I am sick to my stomach over what is happening in our country. It’s hard to keep writing. I feel like I should be penning something profound and relevant, but that’s not me. So I work on the fantasy and the mystery, and hope it will bring someone joy or relief from the pain of life today.

Streets on fire. I think it’s especially difficult for those of us who were there last time, 1965 to 1970. They called them race riots back those days; I remember. Then the King assassination, then Kent State. “Ohio” (Tin soldiers and Nixon comin’…) plays over and over in my head, though the shooting of privileged white students has little to do with the tragic murder of George Floyd.

I’d never seen anyone murdered before. I think it was cruel of the news media to force that on us. The sight can never be unseen, the sound of his voice will always be with me. Yes, these things must be shown and known, but they do it for ratings. I fear soon the news media will throw away all boundaries when it comes to airing violence.

There is no way to perceive what’s happening right now without foreseeing a state of impending doom. Maybe that’s what it takes to change. The upheaval of the sixties changed things: now we recycle. But many of the points we tried to make back then faltered. The hippies grew up and chose capitalism over the communal ideals they once touted. Sixty years later, complacency has settled in, and underneath the surface, old ideas have festered.

With the onset of the Trump regime, those values of racism, greed, and hatred have been reignited and encouraged. Trump himself gives credence to those white boy sentiments. He loves to poke the bear with a stick and will stop at nothing to inflict his own personal version of hell on those who don’t agree with him. That he came to power in the first place, and that people still believe in him, proves the crack in our system, the wound that must be healed before we can go on.

Maybe there will be a civil war, but I doubt it. I’d personally like to see Washington, Oregon, and California become their own country. It’s obvious the country has split into smaller sub-countries. Too bad. I wanted to move toward the one-world paradigm, not away from it.

But I am in lockdown due to the other major crisis affecting us right now. My perceptions come through social medial and the news, from what people say, from what I’ve learned from my near-seventy years on Earth, and from logic. The view outside my window hasn’t changed. (Though oddly enough, the music coming through the window is a remake of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth”) The sun is out. The cats are sleeping. All I can do is be the best person I can be today, one day at a time.

If I view time as a river and see its movement in events, then it’s safe to say none of this stops here. I believe in a Higher Power that will guide us to a new place. I believe the good in the human heart outweighs the bad. With that in mind, I look forward to what comes next. It’s all I can do. That, and take care of cats.