Not sure what to write today.

 Dear Reader,

I'm not really sure what to write today. Typically, I'd be discussing exotic plants and fantastical animals from my little world but the inspiration for that just isn't present. Right now, the kids are drumming away on some random thing in their room. By some minor miracle, they're not fighting at the moment. I'm still stalled in the fiction department. Honestly, I'm stalled in my journal writing even. I've debated breaking out my prompt box and writing stuff based off of prompts but I kinda hate doing that.

Life's been strange of late. The smoke from the fires in California land Oregon have reached the East Coast. It's made the sky look the wrong color and there's the faint scent of fire and death on the air. Death by fire smells like burnt to blackened, charred, ash meat. When I was a kid, we drove past a house where people died in a fire and that smell was there. I never forgot it. Smelling it on the wind now, however faintly, is disturbing and makes me feel like its a bad omen for the remainder of the year.

Looking at the pictures of the forest fires, all I can think is that is what Muspelheim looks like. Nothing but towering flame and choking smoke. It's deeply disturbing. I pray for rain to come and help put out the fires. There's a different kind of fire going on through out the country too. Protests regarding police brutality seem to be everywhere. Some folks I know have said that these are happening because people are bored and looking for some excitement after the confinement that has come with Covid-19. It's a raging fire of fury against injustice. It's not bored people looking for entertainment. It is as deadly serious as the forest fires. I keep saying that the Black Lives Matter movement is a human rights movement. There are folks who are not happy with me taking that position. It doesn't change the fact that it is.

There's a lot of egregious human rights abuses happening in my country. I never thought I'd live to see the day that state sanctioned violence happened openly in the streets. There are protestors being kidnapped from the protests by unmarked police officers into unmarked vans. It's happened in broad daylight. The Attorney General Barr is going so far as to say that he has the power to authorize this bastardy. We're not living in Nazi Germany, but the parallels that I see are deeply disturbing. I'm frustrated because my health is impared enough that I can't go protest. I can't do much aside from write angry blog posts and do my best to raise my children to know better than to act like how so many adults are right now.

It sucks the light out of things. It's enough to inspire depression by itself. To have my seasonal affective disorder and my bipolar II acting up at the same time is just making things harder. I fear for the future.