by Travis Mateer

I began the day with a question: to megaphone or NOT to megaphone. That was my question.

I checked in with a trusted ally who helps me NOT Bota Box my feelings. He confirmed the trend: family structures are being severely damaged, sometimes beyond repair.

I biked around noting the cool edge of autumn air burning off as the sun climbed higher in the sky. I parked the bike to continue on foot.

On the renamed Higgins bridge I sent a cryptic email to a fellow synchronistic that read, in part:

This will happen because will is my middle name and Kora is a bird and if you let me I can put my chapel of the dove into your Costner field of dreams.

I checked the time: 11:02am. I kept walking.

I stopped at a bookstore looking for Krakauer’s book about Missoula, but Garth didn’t have it in stock. He seemed a little perturbed at how I asked for “the rape book about the rape apologists who still run this town”.

Instead, wanting to support local business, I found a book by the filmmaker who likes to makes movies and tv shows about his incest rape fantasies. Here’s an excerpt:

I went to a psychiatrist once. I was doing something that had become a pattern in my life, and I thought, Well, I should go talk to a psychiatrist. When I got into the room, I asked him, “Do you think that this process could, in any way, damage my creativity?” And he said, “Well, David, I have to be honest: it could.” And I shook his hand and left.

After this purchase I stopped into the Peace Center where I discovered the director, Betsy, has retired. I was told the name of the new director, but quickly forgot, as the Peace Center is essentially useless beyond peddling “fair-trade” trinkets.

I did inquire of the young woman working the register if she was aware a black man had been shot and killed by Sheriff Deputies two and a half weeks ago. She was not.

I crossed the river and found the Rape book at Fact and Fiction, where the woman working the register ALSO had no clue a black man had been recently shot by Sheriff Deputies. How could she? His race hasn’t been reported, and the Sheriff’s Department continues to remain tight-lipped about any context to what happened on August 29th.

I returned to my studio with my purchases and found a book I ordered waiting for me. It’s the book I bought after listening to the synchromystic discuss his field of dreams.

And when I checked my email I saw his response. After much back and forth I will speaking with the synchromystic on Sunday. Which is my birthday. Which is perfect.