Follow the River North

I don’t honestly know what’s wrong with me today. I know that it’s some wicked brew created by Trump’s visit to the peninsula this week, this year on the whole, and waking up this morning to find out that 26 people had been murdered at their morning service in their small-town church yesterday. I read it just as I was about to head out the door, because that’s part of my job now — to read the news just as I’m about to walk out the door, and on the train on the way to the studio, and on the bus on the way home, and before I go to bed at night.

I’ve been working at the radio show for three months, and how many times have I had to scramble to add condolences for some tragedy in the middle of a broadcast? I’ve lost count. Because they keep rolling in. And there’s nothing special about this one from yesterday, and I think that’s why I can’t seem to get it together today. Because I realized that there’s nothing special about this one, and that there’s nothing special about any of it anymore. Just another wave that washes over me, and for a moment, I lose my breath. And the wave rolls out. But I know another one is already on its way. And you can never remember a specific wave, because it’s the waves — their collectiveness, their unceasing movement toward you — that makes them what they are.

It’s not a good year for part of your job to be checking the news.

There’s something underneath it all that I can’t quite get to the bottom of, but I can feel myself getting closer. Something about how most of us are doing the best we can with what we have, but “the best we can” doesn’t mean the same thing to all of us. And I’m tired of lone wolf arguments, not because they’re not valid, but because they are unequally applied. And I’m tired of some bodies mattering more than others. I’m tired of immigration being a liability we have to immediately address, but guns being nothing but a tool that can be used for both good and evil. And I’m tired of thoughts and prayers, not only because they don’t accomplish anything, but also because they’re all I feel like I have in most cases.

Thoughts and prayers, and screaming into the void, which is mostly what blogging is.

So, to badly hatchet and paste together, I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable. I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses.