I cant think

This is supposed to  be a place for tempered reflection, but events of the past couple of days have left my  mind  scrambled.  The police murder of  George Floyd in Minneapolis (which I still dont have the  stomach to watch on video), the ensuing riots encompassing the country, the Minneapolis mayor’s pivot from demanding  a murder indictment for the cop to mobilizing  the National Guard, Trump’s  oscillation from calling for shooting of looters to phoning Floyd’s  family and then to threatening the use of dogs and weaponry on White House protestors,  the battle between him and the CEO of his main mouthpiece, Twitter, the complete eclipse of  Corona Virus news of the last three  months by the perception of danger now reduced and by everyone’s having enough  of lockdown, and finally, this afternoon, the  glorious launch of Elon Musk’s Space-X rocket. Humans ugly and beautiful, impotent and omnipotent. No matter how much I’d like to turn away from news,  the  pace and magnitude of the drama keeps me captive.

I tried this morning,  as I have several times this week, to avoid it by taking a long walk with the dog up horse canyon on polyland–and by working at the farm a couple of times a day.  But back home, after the compulsory nap,  I’m back into the NYTimes or Google news, lapping up the latest.  Out in the woods I phoned Joe to try to set up a backpacking trip in Idaho as one way to break routine, now  that air travel has just become  permitted, but he hasnt answered the call.

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