Let It Be

I read that the reason white people don't get Reverend Wright is because white people have not had to sort out the issues of race.

Oh yes, some white people had to sort that one out. Come to Alabama. For those of us born in the fifties, we've been sorting that out all of our lives.

We live together in peace and prosperity. We have attitudes but we have common causes: our children and our God. People who love their children and honor and respect their neighbor do not hate. We worship.

This isn't about misunderstanding; it is about not caring. We care about our children and our God, and that is common purpose enough for living together. Gandhi was right. Reverend King was right.

Two suggestions:

1. Ask Reverend Wright to appear on a Sunday morning with a panel of theologians from all religions and ethnicities. Let them ask him questions about Black Liberation Theology.

2. Create a YouTube channel called "The Conversation" for the people to contribute their thoughts and memories of the race issues in America and the world. Mainstream media by fact of concentration of power must not manage the limits of a converation that must be honest.

Leave the campaigns out. No ads. No sneaky posts. Make it a conversation among people, one at a time, two at a time, whatever.

Ask the hateful, ask the faithful, ask the powerful to let it be.

Brain Dead Liberals and Other Extremists

David Mamet wrote an excellent article on why he quit being a 'brain-dead liberal' in the Village Voice. He explains

I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind. As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart. These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices.

Dean, Pelosi and MoveOn do not represent the Democratic Party any more than Reverend Wright, Michelle Obama and Black Liberation Theology represent the black faithful in America. They are both examples of extremism. We need competency in the white house, not another eight years of extremism. The infatuation with the minority view of extremists is how we got ourselves into this mess. More extremism is simply fighting in a burning house.

Extremism and extremists are the death knell of the Democratic Party. If ever we have needed moderation in our actions and words it is now, but the media will not enable it because anything said in low tones with deliberate thoughts does not play well.

I am voting for Hillary because she has the best grasp of the policies and the problems. Obama and Michelle are students of the school of Black Liberation Theology. I am liberal but I am not brain-dead. When told to take Wright's comments in 'context', I find even more scary rhetoric. When told to read Obama and Michelle's writings, I find more separatism and inability to articulate a united vision.

Take it all the way to August and beyond. Senator Clinton, it is time to quit parsing and worrying about who you will offend by speaking truth to bigotry. The bigots won't vote for you anyway. Instead of worrying about who you will offend, speak loudly for those you must defend. They will vote for you.

Hijack The Conversation

The Conversation is too important to the people to leave it to the politicians except where the politicians are people. :-)

Open a YouTube channel for The Conversation. Ally ally in come free.

I lived the 1960s in Alabama. Some lived more of it in Boston, Watts, Detroit, all the cities that burned.

Some lived it in Poughkipsie. Everyone has a story. Video is cheap.

Tell the story of the people. Have The Conversation on YouTube.

We must recite our tales to find our common fears.
We must understand our tales to find our common God.

Tell it all, brother!

Hillary Says Vote for Obama If He Wins the Nomination

It's a matter of loyalty. If she says vote for Obama, I will....

.... as soon as he can explain Black Liberation Theology to the rest of the faithful.

We are told we cannot hold another man's religion against him. True for some. Not others.

How otherwise can one reply if another holds it against you?

This is a real hurt, Senator Obama. This is a real wound. Is it your intent to spend the duration of your term closing that wound?

Or fixing the economy, the environment, the war, the housing crisis, the cleanup (FINALLY!!) of New Orleans, you know, FIX STUFF.

In my generation, we believed we had taken down the ropes. Two very powerful forces were at work: the media and our shared belief in God. Black Liberation Theology hammers our souls on the anvil of our shared beliefs.

Is it a goal of your administration to take our souls off the anvil, or to hammer harder? When the anvil breaks the hammer, what is between them remains undone.

Having A Conversation

Shelby Steele made points worth making. It is the black perception of themselves as victims (we keep being told that politics are about perceptions) that is the strongest link in the chain that binds them to the past. Senator Obama cannot change being black, but he cannot make the campaign about "The Conversation" without distracting the electorate from issues of more immediate importance to the electorate as a whole: the war, the economy, and the environment.

A conversation has to be two way. Consensus is compromise. If Senator Obama's supporters want to discuss race, they can't just complain. They have to offer solutions.

