In America, November 10, 2024

Relationships are more valuable than politics. And we need more than ever to remember that.

I’m walking to the creek in the dark, Acre and I, and a moon is rising. Early November is almost always cold... A wet sort of cold. This one is no different. The sun breaks through a bit during the day, but more than likely we see both sun and gray throughout the day. Today it did.

I went to the creek this morning too, as I do every day. It was around 7 and I’d just woken up. My brain was a little bit off. Foggy. And a little annoyed too. For no good reason. Annoyed at no one and no thing in particular, just internally so. Do you ever have that? Normally I’d just go make a tea (sometimes if I’m feeling dehydrated and it’s before anyone else is awake and the weekend, I’ll have a dandelion chai or something before coffee… It makes me feel like I’m taking an extra step in my health and helps me stretch my hot drinks further into the day.) Or just straight to a coffee… And I’ll sit in the living room in the corner on the green sofa by the lamp and I’ll write in my journal or on my computer for an hour or so. But my brain… I don’t like the lack of clarity. I don’t like the fog. I’d had a dream about being in highschool again, and I was annoyed because part of me knew it was a dream, and was annoyed to be in such a setting. I just wanted to wake up. It was an absolutely nothing of a dream, except I couldn’t wake from it. When I did I didn’t risk going back into sleep.

When clarity is lacking I have a go to solution: I go to the creek. I didn’t have my swimsuit and didn’t want to wake Ella so I decided to find a place where no one would be around, so I could just go in naked. My baptists roots still make conservative in this regard.

I don’t hesitate getting in the cold water. I step in, find the deep spot and submerge. Then I raise my face slowly from the water, making sure my head is cold before coming up, and sit, head out, but the rest submerged in the cold. The cold is overwhelming. You almost forget to breathe. But I’ve got a pace down, that I tell myself makes the cold fully acceptable. It works. It’s not at all what I see the likes of Wim Hoff doing, but it’s slow and calm and I have an inhale and exhale paced to around a 4 second circuit. Within 15 breaths, or about a minute, my brain was clear. There are no distractions in cold water. There are trees around. There are leaves fluttering about. There are rocks. Occasionally an out of season insect. There is the sound of the moving water, and the sound of the motion of air, and birds that fly through it, and this morning a few deer just up from the bank on the other side, but there are no distractions. Not from here. Within two mintutes I’ve passed well beyond clarity in cold, to just clarity. By minute three I’m not feeling very cold. My brain feels like it has just been refueled, topped off even after full from sleep. Sleep is a great place to rest, to clarify, to clear, but sitting in the cold creek refuels me for  day. Better than coffee. Better than food. I’ll get to both of those later, but after roughly 4 minutes submerged, I’m ready to get out, dry off, bike home. I take my time. In my head I know it’s cold, but that is not what I feel. It’s slightly in the background, but I’m awake. That is what I feel. Awake.

I pull on my layers, topped off with a down jacket, tuck the towel under arm and Acre nudges me for a treat. I reach in my pocket, have him jump up on the log, and give him a piece from the bag that lives in my pocket. He runs ahead. We work our way through the woods back to my bike, then home. Hot coffee. Now sitting down to write.

It’s been a busy week. We elected a new president. Unless you’ve been off media altogether you couldn’t help but notice. And I’ve been on media, so I’ve been around the story for months. I’m not into msm tv, or even online, but the podcasts I listen to, my X feed, and just simply having friends scattered among the different internet channels, Instagram, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Substack, Reddit, etc… everywhere at least someone was talking about the election. There has been no hope of escape. And it’s been a wild ride.

But it’s last night. I’m walking to the creek in the dark with Acre and his gently red blinking collar. The clouds are overhead and kind of thick, heavy threatening water. I like walking in this weather. No one is out. Maybe we’ll see a bear.

I think this time of year the sudden lack of light hits me hard. I think it creates in me a desperation for being outdoors I don’t have in the summer, because in the summer we have so much light it’s far easier to be outdoors, late into the evening. But this time of year my body, going through a shift, takes sleep seriously, and I get tired earlier. And with so much dark, I do sleep sooner. But I need to get out. And today even more than normal.

