Morning came early. 6:45. I stayed in bed reading for a few hours and then decided to get up once my stomach startled rumbling. From under the covers I could see that it had snowed. Only slightly, gently dusting the tiles of the roof in uneven patterns. The skies were blue. It was sunny. Slowly I got up, made breakfast and scheduled a call with my friend Kim. An hour or so later I was watching the moonrise in Australia. The wonders of modern technology and video conferencing. We spoke for hours, until my phone battery had had enough and threatened to end the call. There was talk of a visit later this year, to celebrate their wedding. This would be the second wedding set for this year. In July there will be a trip to New York, to attend my brother's wedding. It will be fun to take Asia and show her the mean streets that made me. And introducing her to real pizza. Taking her to Australia though, that would be something else. I think she'd love it. She'd love Kim and Simon, too.
I was there for their first wedding. Okay, it was a Burning Man wedding, but still. It was officiated by a witch. I probably wrote about it here after it happened. That was the year that I attended the burn with a freshly broken spine after having fallen out of a tree in Golden Gate Park. I remember walking all the way out to the Temple to meet them, armed with my trusty camera wrapped in a protective ziplock bag to keep the particulate dust away from the sensor and other mechanical parts. I managed to capture some great photos, and maybe even a video or two. It was a lovely atmosphere and the second Burning Man wedding I'd ever attended. The first was equally lovely, and happened a year or two earlier when Seamus and Krista renewed their vows. That's what it's called when you're already married, right? I don't know if that's the correct term, but I think it is. Burning Man weddings are special, somehow more sacred than what comes out of a stiff and stuffy chapel. Weddings in the real world are usually indulgent and overly formal, expensive. I guess Burning Man isn't cheap either, but it's definitely cheaper than a traditional wedding.
Kim and Simon will have their wedding at a festival near Christmas time. In Australia it's warm and gorgeous in December. The festival I've been to once before, the last time I was in Australia, which will have been six years ago by that time. What an odd sentence. Language sometimes struggles to drape itself over or bend around discussions of time and tenses. Maybe the way I wrote the sentence is incorrect, but if I speak it aloud it sounds right and makes sense. Technically that still doesn't make it right I guess. Language is an imprecise tool, but it's the best one we've got.
It's hard to imagine what my life will look like by the end of this year. This February marked my five year anniversary in Germany. I expect big changes are to come this year and it's unclear if they are to be positive or negative. There's still the war looming, which you seldom hear people talk about these days unless it's in the context of advocating for American isolationism (namely my father and many Republican senators). But ignoring the tragic loss of life and general destruction that war entails, there's the threat of nuclear war. Germany is two nations west of Ukraine, but still not so far away. It's uncomfortable to sit with the idea that a handful of people have the power to blow it all away. It seems stupid and illogical and senseless. But what else is war?
I spoke to my dad earlier. After ranting about how climate change is a hoax and how Bill Gates and George Soros are going to take over the world, he started to prattle on about Ukraine and Russia and how America needs to mind its own business and stop sending money and military aid to Ukraine. It's a talking point he's probably heard on Fox News from his buddy Tucker Carlson, or maybe one that found its way to him via his cursed YouTube algorithm. I asked him how he felt about World War II, and whether he believes the US shouldn't have gotten involved. I asked if he thought it was okay to stand idly by while one nation invades another and proceeds to enact genocide and commit war crimes. His response was that he wants to avoid World War III. I asked him "if Hitler had been stopped sooner due to quick and immediate action, would World War II would have been shorter and less deadly, or would it have started at all if Hitler's advances were swiftly squashed?"
He mumbled something about us needing to protect our own people and then remarked that our borders are wide open and immigrants with HIV and no skills are just pouring in while Biden busies himself with countries across the ocean.
Doomer, it rhymes with boomer.
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