When I was fifteen I started gaining this little thing called confidence...not just the sappy self kind but confidence in everything, myself and the world around me. Yes, I'm still a cynic, but that takes confidence, too, to trust the world to be a stone cold bitch to you and itself and everything involved in it or around it. But when I was fifteen, I still didn't really believe it. I had that notion, the little itching voice in the back of my head saying "Hey, this is real, believe it. You want to believe it." Yeah, yeah. I pretended to but never really got there until recently.

So now power isn't a dream, it's a reality and I know it. There's a huge difference between knowing and believing and I have learned that believing is only the first step. Move beyond belief. See it realized and touch it, and know it.

This is why I don't believe in God. And why I don't take anyone seriously who does. I know one thing, and I won't say either way here. But only a few people know one way or the other, and both ends of the spectrum are true.

I never got to Paris, but I did make it back to America. That's a feat, I think, when everything in me was working against it. Like the last time, I felt more free where the paper didn't say it, but life actually gave it. We can have a law suit all we want over here, but it won't give us more liberty.

The last time I was in Italy. I didn't make it there this time, just like I never made it to Paris, but the effect on me was the same. The air was freer and I was alone but not lonely. That makes all the difference. I always love the idea of something but face the facts (I'm a realist after all) that sometimes wishes can never come true. Or if they do, it's always a different interpretation, because this wasn't just my wish and it wasn't just my life, but a wish logically thought out and presented to the world in a miracle in Philadelphia in 1789. Here we are, 218 years later, and that wish has been battered and twisted and misconstrued.
Has it ever been granted? Yes. But not in full.

But when it comes to wishes, although I believe them unfulfillable, I never cease to hope that I may just be wrong. It's not only the wish of a country, but of millions of individuals. It's funny because we all work for the same dream, and that dream means something different to each and every one of us. That makes us a miracle and a tragedy, it makes us tolerant and bigoted and lovely and grotesque all at once.

So I work to fulfill what I interpret that dream of the Founding Fathers to be for myself. I work for an ideal. Call me a fool, but nothing great was ever achieved by anyone less. I keep myself in check like this, playing the fool against myself as well as the logician. I see from a wider perspective if I am farther away. In this way I become closer. I can't stand being around the places I love, because I'm closer to them in my head. I fight for them from a distance. And so I would like to return to Europe, to be far from the Land of the Free, so that I can see it from every angle, so that I can work to keep it alive and to mold it and to hold it and to live it as I have always dreamed.

I cannot be a demagogue. But I can be the force behind one.

"Did you find him?" he asked.
"Who?" I said.
"The boy."
"Oh," I laughed. "No. He doesn't exist."
He smiled.
I smiled back.
"Take me home," I said.
"Sure."
I learned something today. There is only one kiss in Belgium. But I learned it French, so I went for two. But going for two while he's going for one makes for a different kind of formula.
I like that.