I’m not a terribly social person, but the few friends I have I take hold to close importance. I don’t think that is unusual. I think most of us are friendly with lots of people but have only a handful of truly close friends. That’s how I operate anyways.

But this election cycle has been wild. I don’t hide what I think with my friends. That is the point of friends, right? We accept each other as is, differences be damned.

But in our current media day in age, where media has inundated so many hours of our lives that some take it more seriously than their actual outside life, there has been a message spreading that differences are not to be accepted, and are reason to shut down relationships, be them friendships or family. A difference of opinion to a certain sub-sect of the population is enough to throw all history to the wind. You see it. It’s happening. I know at least a handful of families that have had it happen in the last week. For real. It’s wild. It’s the problem that arises with a media that throws the term “facist” around with nonchalance.

Let’s pause a moment because I think this day and age I still have to. I don’t care about your politics, which is to say, I don’t judge you based on your politics. I don’t ever want to pretend your thoughts should be anyones but your own. And in that vein, I hope you don’t care about mine. I’m interested in watching the world, moving through it, listening, learning, observing, contributing my best as I move through it, and while I have opinions on things like war, use of taxes, protecting old forests, and foreign policy in general, I don’t expect to ever meet anyone that thinks the same thing as me. I’m not here to make judgment on anyone’s politics. In some corners I’ll be judged just for saying that, which is crazy talk and I give no fucks about that. We are all allowed to have our own ideas, and in fact, it is the only sort of life and people I want to be around… people that aren’t threatened by difference of opinion and are able to look beyond rhetoric.

So this week I saw a lot of division created around politics in America. And it’s heartbreaking to see. Especially knowing that it is in large part created by people driven only by profits and by governments only working to create division. Foreign governments. Playing games with the American public’s mind and no one seems to be talking about it, let alone realizing it. But it’s happening. Division to create corporate profits, shift political power, and weaken the social bonds in a wild game of international power struggles.

Yes, the Chinese are trying to create division here. As are the Russians. If this surprises you, I agree. But it’s real.

And it’s working. Friends are sending friends notes stating they aren’t sure they can still be friends. Families are calling family members to tell them they won’t be there for holidays. All based on stories they have heard from a media that provides endless lies which have become convincing because of the number of cycles of repetition.

And the point isn’t to judge the people who have believed the lies. The point is the people that are doing the lying. They need to ignored. We need to quit listening to them and feeding them more money, more power. We need to recognize that our society is being manipulated with direct intention to cause division. This is a geopolitical strategy that has become 100X more effective since the advent of the internet and mobile phone. We each carry in our hand a messaging device for corrupt corporations and foreign enterprises who carry nefarious intent. The first step to solve this is to realize it. The second is to learn to ignore the voices. It’s in each of our power to decide how to think about all this for ourselves, but lately a lot of the population have been relying on others to not only source their information but let others interpret it. But just as there was a revolution when the Bible was first translated for the common folk, so now we are at a pivotal moment in information. The internet is still relatively free in terms of speech. We’ve gotten a glimpse at the people trying to censor it. We need to ensure they get no further. We also need to learn to gather the information for ourselves, and interpret it, not only based on what we gather online, but what we gather from our eyes and ears in the real world around us. And this to my most important point, which I constantly remind myself… to be in the real world. Talk to real people. Don’t let ideas threaten you. Be curious about what others think and why. Discussion, not judgement is what leads to individual change.

I witnessed from both a distance and up close how this division emerges. Roughly. Harshly. Without much forethought. Texts sent. Messages left. It’s gotten ugly, but I’m optimistic many will realize that opinions and ideas are made better only by discussion, not excommunication. If we abandon family and friends over ideas, are we not just admitting how fragile our thoughts have become and how unsure of them we are?

It’s night, and I’m walking to the creek. Stepping away from the digital abyss, which is not the blackhole it portrays itself as, you can escape it. It’s easy. I put my phone down and walk away;  it is tethered to the wall for the night, charging. I’m out here here doing the same, charging.

More later this week.