chaos and uncertainty

[dancing_crow]

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.

Comments

[clevermanka]

biding their time until the next thing happens
What a life. Poor kids.

[dancing_crow]

yes. It is hard on everyone, but this time you can't get back, and when you are young it is a larger percentage of your entire life to date and this weighs on them, I think. And yet, to be forced to take time after finishing school is kind of luxurious. No one has any standing to tell them to get a grip and start doing ...something. They are all certainly safe; fed, sheltered, wifi-ed and with free access to friends. But the part of a summer idyll like this is that makes it memorable is the pack of you all together, doing dumb post college things and creating all the in jokes and "remember when"s you will rely on for grounding friendships that will sustain you for the next decade.

They are, apart and together, my hope for the future, and I love them, and want things to get better sooner.

I, um, have a LOT of feelings about this.

[clevermanka]