And Yet

I suffered my personal Hejira circa second half 2019. By the time Covid hit — I called "Pandemic" loudly in March 2019 — I was settling into a new and profoundly better life (city boy moves to small town). Then again — May 2020, my home town of Minneapolis exploded in riot, which I watched in real-time horror via social media. The Target, the Cub burned down? That was my Target. That was my Cub. The Third Precinct building that was swarmed and burned to a shell? That was my Third Precinct Building, where I went to report a stolen bicycle. I didn't shop at Cup Foods much, but I went by that intersection *all the time* on my way to one place or another. My brother lives there. My ex-wife lives there. Many of my friends live there. When the riots hit, I was beside myself — no mere figure of speech, I was half-dissociated, *beside myself* — with shock and horror and grief and rage. And then Trump, about which say no more there, except: "And then the War came." Near as, dammit. So: Terrible evil, terrible times, if ever there was a Golden Age for America this is not that age, nor Silver. It's all Iron and Plutonium now (though people tend to forget that nukes could go off any time, it's not in the Zeitgeist or something). And yet — and yet — This the the best time, the happiest time, the most creatively rich time of my life.