Garden Party

Our hosts had buried TVs all over the yard & plugged them in. Screens hissed their snow from the grass as we drank draft beer from plastic cups.

They were like oracles, chthonic & obscure. A young woman who appeared to be tripping stopped short, stared & began to weep. It’s not fighting, I said, trying to console. It’s dancing.

It’s cosmic background radiation & thermal noise, she said without looking up. Reality is beautiful, you know?

I crouched down for a closer look. It was 1990. The news was full of the end of the Cold War & the Gulf War was still weeks away. Here’s to reality, I said, raising my disposable cup.