I guess I can continue to call these entires “World War III Radio” despite that the Depp/Heard debacle replace Russia’s Ukraine invasion in the headlines and people have seemingly forgotten that they were pretending to care about the plight of mothers in Kiev. The world feels no less unsafe than it did in those early days when the tanks were rolling in and rockets were leveling maternity hospitals. Hell, there was no line for borscht and pierogi yesterday at Veselka in Manhattan. There was no wait and the food came quickly. So… are we at war? I’m going to argue that everything is just as well fucked this morning as it was two months ago, so we’re going to stick with it. I don’t know how RAWCATS feel about it either but we’re going to stick with them. Nothing like a little barberbeats/downtempo/vaporwave to ease into a day. Yup, we’re going to stick with it for now. It’s a good start.

It was a mellow afternoon right in the middle of The Apocalypse. We had lunch. We wandered. We shopped. We visited. We shopped more. We had dessert. It was lovely, really. You’d never know that young men with assault rifles were stewing in basements here and there, plotting their big statements. Planning to create havoc and kill children and old women out shopping.

Pause here, and don’t get it twisted. I’m not making light of anything. I shouldn’t have to explain that but I will. I’m not taking the piss, but I’m surely not missing the irony that lovely afternoons are happening all over in the very same moment that we are slipping further into hell. That’s the whole foundation of the fuckedupness. We are having special moments and maybe we are supposed to. Not that we are supposed to be oblivious to the impending horrors, but that we are still supposed to treasure these fragile moments with the knowledge that we are blessed in those moments.

But aware that they are just lucky moments… that’s all. We did nothing to deserve them, the same as we did nothing to deserve anything bad that might come next. Fate and The Universe exist in a blatant disregard for any of that. Good and bad don’t exist in a gas explosion. A person is either in the way or they are not. Still… be thankful for every second. The next second isn’t guaranteed.

All that said, yesterday was lovely. I woke up and went to sleep in a state of loving and being loved. And in a state of knowing it… living in the opportunity to feel grateful.

Maybe that should have been my first step today, to acknowledge my fortune and express gratitude. Maybe that’s what the purpose of today’s post is, to express that. It started out bleak but I’m really still just trying to sort out how all this good shit and bad shit can co-exist, because it does. Good and bad are the same. They skitter along happily holding hands and we never know which of them is going to bump into us, knocking us down or lifting us up.

Gratitude.

Selah.