"Whachoo runnin from, boy?"
William quit running and bent over, his sweaty hair dripping, and his hands on his knees.
"Aaah..." he panted and pointed behind his shoulder.
The man craned his neck to see over the boy and laughed dryly.
"You's runnin from life, boy? Ain't nothin' back yonder."
William turned his head up to look at the man, still bent over with his hands on his knees, and grimaced.
Finally, he caught his breath.
"Boys. Boys are coming."
The old man squinted at him.
"You ain't from roun' here, is you?"
William wiped the sweat from his upper lip and looked behind him nervously.
"Hide me," he whispered desperately.
The old man looked around, then swung open the screen door.
"Git in. Quick now."
William ducked under the man's arm and ran inside.
The hut smelled of moss and damp wood, was bare but for a chair, table, and cot in the corner with layers of blankets strewn across it that seemed to be about fifty years old.
He backed up into a far corner of the room and slid to the floor, pulling himself into the smallest bundle possible.
Outside, the sound of pounding footsteps echoed into the hut.
He heard voices but couldn't decipher the words.
"Go on now," he heard the old man saying as the screen door was pushed open. "Git!"
The voices rose up angrily and soon faded into the distance along with the footsteps.
William breathed a sigh of relief.
"Whatchoo doin, boy, trine to git yo'self killed?"
William shook his head and looked up at the man.
"No," he said.
"Then what? White boy from up north trumpin roun' these parts. Sho 'nuff you's gonna git yo' ass kicked."
"That's all it's about here, isn't it?"
"What's what 'bout?"
"White. Black. Whatever."
"Well, whatchoo expect, boy? Whey you from?"
"Above the Mason-Dixon line, that's for sure."
The old man chuckled.
"You'sa gittin use ta that, now? They's not payin' 'tention ta that one up they, is they?"
"It's all one country...At least I thought so."
"All's one country but you's got them states here."
"And race. You let me in, though."
"You a yankee. You free me."
"I didn't do anything. That was a million years ago."
"No more'n one-hundred-fiffy."
"Whatever. Forever ago."
"Not here, boy."
"I'm realizing. Only on paper. Nobody really won, did they?"
The old man laughed again, exposing a nearly toothless mouth.
"What's your name?" William asked.
"They call me Lamar Coal. Like them rocks put soot all ovuh you."
"William."
They shook hands.
"Thanks," William said.
"You git on now. An' I don' wan' hear 'bout no hangin' o' you, boy."
"Yeah. I'll stay clear."

Michael

She met him under the most spectacular fireworks she'd ever dreamed of, where they were so close it was raining ash.

"Do you think it'll be good?" he asked.
"I don't know...You know how when you first see something, when you're like three years old and it's so magical and so new nothing can ever beat it in your mind?"
"Yeah, I know what you mean," he said.
"So I think it might be good. But I'm not three anymore."
He laughed. "Neither am I."
She turned her head up to the sky and smiled as it exploded in color and looked back at him when the smoke started pouring out of the sky and crawling the ground.
"I've never been this close before," she said.
"It's a grand celebration. How else could they do it?"
And then it began to pour. She got soaked and they huddled in the crowd under the few umbrellas there were to be found, but soon she split off and walked through the rain anyway. A little rain wouldn't kill her. And she saw him walk off in the other direction.
She wasn't accustomed to putting faith in anything, so she walked along with the crowd, moving where it took her.
And then he was there.
"Hey."
"I thought you left."
"No. I'm supposed to meet up with a colleague but it's crazy here. We can't find anyone in this."
"You found me."
He smiled and took her arm. And they were two in a crowd instead of one and one.
But somewhere between the shots and the street and midnight and one, the crowd swept them in opposite directions.
To the left and to the right, forward and backward she turned and then the current grabbed her and left her in her room until the morning.
"Are you there?" she asked him even though he wasn't there.
"I'm supposed to find you in this crowd?" he asked.
"You found me once, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"And it's raining ash all the time even though it's not staining our clothes like that night."
But an ocean is far and she thought that nothing could beat that memory of when she was three, but the sky did that night and rained on her.
Anything can be overtaken and even a stone can be weathered away by water.