Reparations? No. That won't change anything. It leads to the same victim mentality that keeps the issue of racism on the table. So precisely what will be considered 'the end of racism in America'? I don't think the textbook definitions from sociology help here, Joy Behar not withstanding. The fact of Senator Obama's successes suggest we are past "oppression of a minority by a majority", a phrase she used to make the claims that blacks cannot be racist.

Puhleeeze... ask Hispanics about that one.

Guilt-proscribing definitions won't further The Conversation. We have to change The Conversation from the past to the future and that means we need to talk about our shared goals.

Perhaps a change of term is needed. Try this: white America does not fear black America. It is intimidated by black culture. Our government does not practice racism if the laws on the books are enforced. But nothing can change the preferences for culture except appeal and excellence.

So now white America might ask itself: what about black culture is intimidating?

I will not vote for Obama. He lacks the depth of character I require for a President at this time. On the other hand, no one is prying my Temptations collection out of my lily white hands. I'm not giving them up. Black music has black soul and black soul is a very powerful force for good and comfort.

Is it really about hate or fear? We've shown we can get past fear. When the ropes came down, when the signs came down, when the neighborhoods integrated, when the mixed marriages became non-notable, we put down fear. I'm not saying there are no racists and that we have eliminated fear. Racism is a disease. It can't be eradicated but it can be made statistically irrelevant and manageable. Polarities are not resolved; they are managed.

Fear has to be conquered by individuals. There is no universal solution.

Hate? Each generation has to decide for itself one person at a time just as they have to understand their fears. The difference is hate inspires violence. Wherever we can use the tools of culture to reduce hate, we must. This must be the goal we share. Culture can be a means. Ask Whoopie Goldberg. Ask Sinbad. Ask Reverend Wright. Ask Obama.

Hate? My advice? Lay it down. Then pick up the prize of love and celebration of distinctions. It isn't enough to quit fearing or hating. In my opinion, racism ends the day we walk into our daily lives and instead of accepting someone for being black or white, we revel in it, we enjoy it, we love it. It isn't about loving them despite who they are, but because of it.

Here's the fun bit: this many years later, we all still know who Tonya Harding is. Few remember Kerrigan and almost no one can pronounce the winner's name.

When politics become entertainment, the news media becomes a ring master. Beware of tigers and clowns.

Democrats United By Our Stupidity

If we let this nomination be about race, we are stupid.

If we let this nomination be about Bill Clinton, we are stupid.

If we let this election be a web blog conversation instead of a campaign to win, we are stupid.

If we lose THIS election to the republicans, we are blithering professional A-lister STUPID!

They could run together and the Democrats could have the White House for sixteen years. Any Democrat who can't work out what kind of real change that would be shouldn't be in the Democratic Party.

It isn't hard to be stupid but it takes practice to be good at it. I know it sounds stupid, heck it is stupid, but wow, should we make stupid moves that give us the White House for 16 years or stupid moves that give it back to the Republicans after the last eight?

How stupid can we be before it qualifies as brain-dead?

Well, you have to pick your stupid moves too. And wow, can we be stupid in the Democratic Party!

He can't win the general election.

She can. Together they can run the table and show in one election the power of the right choices by people who REALLY DO hold the good of the country above their own.

Now THAT would be REAL change.

The Swift Boat

It just keeps getting uglier. Some one posted the following today on one of the news sites. The quote is from a professor who teaches Black Liberation Theology, Dr. James Cone whom Reverend Wright cites. You can google him for Cone.

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community. . . . Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

Maybe there is a context for this. I'm not sure it matters. Lanny Davis, a hard nose attorney, posted this as the two questions Barack Obama will have to answer before or during a General Election.

1. If a white minister preached sermons to his congregation and had used the "N" word and used rhetoric and words similar to members of the KKK, would you support a Democratic presidential candidate who decided to continue to be a member of that congregation?

2. Would you support that candidate if, after knowing of or hearing those sermons, he or she still appointed that minister to serve on his or her "Religious Advisory Committee" of his or her presidential campaign?

Therein is the crux of what Obama has to explain in conversation. For my colleagues who use the Internet to promote Obama, like it or not, this is what you are involving yourselves and the technology in. One wants to believe Obama is not involved in this theology, but he will have to answer those questions. Some one really should have vetted all of this before the Democratic National Committee allowed this to go this far. Howard Dean is toast no matter how the election fares.

One astute reporter said it best noting that Obama did not grow up as poor or oppressed: he won't be defeated for what he is, but he may be defeated by what he pretends to be.

