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 ^{(it's beta!)}

I walk, plodding through the desert, this one small arid island encompassed by a sea of green. Like a biosphere, this desert sits self-contained within its perimeter of concrete walls, razor wire and armed guards. What's over those walls? What's past that fence? What are those guards guarding against? Farmland. Green vineyards, lush palm groves and endless farmland spotted by settlements and eventually cities. Somewhere in those groves, among those palms, grapes and homes, someone wants to kill us. Probably not among the homes. They remind us of this, every now and then, usually about three times in five days. Most times, we don't hear their reminder, just the bellowing of sirens as the post-wide communique is put out telling us that it's safe to walk the streets again and to be mindful of unexploded ordinance. Other times we'll hear the boom from somewhere distant, a place we'll never see even though it's within a couple miles of the base. And, a certain few times, we feel the very floor and buildings quake as the concussion of those shells reaches out to tap us lightly on the shoulder. I always thought it odd to be witness to so many mortar strikes and never see a crater or an explosion.

But, I've digressed from walking. This is here; this is where I'm supposed to make my home. This is where I walk. This is where my tan boots kick up tan dust against the tan background of concrete men looming over me everywhere I go. Sometimes even the sky is tan, filtering the sunlight to an eerie orange that always makes me wonder whether Clark Kent would dare come out of the phone booth on those days. Tonight, I'm walking back to home. To what they tell me is my home, anyways. As I pass by something closer to my home, that double sided shack, surrounded by more concrete, housing the net-connected PCs and telephones, I see a figure. The silhouetted bust of a man pokes above the bench sitting on the back porch of that second home. I still don't know what it was silhouetted against. As I get closer, I see he's holding something. It's something large and awkward to hold in any save a handful of ways. I don't give it second thought until I hear the strumming. A guitar calling out to me from hopes and plans I've left behind for here. Nothing very mindful or anything I recognize, just strumming chords and notes, practicing something. Maybe a song or symphony still left unwritten? And as these thoughts and aged hopes go fluttering through my mind, I keep walking.

Something stranger happens next. Passing by him, I feel heat. That, in and of itself, is anything but a rare occurrence where I am. There's something odd about the heat, though. It's not constant. It's a wavering, flowing kind of heat. The sort of heat you catch when warmed by wind-whipped flames. Along with this, I smell something. Marshmallow roasting over open flame. In that instant of confusion, I'm sent years into the past and decades into the future. I remember every campfire I ever sat in front of while my siblings criticized my marshmallow technique. I keep telling them it's flambe. However, these fires never had a guitar with them and so my mind searches through my future. I see plans and visions of my wife, son and I. I see us gathering around those open flames. I see my son and I loosing hot dogs off the sticks too small to keep from burning the hairs off all our knuckles. I see myself strumming that guitar, making music out of nonsense as I can't remember one single tune. I see lifetimes and futures passing before my eyes and through my senses. And then it's gone.

All in the space of one stride as I walk past that figure with his guitar, with his hopes and dreams, with his choice of pastime and personal visions of tours where women throw their underwear on stages drenched in alcohol. And when my next foot lands I'm still here. I still hear the strumming coming from this man and I just want to go home. I want to feel the heat from a fire instead of that hateful sun burning down at me. I want to relive the moment I just had and share it with the world. I know there never was a fire. I know some hot draft from the generator exhaust is playing tricks with my mind, so I just continue walking. If I stop and turn, this memory will be lost forever. Better to keep it to myself, to nurture it within the fanciful realm of my mind than to have it squashed by such a trifle as reality. Better just to keep walking.