As I write this, the news is consumed by events in Minnesota. Specifically...
...which is just a kind of punctuation mark in a larger story about control, violence and the desire of one man to retain political power for the rest of his life. A story that is still being written and with an ending that can't come soon enough. We know the ending already, by the way, in that his mortal coil will fail at some point, and the United States will be left to sort through the damage. I suspect that I won't live to see how long that will truly take. Maybe that's a good thing.
The last time I felt this way was during the events of 9.11, when it all just seemed so overwhelming. This comes from a place inside of me whereby I can't really fathom an event, where it seems surreal in a very horrible way. I do feel a certain degree of anxiety that is widely generalized, a kind of pall that falls over me where nothing I seem to do takes me out of my own head for any length of time. I tried cleaning, which usually works, but that didn't help. I'll do some work stuff later, which may help, but that's got its own set of issues. Writing this is helping...a little bit...which I suppose is better than nothing.
I did try to divorce myself from the news and social media, but that didn't last long. Like a moth attracted to a lamppost on a dark night, I feel drawn to the horribleness of this event. It's like part of me is searching for a big revelation, but yet nothing is in the offing. There is, instead, a kind of societal rot that has been creeping into the collective us, where part of the net product is trying to understand why our government is killing American citizens. It's a kind of end to something that we once took for granted.
Let's just hope that some sense of Grace returns to this country. We desperately need it.
(*) Including my oldest daughter, Katrina.