We tell ourselves we won't be fooled again. Then we are.

The Kareoke Candidate

Obama is the Kareoke Candidate. He presents well but every note is borrowed and his sound is the sound of overamplified overprocessed machinery.

Kareoke and disco became popular for the same reason: people with no talent and no discipline could pretend to be dancers and singers. As an old band mate of mine put it, 'it is the audience as the stars instead of the professionals'.

Populism succeeds in elections. It simply cannot govern. If we elect this man, we'll go from a ruthless DJ who only spins what he likes to amateur singers who can stay on message but not on beat. Meanwhile, the sucking sound in the background is our economy being flushed to syncopated blues notes.

Using Bill Richardson and other surrogates, the Obama campaign will keep picking 09-09-Race and giving it to the media kareoke masters of ceremonies for today's news spin cycle. The Wright affair and the Rezko trial are causing Obama's base to erode. That base is passionate about the race issue. His campaign will keep finding ways to hit that button. The best thing the rest of us can do is yawn. It isn't that the conversation isn't important, it is that this isn't a conversation. It is a one-sided attempt to guilt us into voting for Obama. Ignore it.

Barack Obama isn't the Manchurian Candidate; he is the Kareoke Candidate picking his songs from a playbook. He does that well. He is a good singer. That doesn't mean he is a good musician or a bandleader.

Gesthemane: YouTube

My gig tonight was a Maundy Thursday service.
Sing the songs of the death of the Savior.
Pray for forgiveness.
Be quiet as you leave.

Here is something I share with you as a You Tube video. Be well!

Conversations

@John Cowan:

13.4 and women don't get along with each other well enough to be 51.4. Hence, the Democratic Party.

Friend Obama, does a great service, Dr. John. He introduces a conversation. Conversations are the soul of the Web. If our technology is a greater good, this is where it is more easily sensed.

Whatever the greater scary of economics and war, what America wants is to feel good about itself again. What change we make we make because we need that.

The conversation of race is a conversation the people choose. It is a conversation that may indeed be a healing force in our country.

Whatever we speculate, it is a conversation that the young want or a very important demographic drops away from Friend Obama.

Conversation is their birthright.

It Was A Good Speech

>>Will his speech help or hurt his chances of becoming President?

It won’t change the fact that he waited too late and made too many contradictory statements. Obama lacks discernment and the ability to make the right decisions even on topics to which he has given considerable thought. When it got to the crunch, he chose to protect his candidacy instead of the values he espoused. He is not ready for the toughest job in the world. He may be someday, but his time is not yet come.

>>And is our nation in a racial stalemate?

No. If it were, Obama's candidacy could not have come as far as it has. He is the proof of change if not the agent of change. Have we come far enough? The fact as stated by him that statements such as those made by Wright are typical of the black church experience in America proves we have not. We have a lot of anger and hate yet to lay down.

However, the sad fact is if he does lose this nomination, it will be the statements of his pastor and his own refusal to confront him many years ago that beat him. Trying to spin that any other way is exactly the kind of response that keeps us from making that progress so many desire so earnestly.

Bridge Over Troubled Water

Senator Obama gives his speech tomorrow. I hope it is a good one.

Race divides America.
Gender divides America.
Wealth divides America.
War divides America.

America is a land divided.
Are we a family divided, too?

Lord, let us find a way from the hate that divides us.
Show us the bridge across these troubled waters
In this saddest of weeks for the followers of Jesus
Show us mercy and a way into the Promised Land
Undivided by hate
United by your purpose
Living together in hope of His Return
Lead us
Love us
Keep us
Forever in your hands.

Amen

Lay It Down

That moment between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the Senate floor yesterday counts for something. I do hope earnestly that supporters on both sides pay attention.

The Obamites make much of what Obama says, and repeat over and over that words matter. If words really matter, then will Obama take responsibility for belonging to a church for so many years and espousing the words and works of a man who is clearly a black racist, his minister? Where I live, if a minister says things like that, we fire him or go to another church. Obama full well knows what his base believes. It isn't just what a man says that he is judged by, but also who he listens to attentively.

Is this really the campaign you want to run? Can the black community in America get past those remarks? Can the rest of us ignore them? If we keep ratcheting this up, only bad will come of it.

