Choke Chain… from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, not that this fun fact has anything to do with it. I’m realizing now that I know as much about Milwaukee as I do Borneo, which is essentially nothing. What do we call this music? EBM? Electro? Dark-electro? Industrial? All of the above? Yes, we’ll go with all of the above. It ain’t pretty. At the same time, it’s beautiful, as long as you’re willing to expand your definition of beauty well beyond the Disney princess threshold into apocalyptic hellscape. Well, well beyond, and well into.

I woke up well in advance of the alarm today, unable to resettle into any kind of meaningful sleep. It’s some kind of spiritual/psychic agitation. It’s one of those days when I wake up with the fear of… Fear of? The sense of impending doom, the other boot about to drop. The tremors. The sense that something is about to go terribly wrong. I wonder if this feeling is something I’ve absorbed from the atmosphere around me. There are certainly enough psychic toxins in the air. Or is it an inside job? Have my personal demons, with whom I’ve developed a rather congenial, platonic relationship, are doing me for a piss-take this week? Or have I subconsciously done the math and perceive that I’ve somehow fucked myself over and there’s about to be a comeuppance?

Self-awareness has escaped me. Any of the above possibilities are equally likely or unlikely. It’s my inability to discern the source of the tension that’s most disturbing. The Crocodiles would say that I need to get right with God, whoever that is. I don’t think that they agree on that themselves, but they’re probably right. If there’s a higher power in my life then it’s time to give all this to it, or whatever its pronouns are.

It may all be a lot more simple than one would imagine. The world is opening up and there’s a lot more exposure to other energies. I’m not safely ensconced in my solo routines and the security of home. It’s definitely been difficult to readjust to the levels of face to face human interactions as I head back to the office and meetings and my responsibilities in the face to face world. I’m coming home each evening, exhausted. Weary. More than a little bit frightened.

So… I don’t know. Time to change things up to adjust to the readjustment.

Maybe.

Maybe what’s bothering me is that after nearly two years and just under a million deaths, very little has changed and few people have any intention of changing. Maybe it’s the nagging question and the frightening answer.

What have we learned?

Not a fucking thing.

Is this the truth? This shit isn’t even over, and I don’t mean the pandemic. All the other stuff actually seems to be escalating and we seem on the verge of violence. It just seems to me that something is on the verge of popping off and that it’s not just a question of if, but of when. When seems sooner rather than later and you know how it is: you never need to piss so badly until you’re right outside the bathroom door. It just seems that something big is about to happen. Bigger than we’ve seen in the last two years.

Buckle up but let go of the fear. Give it to The Universe. This is bigger than me.