My neighbor is having tree work done and the grinding 
is not conducive to my meditation. There are evil-doers 
in Congress that I want to grind up like that, but reading 
Hannah Arendt last night I recalled it’s not just the leaders 
but also my neighbors that have done terrible things. 

My neighbor borders her yard with American flags 
every holiday she can, and before the last election 
she hung a black stars-and-stripes from her porch. 
The way I read it was, “Evil lives here,” but the flag 
commerce site shows that it honors fallen police. 

In that way it’s like all art: the more you know, 
the more you understand. Maybe it was the 
Trump signs that threw me off. She had sold me 
her wheelbarrow just after we moved here. Only 
twenty-five bucks. I was so happy. It was a beautiful 

tool. She even offered to drive it over, but I didn’t 
mind walking it around the corner. “What 
a great neighbor,” I had thought. And even now, 
though the thought has occurred to me, I would 
never feed her into the chipper. That’s not catharsis. 

And this morning as I meditate, I notice the tension 
in my shoulders and even my teeth. It doesn’t help 
to try to figure out where it comes from. The only 
thing to do is get back to the breathing, noticing 
who it is that’s doing it, the grinding.