For the kids in the campaign, step back and ask yourselves if you want to be the ones to set back race relations in this country fifty years. For the adults of my generation, try to remember when we promised each other that despite what our parents said or did, the horrible disease of racism stopped in our generation.

Do it for your children. An election isn't worth this.

"Lay down lay down
Lay it on down
Let your white bird smile up
At the ones who stand and frown."
- Melanie Safka -

The Devil and Obama Webster

Jack Cafferty asks at CNN.Com if Obama should go negative.

Not if he wants to win. He needs to get his supporters to quit being shrill.

Explain this, Jack: if he claims that his rival believes his followers are delusional, what does it mean when he claims her support is all blue-collar and undereducated, or in short form, stupid?

Obama is running out of speeches fast. If he continues to repeat himself, he begins to sound like a caged parrot. If he squawks too loudly and shrilly, he is a cooked goose. That is the fatal flaw of populism: it is based on the popularity of an idea, not the execution of a plan.

Maybe common sense is prevailing at last. People who understand that their government is actually NOT a vast right wing closed conspiracy, but a representative democracy (say Republic) in need of competent executive leadership are voting for Hillary Clinton. They understand that we don't have to overturn the government; we need to fix the mess left by the current administration. This isn't 'old school' thinking; it is common sense patriotism. It is belief we have a good system; we need better leaders.

She governs best who governs least, isn't that the conservative mantra, Jack? We want a change of leadership, not a swift boat to hell.

Technologists With Obamamania

Declan McCullagh writes an article at C-Net on the topic "In a technological upset, Obama bests Clinton". Someone writes in that Obama has a grand plan of opening up the corrupt closed insider system in Washington DC to the people.

Sounds good. Answer these questions before we start spending the money:

How many hours of C-Span do you watch a week?

How many letters do you write to your Congressman?

When your local council has meetings, do you attend?

Do you read the local political news and review the published bills?

There is an abundance of information and opportunities. There are few users or takers. The US government is not a large closed conspiracy (Bush I and II being exceptional). It is a large bureaucratic form of representative democracy (say Republic).

What you need to understand is WE ELECTED BUSH TWICE WITH ALL THE INFORMATION WE NEEDED IN FRONT OF US.

What Obama is saying sounds good, but that is it. Neither he nor those programs will change the culture or the goals of our government. Once elected, all those neat sounding ideas vanish into budgets and hearings and costs and taxes and finally into a low dull snore.

Technologists like the sound because they can sell more technology and they can *feel* empowered but this won't change Washington in the least. Competent persistent knowledgeable executive leadership can. When you vote, you are not voting for machinery but a machine. Be very very sure the machine you are voting for has your best interests at heart because once in, they have the power for four years, and the agenda they set determines the cultural changes possible within the limits of that power (and the limits are considerable).

The most telling aspect of Obamamania is that it sells hope but is driven by deep seated paranoia. That is why the shrillness in that camp when debating. It isn't that they are delusional but that they believe everyone else is stupid (citing the blue collar vote for Hillary Clinton). Technology cannot fix the government. In fact nothing can. The system we have is the one we passed legally, is in the Constitution, and is not in need of radical overhaul.

It is in need of competent executive leadership.

The Hand On The Tiller

What is behind that face?"

In his own words, anything you care to put there. Caveat emptor.

"... overturn the machine"

Do that without a new one ready to roll and you walk home. Caveat vendor.

I don't take the bloggers that seriously. The Nixon generation didn't take us that seriously. It is easy to campaign and put enough spin there, and you can win. But to govern, you have to have the people in place who have the knowledge because no single man, woman or President will change a government of laws. For Larry Lessig, the answer has always been, ignore the laws and do what feels best for you. As a result of that, I can go to YouTube and find one of my songs taken without permission or acknowledgement and used in a video. There is another web site selling that song, also without permission and without sharing the profits.

Boy howdy, what a deal for me.

However you slice it, that's theft, and worse, theft of goods that I have shared graciously when asked and credited. But Lessig and now Obama keep promoting an idea among the young that whatever they want they can take without any preconditions because They Are The Internet Generation. In fact, they are a mob organizing for a generational war.

It will fail but with a price. Perhaps they are a generation that history and power should by-pass because they have failed to learn the lessons of history, and have not earned the power.

Security is a boat in a storm where the captain keeps a light hand on the tiller. The tiller is technology. You need it but it is just stuff. The hand requires experience. You can't steal that.

