these are unedited and unfiltered thoughts that I don’t know where else to place. They are not witty or rehearsed or arranged well. But I’m so tired of the manic hamster wheel thought processing. every day we wake up to new horrors, new but familiar tragedies. We wake up and still must move through the structure of our days within our small micro lives in tiny pockets that feel blown wide open and so terribly raw and unsafe and laughably normal. I’m feeding a rabbit and making cheese toast for my young daughter, and then legitimately thinking about today being the day when it finally happens to me. Will she die at school? Will my adrenaline over ride my artificial hips and allow me to sprint toward her school when I get the alert? I physically cannot run but maybe i can under extreme duress? And then I’m drinking my coffee and packing her lunch and checking my calendar at work to try and get my arms around my day because I’m successful and accomplished and am great at my job. And then I’m driving to work still thinking about her safety and my safety and will this be the day it all ends? and what good is being great at your job when your the one whose kid gets shot at school? Nothing fucking matters anymore after that. It’s just an unfair dice roll isn’t it? That’s all it is.
I think at some point the chemicals in our body that weave us through these very real and fluid mental shifts become poisonous. we were not designed to exist in this sticky dread that never washes off. Not designed to consume at the rate required of today’s normalcy. Not designed to digest and receive the infinite feedback loop of our algorithm, our content creators, our friends. Access to everyone’s rough draft hot take responses and opinions. Uninformed, unreasonable, inhuman. This is not okay.
it can be two things at the same time. It can be revulsion of violence and rebuking of tragedy on a human level. It can also be unabashed indifference at the irony of the loss. The lack of sadness or empathy toward someone who never extended that to those he mocked, shamed, condemned. He is the result of his ideology. He is the manifestation of what he believed. But I am more afraid of the tidal wave of hatred and division that will follow. It’s not the earthquake but the tsunami that makes me so filled with dread. Modern day monsters should not be martyred.
Long ago, so long ago that we cannot even comprehend, when the earth formed and millions of years of evolution allowed for life to form, there were no rules, no laws, no measure of worth. No lines drawn amongst the land to include or exclude. We made up all of the rules we kill each other over. We created the framework to believe that some people are worthy of more or less than others. We just made it all up, and now we cannot even exist around each other because of it.
I think about the newspaper and how for so long, people consumed the news that was objective and truthful without any slant, and then they formed their thoughts about it and moved on. there was no ability to read anything more than that newspaper. And then you reconcile your thoughts yourself, filter them through your own lived experience and maybe you discussed it at some point with those closest to you, but then you moved on. And now, even if you can access objective truth, you must consume so much more than just the data. You reconcile and adopt the feedback and views of others because it’s instantly and unavoidably available for consumption. Adopt them as yours. Feel validated. It’s part of the echochamber experience, it goes both ways. I wish we could remove the access of the infinite loop and go back to the one lane highway for awhile. What if we just kept our hands and our words to ourselves forever?
I’ve had a hard time admitting this to myself, but in the last 10 years, i’ve watched the church and the concept of God (as a christian nation God) become something that makes me recoil. There is so much hate and misunderstanding at the root of “Christian Love”. it’s shrouded in disguise and is so incredibly hpprochritical. I do not feel safe around evangelical individuals anymore. You support the president? Call yourself someone who loves Jesus? Sorry those two things cannot co-exist. Your righteousness is rooted in hate and everyone sees it but you. You are small and narrow and misguided and ugly and I want no where near your or whatever your peddling.
I think about the earth and how small it really is against the landscape of the universe, the metaverse. the infinite blackness that we can know and measure (and then what we cannot) and i feel so sad that this is what we are doing with the one breath we get at all of this vastness. How horribly tragic it is to use the one whiff of a life to stand at opposite ends of the made up rules and kill each other over them.
though the water around me boils, the sticky dread will not wash off.
The Wayfaring Friend 