More Germans… EXTRAWELT is yet another that captures the vibe. At some point even the Vaporwave and Chillwave isn’t going to balance the weight of the darkness and I’m going to have to dive headfirst into K-pop to escape the fear and loathing. Not today though.

It hit me this morning that it is, in fact, the end of September. This year has really been a trip. So much like an actual psychedelic foray, time has either crept or disappeared entirely. This morning it feels like we were sucked into a glitch in the space/time continuum and rocketed forward six months. It really seems like only last night I stood on the A-train platform in Manhattan and took a picture of the… emptiness. It was rush hour and there were perhaps a half dozen of us waiting for the train. I had just said goodnight to the last of my co-workers, fully expecting to see them again in a couple weeks. I had been very agnostic about the whole COVID-19 affair and couldn’t wrap my head around the degree of disruption it would bring about. I went back to Brooklyn and had dinner at a restaurant on Dekalb Avenue and that was my last night out, really, excluding a couple evenings sitting on a boat talking about “the new normal.”

Now it’s the final days of August. Everything that I thought that the summer of 2020 would be, the whole year really, has turned out very differently. I can’t even imagine what the families of any of the 180,000+ victims of the virus are thinking this morning. Are they thinking at all? Or have they given up trying to make sense of it? My only advice would be to stop trying to make sense and honor the grief. Pestilence is actually as horribly random as one could imagine. The impact may or may not have been lessened by earlier action but I’d give up on blame for the moment anyway. Honor the grief and try to live well despite the cruel meaninglessness of the virus, and of the people all over the place screaming at each other. I’m not being dismissive. Pestilence is random and very powerful. We, as humans, don’t easily concede that invisible things are more powerful than we are. Sure, some of us talk about gods and devils, but belief in the supernatural may only make us more angry when these gods can’t defeat these other things. Where is meaning then, when our protector fails to save us? So that’s my advice. Just acknowledge the loss. Honor the grief. These horrible things do happen and we will miss the people they take when they pass through.

It does seem almost an insult though that time itself has crumbled from beneath our feet and left us in September in just a blink. It’s been one loss or tragedy or act of mindless violence after another, and rather than numb or inure anyone it’s been traumatizing for so many people.

Okay, full stop on this, for now. Maybe the K-pop wouldn’t be such a bad idea today. Perhaps I’m been deluding myself about the degree to which this has affected me and the toll that 2020 has taken. I’m going to sign off this one and let it be. I’m going to admit that despite my successes in making this a productive time personally, it’s all caught up to me.