Barack H. Obama: What's In A Name?

The latest distraction is whether or not Obama's critics are baiting by using Obama's middle name, Hussein.

Get real. Some words DON'T matter.

The name isn't important. The problem Obama is having is he is late to realizing when something is important. With Rezko, he gives the money to charity but only after the press notices. With Farrakhan and his minister, he denounces and rejects but only after the press notices. With Al Qaeda in Iraq, surely he noticed? With the chair of the sub-committee, he should have held hearings but said nothing until the press noticed. He knows there is a puppet government in Russia but doesn't know any details until the press notices and Clinton explains it to him.

What this buttresses is the charges that he is long on rhetoric and short on real experience because all of these are the kinds of details a leader absolutely must be aware of at all times. It's no good to be in California when a hurricane roars into New Orleans as Bush was.

Why will moderate Democrats vote for McCain? At the age of a lot of us, we've been watching "movements' all of our lives. Most failed to deliver so we are very cynical about that and not just a little creeped out by Obamamania. We know by experience this kind of thing doesn't deliver. We don't want 'a dream'. We want a plan. We know Obama may someday be a good leader but these gaffes in judgement are too frequent and too noticeable.

At voting time, we vote for real change, and we do what Obama says we should do: we cross the party lines to get leadership and a practical approach to government based on our perception of the person best qualified to lead. If the Democratic Party has decided it is more important to make a statement than it is to lead effectively, then the Democratic Party has abandoned us to its feel-good politics which we know don't work when the choices are hard and unpopular but ultimately the right choices.

I'm a Democrat and I support Hillary Clinton, but if I have to choose between party loyalty and loyalty to the country, I choose the country. Had the Republican Party done that, the last eight years would not have happened. I didn't make that mistake last time and I won't this time. It isn't that Obama is the same thing as Bush; it is that a choice for Obama is a choice for the same kind of thing: feel good over experience.

It comes down to doing the right thing and if we lose doing that, we lose doing it right. If we win, we won for the right reasons.

Last Night's Debate: The F Word

Looking at the CNN political ticker, the Farrakhan question caught fire as I thought it might.

In the South, if a minister espouses a position a person of conscience can’t abide, the person works with the church to get a new minister or goes to another church. Bifurcating churches are a reason the landscape and real estate market here is flooded with church buildings. This is the danger because those looking the Trinity pages now understand that it is a bigger deal than Louis F., that this is Obama's base and it is a separatist base. So now the moderate Democrats have more in common with McCain given an Obama v.s. McCain bid. Meanwhile, the separatists get pushed to the front of the debate and unless Obama clearly puts some distance between him and them really fast, at the end of this, we still get a Republican president and set back race relations in America fifty years.

On the other hand, the loser of last night's debate was Tim Russert. Mean little man.

For John Cowan: Which Words Matter?

So to be for Hillary is to be against the JPL, John? In other words, Obama is all inclusive and somehow her opponent is all divisive?

Ok. Here is the web page for Senator Obama's church in Illinois. Read it.

http://www.tucc.org/about.htm

I've seen this sort of stuff in the papers the guys who stand in suits on the corner sell here. Not new news. For people who don't live in heavily mixed neighborhoods, the words may be a bit of a surprise. So here are the typical positions taken by those who encounter this stuff.

Pro:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_11_124/ai_n19328537

Anti:

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/barack-obamas-church-ultra-left-and-afrocentric

The problem about the hard positions is it is tough to sort the words that matter from the words that don't, which means effectively, no one knows what Obama is about if that is his professed beliefs as a member of Trinity. It may be that that church is his political base and the means to get elected. Ok, politics as usual, but it means that only some words matter to him and his political base. Or it means his congregation has been duped by his membership. Not possible?

Then it means he believes all of that.

So John, which words matter?

Pro or anti, the message that church is espousing is political dynamite. This is what the Republicans will go after him with because they can get this message to their base without having to go through the Big Media outlets, and when it does, it will go through without traceability. That is how Obama will be Swift boated, except not with third party assertions, but with his own. Get ready for it.

It seems to me that for too many this is about some kind of Great Get Even. Some want to get even with the rich, some to get even with the Baby Boomers, some to get even with whoever. But that is exactly how the right elected Bush twice.

