Americans. Not for the Canadians, not the Russians. Not the Africans. Not the islanders. Not anyone.

It's not there. We fooled ourselves in the first place thinking that it was, or that it might be.

The world's not come down to this. It's just what it's always been and we've deluded ourselves for so long into thinking that there can be rules in war pertaining to the "humane" but what's humane at all about war at all? What's humane about anything human? It all boils down to blood. We live for the same thing we die for.

Ithaca In Parts: The Oath of Me'usha

Life is not always sweet.

On the plains of Mitra on the planet of Waas, people had been at war for longer than they could remember. I was born one of them, a Lui'embai, as we called ourselves.

Our bodies were anything but human, but all peoples are the same, no matter who they are in the universe.

As a Lui'embai my name was Mah'lo-gua. I was female in the most simplistic of analogies to earth. This was an early life, so I never knew my true name, although afterward, I remembered hearing it whispered in the night air when the battles took their rests; I remembered the trees singing 'Ithaca' and sometimes even the clashing of bodies against each other as we all fell dead.

Here, we struggled to stay alive because why else should we be born?

Mah'lo-gua treasured life. Her sister Si'ynan-undua begged to differ.

I caught her by the fire once, contemplating a knife against her wrist.

"You wish to kill yourself?" I asked her from behind, the fire flickering back and forth between us.
"What's the point in waiting?"she answered.
"You cannot be free if you are dead. We wait for the world to take. Although it is chaos, it is still life."
"The chaos is for nothing. For what is it that we fight? We have all forgotten! We're not born knowing. We don't don't die knowing."
"Spend your life trying to find out. Suicide isn't the answer."
"How do you know? The Clans come and go. Sometimes we're one of them. This world is not for us. Can't you see, Mah'lo-gua? The Lui'embai commit suicide en masse. What's one taken alone? It will die by the Clans anyway," she said.
"You sound like the Clan of the Malo-selo-hul, the Mountains of the North."
She turned to me then, her face cast in shadow, the fire illuminating a wring behind her, creating an illusion that held her slightly above the ground.
"I have joined them, sister. I have taken the Oath of Me'usha."
I stood in place and gaped at her.
"How could you?" I gasped. "How could you, Si'ynan-undua?"
"It is the way to peace," she answered. "I will be of the other Clans, too. But I have taken my Oath. We must stop this ravaging of Waas. We have been nothing but a blight upon ourselves and the planet! We must finish it off!"
"We already kill those who come from the chaos. But there is something worth preserving among all of us! Please! For the children, you must see this," I argued.
"I swear to never harm a soul by creating for it a body. The Oath of Me'usha," she said.
"What has become of you, Si'ynan?" I whispered.
"I swear to purge from upon this earth all creatures known as life. I swear to end the chaos, annihilate each Clan in turn. I swear that when my time comes, or when all Clans have been erased, whichever time brings first, I will purge from upon this earth this creature of myself."
"You have gone mad!" I exclaimed.
An hysterical laughter escaped her and she turned back toward the fire.

In the morning she was gone. Over the years, the Clan of Me'usha grew until it took up all of the Northern Plains. It spread to South and the East and West, killing everything in its path that moved.

The Clan of Me'usha only grew by convincing, for they were to have no children without being put to death: both the creature who carried the child and child, so as not to put it through misery. The mothers gave themselves willingly.

One day at the end, the Clan of Me'usha ambushed my own and my sister came upon me. She invited me to take the Oath of Me'usha.

"To take my place," she told me.
"What will become of you that I have to take your place?"
"I have created a body. We must end ourselves."

Of the several thousand members of the Clan of Me'usha, there were twelve to be put to death along with their unborn. I watched from the shadows as they all drove the Knives of Battle into themselves, each bearing an expression of utmost ecstasy.

I took the Oath of Me'usha, forcing my children to take it along with me.

In time, the Clan of Me'usha grew stronger and bigger than the rest. After only three centuries, they had succeeded in purging the world of all other Clans.

Then it was only a matter of time. There were no more children. No more battles. I thought of it as a synthetic peace.
As the last of them died out, I watched. I never agreed with the Oath I'd taken, but took it as a way to preserve life in the only I knew possible.
However, from that time forward, I did abide by its promise.

I swear to never harm a soul by creating for it a body.

Now, the planet of Waas no longer exists, for everything dies. But its plains were quiet, and its mountains and its seas. The world was quiet but for the soul who rested in its core. Now even that soul is silent.

Life is not always sweet. But it is a taste, nonetheless.

If I could have one wish I would wish for the day I can wake up and ask you "What's new?" and you could answer "Peace."

But that will never be.

There's no point in any of it. So we keep hoping and I can't help wondering what for.

More die everyday for nothing. The cause has been forgotten and there wasn't really a cause in the first place except for religious zealotry and the false pretense of God.

But this is humanity. We thrive on what's marketable and peace most certainly doesn't sell.

There's nothing to say. I just sat here for five minutes and thought of nothing to say.

All is fair is fair in love and war, right? So what happened to the love? Did it die? Most likely it was a lie. There is no love and never was.

But we keep hoping. There's nothing else to do but fight, is there? And I don't want to fight.

Are they dying for the fight or the love or the hope? Are they dying for anything? Some bastard's pet enterprise? An exploitation of the young as always for the old's forgotten quarrels?

My favorite part is how we look the same. We all look the same. I can't tell one from the other and that should tell us all something: there is no difference except what we imagine.

For once what is real is caused by what's imagined and I'd rather not imagine. I'd rather not dream. I'd rather live and save than live and die. But humanity is its own carcinogen and the disease has spread everywhere.

Now, it's only a matter of time.