ando

No connection Disconnected Empty pit of dead emotions Barren soil Learned too late No branch can grow here No chance at life

Why do I have this feeling, this urge to disappear, to erase my existence To go without a name, without notice Less than a shadow Atoms in a breeze, too faint to detect What holds me back from melding with a sea of normalcy?

distant in space but close in mind flickering light that leads the way powerful and certain that it can change the world, even the heavens but loving and warm attracting the smaller and weaker providing nourishment and sustainment for all to benefit if we tease its flames, will it burn even brighter, or go supernova?

At the start of this week a new visitor came to our office A mouse a Mouse!? Only here to eat crumbs carelessly left aside But a mouse, here?! “Oh, I'll just work elsewhere today” “If you need me, I'll be working over there for now” And so I sit here, alone in our office Wearing a mask, all alone Wondering, why are they so afraid of a small creature only looking for food and shelter While an unseen tiger lurks behind every cough beside every smiling face in the midst of every crowd And I realize, I'd rather take my chance with the mouse.

a warm kindling to a raging inferno everybreatheverythoughteverystepneedtogive wrongandrightandblackandwhiteloseallsignificance just breathe but it's not enough burningandburningandburningandburning thethoughtstheanxietiesthestrugglesthesuccessesthefatigue then, gone in the ashes, what remains? the promise of new life? but at what cost? in a week, a day, a month, a year, a decade, a lifetime?

snif snif a force of habit with no reward or punishment snif snif a blessing and curse from the Virus ambivalent about abnormality snif snif who’s to say what’s good or bad when it’s all sterile to the senses snif snif

Several years back, the closest person I’ve had to a brother had posted several songs and EPs to his YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@_johnnydenim). Unfortunately, he has since deleted most of his older songs. I think it’s because of a bad breakup he was going through at the time of writing many of the songs. One song in particular, titled “Out of the Loop”, resonated with me and I still listen to it in my head from time to time. I can still remember most of the lyrics, which were (unsurprisingly) looped many times during the song:

I'm so out of the loop I don't know what to do Can you Help me through This night-mare

It's hard for me to imagine the depths of what he was going through when he wrote this and other songs from that EP. Even though I would almost call him a brother, I have barely talked to him in the last decade. Not for any bad reason, but that is just my personality. If someone or something isn't forced in front of me regularly, I quickly start to erase it from my thoughts and habits, until it is nothing more than a faint wisp of remembrance. Or to say it another way, I am very much “out of the loop” with most things going on with people that are not immediately in my daily life, even if I (should) care about them otherwise. At this point, I have very little connection to his current self. But, those songs remind me of my past and bring about a strange longing for home. I can feel the sub-suburban, near-dystopian futility, Midwestern skate-punk of his youth, which I was much more closely involved with. He wrote these songs and others about his love and heartbreak of the time. While I feel a sense of nostalgia listening and thinking about his sounds, about his struggles in life, considering them in more depth brings about a bitterness and unease with my own life. My “out of the loop” makes me almost actively avoid contact and interaction with people. Due to that, how could I ever manage to make a connection to someone on a level that would move my inner self in that kind of way, that I would be able to share my soul with another and be enriched by it. A connection that if severed would cause me pain. It's something that I have slowly been thinking about for many years now, in particular after a few fleeting attempts at online dating. I think ultimately, with the way I am, it's better that I just accept that I will likely spend my life alone (or rather, probably become a crazy cat person). I think accepting this realization has been better for my overall health, but it still doesn't make the longing completely go away. Part of me still hopes that perhaps one day, someone will be forced into my life in a way that enables such a connection. But until that happens or I pass away, I will likely continue to remain “out of the loop”.

the Earth is on fire the Air is on fire my eyes and mouth are on fire Important people argue with fire in their Words and Accusations we can only hope that fire remains in the hearts of those who fight for love, justice, and freedom before Fire consumes us all

Blue or Pink? Out or In? Strong or Soft? But what if neither describes me? Powerful or powerless? Oppressor or oppressed? Emotionless or alive? But where do I fit? Life isn’t always binary Any maybe neither am I

“Power attracts those easily corrupted” is one of the many themes present in Frank Herbert’s Dune series, particularly in several of the later books. A re-examination of the more usual idiom “Power corrupts”; he suggests that it is not so much that those who end up in power get corrupted by it, but rather that those who seek out power are also easily corrupted by it (implying that they were perhaps always corrupt to some degree). While Dune was finished decades ago, many of Herbert’s themes and observations are just as relevant today, if not more so than when Dune was first written. This observation about power corruption, in the context of government and leadership, really stuck out to during a recent read-through of the series. The recently unveiled blatant corruption of several members of the supreme court of the United States, tax cuts and loopholes for large corporations and the wealthy, along with renewed attacks on women’s and minority’s rights have all shown one of the ugly sides of current US politics: people in power abusing their power in order to benefit themselves and insulate their position, at whatever and any cost to those below them. In retrospect, sadly, this is probably not much worse than the usual status quo. Realistically, no system of government will ever be perfect, but it is so disheartening to see how much worse the US handles so many things related to the well-being of it citizens, compared to pretty much any other first-world country. Too much of the “American Dream” is just “Do whatever you need to do to get Yours; fuck everyone and everything else”. There is so little sense of community and doing what is right for everyone, not just for your benefit. As an aside, I wholeheartedly recommend and think that more people from the US should spend an extended period of time abroad (like a year or two at least) in another country; I spent about seven years living in Japan, and the perspective I gained from that experience was incredibly enlightening. Unfortunately, short of Russia or China dropping a few bombs on Washington D.C. or another civil war, I don’t really see the situation changing much in the short term, because so many issues are deeply rooted. But even then, what is there to prevent these blatant abuses of power from simply happening again, continuing the same cycles and repeating the same histories?

These issues led me to think about ways that “anti-corruption” could be built into a political system. Short of everyone suddenly becoming perfect moralists, I think it would be better to have a system which actively prevents and avoids situations which could lead to conflicts of interest and personal corruption. My idea was quite simple; the basis already exists and is used in the judicial system. For criminal trials where “unbiased” judgment is warranted, we select a (well, ideally) random panel of jurors to evaluate the available data and make a judgment on its implications. Would not a very similar system work for the main arms of the US political system? For example, the representatives for the House and Senate (both state and federal) are selected by a lottery, with terms of just a few years for each person, with no extension or re-election. Pay the representative a standard wage, ensure they can return to their usual employment without disruption, and strictly forbid gifts during their service. Anyone registered to vote should be entered into the lottery. Similar to serving on a jury, there should be acceptable exclusions, for example due to health, childcare, possible conflicts of interest, or for essential work that can’t easily be interrupted by service (e.g., a doctor could elect out if it would interfere too much with patient care). In this way, the People would hopefully be represented by the People. You cannot make a “career” out of high-level public service, nor can representatives be easily bankrolled by corporations. Representatives spend their service judging if bills are improving the well-being and livelihood of the public. Likely, this requires that legislation be strictly written and communicated in simple language; it must be clearly understandable by everyone, not just the elite few who went to law school. And as a another guard against lobbying and conflicts of interest, it would probably be beneficial to strictly forbid any and all political parties; allowing for such concentrations of power is one of the reasons that the current bipartisan US system struggles to function over even basic issues. Does this system have it’s flaws? Probably; it’s not like I know anything at all about “politics” or law. These are just random thoughts and opinions on a complicated matter. But, I cannot help but see so many of the shortcomings in the current system, how out of touch and too focused upon itself it is, to really do the damn job that it should be doing: making it so that every person, without prejudice, oppression, or fear, can have “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”.