I’ve spent the past few days feeling very disoriented and a little psychic. In small ways: Dave and I both dreamed about enormous waves the night before there was a big earthquake & tsunami warning in Mexico. Last night, more absurdly, I dreamed that we were transitioning to paper money from “frog money” (i.e. frogs), and then this morning I saw there’s a new photo of the Loch Ness Monster. Friends and I have been experiencing strange period synchronicity, spooky uterine action at a distance.

I know this all sounds stupid, but that’s exactly my point: we live in a world, at the moment, where everything feels equally possible, and therefore equally insane, fanciful, and dream-like. American tourism banned (probably) from Europe. Many states, including Arizona, required to quarantine to go to New York. (Both are, by the way, moves I find completely reasonable, and it’s not like I’m traveling either place right now. It’s just disorienting.)

COVID-19 cases continue to rise here. The mountains are still on fire, and the sky is full of smoke. A man died in the custody of the Tucson Police Department back in April, and we’re only learning about it now. We should absolutely be discussing reparations for Black Americans on a national scale. The Loch Ness Monster is real (or, equally impressively, an 8-foot long fish is), UFOs are real, and time no longer has any meaning. Remember March? March happened just a few months ago!

The fig tree that I bought at Trader Joe’s back in, like, February is sprouting new leaves, which feels like an unprecedented achievement. This morning I saw a coyote and waved hello, and I swear it nodded its head at me. I am getting enough sleep, though you might not think so, reading this.

Perhaps it is good to be shaken. Perhaps it is actually a gift to have the world create an interior state change for you, a privilege not always accorded. I baked a really good peach cobbler the other day, and all the books I’ve been reading are outstanding. If life at the moment lacks a certain kind of steadiness, it has gained other kinds. My friends and I, my family and I, throw ropes out to one another periodically, and we pull each other back to shore. Our arms will be so strong, on the other side of this plague year, from the heaviness of the ropes. I don’t want to forget how much work we still need to do to, how much change our society still needs to make. Let’s keep our arms strong, let’s hoist each other up, let’s keep shaking loose the racist edifices of America, let’s stay shaken.