State of Emergency

We live in a state of emergency.

Rising fascism. Mass incarceration. Children in cages. Continued indigenous displacement. Black and brown people shot in the streets, or in their own homes.

Poisoned water. Raging wildfires. Record temperatures. Sudden snow storms.

We live in a constant, rolling, apocalypse. A state of emergency that never ends. This apocalypse has been brought about by a few ultra-wealthy people and a handful of corporations, and many government officials.

Unfortunately, the culprits are the ones best sheltered from the immediate effects.

Our nervous systems are on high alert, we rest uneasily. If we rest at all.

And yet, we care for one another. We go to work. We feed our families. We offer kindness where we can. We protest injustice at work, in prisons, and in the streets. We grow food. We feed our neighbors. We donate. We call. We write. We organize. We do our best.

We write music. We scratch out drawings on endless pads of paper. We tell stories.

Even in the midst of our despair, hope seeds itself. Hope seeds itself in every action, and every kindness, and every attempt to create something that simply was not there before we tried.

This is our world now. So how do we help our nervous system's calm down enough to live another day?

We inhale. We pause. We exhale. We start again. 

Find your way to plug in and disrupt the systems of injustice, oppression, and fascism. 

And find your way to recenter and breathe. 

To help, here is 9 Minutes in a Crisis, funded by my Patreon supporters back in march. Please, take the time to listen and to breathe. 

Be well - Thorn

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