spaghetti war crimes

     Cresting a hill, I drive and look upwards. I see the criss-cross of power lines catch the early morning light against the backdrop of a blue sky. Streaks of chem trails from low flying planes slowly float down from the atmosphere and into our soil and cereal bowls. Morning air breaches my slightly cracked windows and streams over the features of my face. Skimming my ears and crawling up my nostrils. I squint in order to shield my eyeballs from any unnecessary buffeting. I reach the climax of the hill and for an instant, look out onto the city.      A backdrop of Mexican mountains lazily rolls from east to west. They seem to meet the ocean and drop off as sheer cliffs into pastels of blue, green foam. Dazzling light bounces off the millions of windows that line the office buildings and skyscrapers that sit in tight knit arrays along the streets before me. The city looks like a single, shimmering diamond dropped into the purse of an old woman. ...

        Caked in white powder, one would assume a fresh blanket of snow had just fallen in the small 12x8 garage that we are currently occupying. I sit on a sideways crate, watching as Tommy goes over–again and again–all sides of his styrofoam chunk with an instrument that must be a close cousin to the cheese grater. A resilience is needed by the surfboard shaper. The repetitive motions might be seen as tedious to some, but from my observations, the back and forth motion of the cheese grater facilitates a passive inertia that moves up Tommy’s arm, through his shoulder, into his neck, and eventually floods into the back of his eyes. With a glossy look and furrowed brow, he continues on with his task at hand. I, along with his surroundings, dissipate into non-importance as his world becomes narrowly focused on the board before him. This is the sign of not only a true shaper but of a true artist at work. Tommy is both.

          On old Nantucket’s property sat a national monument: the oldest tree in all of North America. Of course, like most all great trees, it sat firmly in the ground off to the side of a front porch, offering a house its tranquil shade and shelter from the sweltering sun. The trunk was large and cockeyed, running at a slant from the ground to the sky. The slope was mellow enough for a young child to crawl on hands and knees upwards, but after about five feet, the trunk shot up. A wide array of dark brown pinecones–none larger than a baseball–peppered the lush green thistles that populated the many branches. Exposed roots laid at the foot of the tree, rolling in crisscrossed patterns that spread out from the trunk. One does not hold the title of Oldest Tree in North America without bearing a few scars of a life well-lived however. Brown thistles gathered in small patches throughout the tree’s head, and knotted portals of darkened wood spotted the tree’s...