Saturday, October 29, 2022

October 2022 - Abandoned Places

 The month of October 2022 has sped by with most of the narratives of last month shambling on, with the impending US elections - only nine short days away - aggressively perp-ing its way into the lead of our national horse race that our collective news chain subsists on launching full-throated into some explosive, fiery unknown. The war in Ukraine drags on blindly with Putin still insulting millions with life and death and promising still millions more with no heat this winter. China's Xi Jinping takes another unprecedented term for himself and had Hu Jintao ejected from their politburo seeming to promise other future autocratic movements. Unlike France in April, Italy elected far-right nationalist Giorgi Meloni to their top post late September. Meanwhile the pandemic has been ignored in the US by its forgetful many though overall cases in the US decreased in this last month. Brazil holds a crucial run-off election this weekend.

It's all so tiresome, unnecessary and insulting. Everything seems broken or in only partial, hoped-for repair, with the snide broadcasts of future destruction on every other person's lips. As if winter has already come and we have only the uncertainties of climate change to depend on instead of the dim light of some far-off spring. Dejection and apathy reign over any chance of light or hope around any corner. Elon Musk closed the deal on his Twitter acquisition yesterday. He's appointing a new board to oversee things there regarding content. No one knows what that may mean. Who knows, maybe the fascists will blow up the market tomorrow or the elections next week. Who but the innocent bystanders will notice anyway?

Any arguments or answers on how we got here have been daily erased for so long now by nearly every next random 'news story', the twists and turns of the tumult have caused 'national concerns' to normatively blur. "What does that mean?" has become a national obsession and no one has any answers. Everything just falls apart. Nothing to do but count the ways affairs have gotten more bleak. 

Still there remains things to see and talk about. So here's a few from this month. With the prevailing mood so full of uncertainty and fear, abandoned places have some allure. 



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