screaming into the void.

a letter to a friend in despair.

I’ve spent the first quarter of ‘24 bearing witness to a friend in despair over social media, their tweets becoming progressively unhinged as the months have gone by, the election looming over us, inching further and further into our space, until it’s just so uncomfortably close when really all you’re trying to do is smoke this joint and enjoy the party. And by party I mean being peaceful in my apartment reading books, writing, and making art and still calling them tweets while the world falls down all around me.

It is not just their despair, though - despair at the state of the world and our country or whathaveyou, it is their incredibly self-righteous anger at everything and everyone and every circumstance that got us here, that has happened and that is happening now - everyone and everything except the powers that be. Bernie Bros were the fall of America! Student protestors are dumb wokes and pro-Hamas! These are just two among many such opinions of theirs on these contentious current affairs.

Which isn’t to say I don’t understand. Class issues, Gaza, neoLib Dems get under my skin in much the same way, like, truly, madly, deeply there’s more than enough to be angry and or worried about these days, what with our climate heating up, the election coming up, just about the only thing NOT up is the balance in working folx bank accounts - am I right, friends? You feel that anxiety, that anger churning inside of you at such depravity and greed, at the injustice, the wretchedness of it all until you just have to scream or punch something or someone.

Or post on the interwebs. I know this because I once was that guy.

Like, for real. A typical day some months ago at the House of Ellington, when I had MSNBC running for just about ten hours a day - seven, sometimes six ay till noon, and then on again at four, sometimes three until Rachel was over at seven, lest I miss any new, anger increasing, breaking news. I felt it my duty, my moral obligation as an intelligent, engaged citizen that I bear witness to the presidency of Dump Truck Donnie and his merry band of fascists and all of the disasters and tragedies they hadst wrought down upon us. Grist for innumerable pointedly composed tweets and a series of essays and also my diminished mental health, obviously.

I’m not sure when it happened for me, if it’s a different bench mark for each of us - I imagine it is, but go on like that long enough and feel that anger start to feed on itself, growing stronger and more toxic within you, creating a frightening feedback loop in your psyche, social media a bunch of Ivy League Sheev Palpatines whispering into the ears of the algorithm,

“Give into your anger. It is unavoidable, it is your destiny.”

I am no guru by any stretch, or even all that well adjusted for that matter, so I would invite you to take this with a grain - but I’ve found when I took a step back, slowed down that fire roll, that I found the space to consider that perhaps starting and ending each day shouting into the void of the endless alarm, doom anger scroll was not the healthiest approach to thriving in our most bleak and dying world. In this space, as well, I’ve realized that energy is hella contagious, you know, and really? Are you happy infecting your fellow humans? Spreading that negativity around like foxtail seeds, because it really doesn’t seem that you are. I mean, I certainly wasn’t. Imma remind you here of what that OG Master Yoda once said,

“Beware. Anger, fear, oppression. The Dark Side are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.”

Word, right?

I am writing this missive in a place called Radical Acceptance and would invite you to join me. The weather’s nice, shit’s still crazy here, there’s a whole lotta work to be done. But it’s quiet enough so that we can talk to each other when you get here.

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