chaos and uncertainty

In an attempt to find comfort, and some small measure of predictability, in the current chaos, I found these double pendulum animations. Staring at them, and realizing that the patterns are wild but bounded, nonrepeating but bounded, has improved my brain.

In COVID news, the mayor and my two neighbors who were sick with it are better and back to their usual work. The number of cases in the county is falling. The redder, more reactionary towns in my county are full of people who do not believe in virus or masks, parroting the mendacious individual in the white house, and they spent a lot of Memorial Day weekend out and frolicing.

It seems like half the things I read are "when the vaccine comes, when we all behave better, when we have better leadership" and the other half is "this virus will always be with us, vaccine development is very different from distribution and compliance, we will be doing this FOR.EV.ER" and I am getting whiplash.

I am also getting whiplash from Alice's planned top surgery. It was slated for June 2, and we both assumed it was postponed indefinitely. Then she got a call last week to come in for her pre-op appt and she was slated to go forward if the state allowed different standards for W. Mass than Boston. And then they called back a week later and gave her a new date for October. And also I don't know what to say to my kind and well meaning but nosy step-mother. So it was on, off, on, off again and I am feeling raw around the edges and can only imagine what Alice is feeling although she is mostly bummed about being too hot over the summer.

She and her crew are all dispersed, even the ones back home in town here are present but unreachable, and biding their time until the next thing happens. There are no jobs to apply for, there are no places to go to be young, there are no pieces of a summer of 2020 to have right now, so they visit by phone and group chat and various skype and discord things I do not understand to keep each other sane and cheerful.