"Uriel, how do angels fight?"
"We do not."
"You fight for me."
"You are the Living."
"So are you. Only not human."
"There you are."
"You fight for humans?"
"Yes. Now answer the question yourself."
"I still don't know. You make me fight for myself. And I do."
"You know a truth now but there's more to it. Say it aloud."
"I'm too intrigued by you. And since I'm human, I don't really believe yet that there's existence once this life is over. I only want to. So I hope. I keep my eyes open to you."
"Yes, Little Girl. But here I am. Now tell me how we fight."
"You bore into our minds. Right? You show us another way. And when the others are angry with you they lament and they pierce into yours. Your fighting is all inside. They show you another way for the world to be. Or you to be, I guess. Like they fight when they pull you away from me. That's fighting, right?"
"An angelic fight cannot be explained to a human for Heaven is outside of your grasp. If you ask me to show an angel fighting with a fellow of his own, your status of being among the Living will have gone. People have always wondered as we have pierced their minds in more ways than fighting. They explain it in the words they can, in the images. They explain it with swords and metal and fire. But the closest thing I can give to you is this: from every act destruction something is made. The Greater the beings, the greater the destruction, and thus--"
"The greater the creation?"
"Yes, Little Girl. The greater the creation. Imagine the fight for you."
I laughed. "You flatter me to much. Stop it. You know I don't take that from anybody."
"Tell me an act of creation. The greatest kind. The most glorious," he says.
"I was thinking the birth of a star. An end and a beginning all in one. But it takes millions of years."
"In your terms. In mine it takes but a moment. Now. Tell me something greater, I've already given you a clue."
"Than the birth of star? The birth of the universe?"
"No. You are thinking too big now. Imagine the fight for you."
"Aah. I get it."
"Yes, Little Girl. Do you see that fight?"
"Ares and Aphrodite."
The angel smiles. "You let your studies get away with you. But that is the answer."
"It's a shorter one," I laugh at him.
"You are growing up."
"But to make an angelic fight...look...glorious...for people...in...modern day society. How would you do that without really showing it?"
"You couldn't. So, as I have told you, humanity leaves it up to their own imaginations. Use an explosion of two forms, hardly visible. It is neither dark nor light, but the forms disturb the vision just enough to make one doubt as you rub your eyes and think again. They collide and for a moment, merge into one. Then there is a stillness such as you have never seen. Such as you could never imagine. And after that moment, a brilliant light and a sound so loud any mortal there would never hear again. Yet if a mortal were present, he would be gone, not among the Living, and not among the Dead. He would have merged with that creation."
"What happens to you?"
"The fighters?"
"Yes."
"We separate and as it has been more than minds piercing one another, but our forms, we both lost and both won. When we separate, we are somewhat new, and we begin again, our consciousnesses free of opinion."
"And when you start all over, does the same opinion form again and cause the fight again?"
"No. The fight is settled by what you would call the Scattering. There is a mutual understanding, and in warring with each other, we have melded and fall in love with our creation."
"But what if it's more than two of you? What if it's a war, with many ranks all fighting against one another?"
"Then many creations, from a blade of grass to a storm, to a star, to a glaxaxy and on and on. Remember, do not take the world so literally, Little Girl. The greatest of all fights, originate within a human mind. But you are not angelic. Your race is not angelic. Your destruction does not create in this manner. You destroy yourselves. We step in and fight for you, the opinions clash between those of the Living and those of the Higher Beings. Your instict disagrees with us. So what we create is madness."
"Madness causes love and hate."
"Madness causes everything in your world, Little Girl. What would you call our conversations?"

"Are you dying, Little Girl?"
"Aren't we all?"
"Not all."
"I've been dying for a long time. And remember when I was the living dead? I'm back there."
"You will save yourself."
"No. No, I won't."
"Then who will?"
"Nobody. I don't want them to. I'm ready to go on. I can't take this anymore. I can't bear it. I've always tried. I've always tried so hard. And what's it for, Uriel? What's it for? Nothing! It's for nothing! Even if it's extraordinary, that's forgotten in the end. And it hurts too much. It hurts too much. Take me to the World to Come. Take me away from this place. I can't stand the emptiness. I can't stand the prospect of so many years waiting and waiting. What am I waiting for, Uriel? I'm waiting for a retribution that will never come. I'm not waiting anymore. Hope fades eventually. Doesn't it?"
"Aah, Little Girl, you will never grow up."
"I was never a little girl."
"As you wish."
"I was always a hypocrisy, a dichotomy. I was always more than one thing. And it never made sense. It scared everyone away. I don't blame them."
"What shall I do with you?"
"Make me disappear. Make my love count for something. Don't send me one of those faux friends and don't you dare haunt my dreams with the imposters of a soul who doesn't exist."