Hard to say why these frozen images give me such comfort. It’s an odd nostalgia for a place I’ve never been. Homesickness for someone else’s home. People fled these frozen, northern cities to live here in places like Brighton Beach and parts of Chicago and Detroit. They didn’t make it out of the cold, but then again, everyone brings something with them when they run away from home. Some memento. A reminder.

Odd to me that as we move into Christmas they aren’t talking much about the bombs and bullets but we all know that hasn’t slowed down. They’ve got us all hung up on the angry words that keep bringing us back to editorials where we are available to create “impressions” to measure online advertising. The attention economy… Well, you’ve got it. We’re a captive audience. And now Elon Musk has started ejecting journalists from Twitter so there’s no chance at all of anyone getting anything approximating the truth, except by accident, but there’s no fact checking. Well, not that all the journalists were doing all that great either.

Strange times…

A cold rain settled in yesterday and that was actually comforting. It might have been nice to see snow like outside the city, but this works. Not a lot of foot traffic outside. It’s mostly quiet except for the cars on the highway. And like the rain settled in, a cold melancholy has settled into my soul. It’s not terrible. It’s like an old friend returning to have a sit and discuss a hard past, and maybe make a few apologies and amends. I don’t know. It’s not entirely unwelcome and that may seem strange to some, but if you know, you know. You get used to it after a while. It’s not so bad when you get use to it, and fucking hell, I’m used to it.

I’ll be all right.