I won't vote for that. I vote for real change, a change of leadership that actually is inclusive and actually has a real plan to get our economy out of the dumps and our troops out of the desert. Not a cause, a movement, or a "people's liberation". If we need liberation, it is from those self-serving whining delusions that somehow a grand conspiracy got us in this trouble.

We did it to ourselves. Twice. What does it say if we do it a third time and call that liberation? Which words matter?

Bewitched: Dakini

In the alley by the third to last shadow of the mid-day stood the door to the Dakini, a house of idle chatter, conspiracy, and oh, magic of the most secret kind, the secrets of children who play in the mortal world while yet protected by that most ancient spell called innocence. Light shielded by shadow, in a room shaped by incantation, hidden among the busyness of the mortals, two girls played as little witches will, making up forever evers from recitations of dreams, practiced sighs and wrinkled noses.

Twin proprietors of the pleasures of the patrons of the Dakini, they practiced feminine arts of wit, and guile, satisfying their indulgent desires so sweet, no mortal man could resist them nor tell the dark from the light haired. Nor cared any to take one when with the other, or ever knew that both were satisfied. Even as the girls competed for the most high and delicious adventures of their immortal imaginations, they remained without question, cousins, devoted to each other’s hearts, each other’s needs, and each other’s failings. Neither would ever fall to sorcery or treachery in the mortal world while the other remained with her.

Mortals believe that magic is spells. Spells are a mask that bends the surface of an illusion inscribed by light on the magical eye. The face that names the names is hidden behind the veil of appearances summoned from the heart as signs tumbling in clusters of sparkling light. Calling these names, she can fly fearlessly among the dark stars that consume beings such as she. Their dark penetrating hums become the land marks by which a witches craft is discovered. Each act of magic inscribes a map of the light devouring spaces.

“He is waiting”, said the light-haired witch laconically with a resigned sigh as she counted the coins in the box for her turn. To the young man seated behind them, they were serving maids preparing for evening work. To each other, they were luminous goddesses preparing for an evening of amusement.

“Then let him”, her dark hair cousin coyly said, drawling in her deliberateness. “See how he taps his fingers on the case he carries. If he is the tiniest bit impatient to ask his question, let the answer be even less forthcoming.” Her face drew into the small curve, narrow at both ends but with fully pouted purple lips. “Anyway, he isn’t here to see me, now is he?”

Her laconic cousin saw the hint of jealousy betraying her disregard when a tiny spark escaped as if launched from the arched curve of her dark mascara. “Signs of attachments, or do the signs hold no currency for you, Samantha?”

“If signs were currency, Serena, you would be wealthier than your Mother,” the other replied with uplifted eyes smiling.

Bending over her as Samantha counted, she retorted “If your Mother’s currency were better clothed, you would be my Sister, Cousin.” the dark haired girl laughed with a pitched giggle.

“He is still waiting” she reminded.

The light haired serving girl glanced at her unmade face in the mirror hung on the wall behind the lid of the counting box as she closed it. Identical to her Cousin, her unadorned dress and face distinguished her as she moved among her customers. Polite and unassuming, she minded her magic with care and did not tease the men. They saw in her plainness any woman they desired but did not see the true face of Endora’s daughter.

Her eyes fixed on the boy sitting there. “Is magic enough?” she asked herself nervously moving her lip.

Serena’s dress clung like blood to every curve of her body, spread thickly in a few places, but thinly to the edges of these. Sam wore the plain robes of a servant girl hiding all that would cause a man’s eyes to linger, using her magic to keep their eyes fixed on her bewitching smile, crinkling nose and luminous green eyes, as if in her plainness, her intimate secret would be safe.

The young witch did not wish to be unattractive; she wished to attract only one. Like the boy drumming his fingers, she could count time until the moment of attraction, but until that one moment, she could play safely, instructing the willing and letting her Cousin steal the will of the others as she pleased. She knew that once she loved, she would always love. Her Cousin was perspicacious. That currency was her immortal heart.

Her fear silent, her heart needy, she asked his desire of the Dakini.

He raised his eyes and looked upon her true face.

A door opened and closed letting him see the immortal behind it for just a single thought. The light dissolved into a million suns plummeting toward him, blinding him, scattering him then swallowing the shards. He died wordlessly, his eyes still reflecting the luminous face he had seen. He vanished from the little girl’s magic.

As her Cousin laughed cruelly but without malice, she heard her Mother’s sad words whispered in her ear,

“To truly love a mortal is to lose one’s magic forever and ever again.”