Every morning I check the phone to see if I'm still mourning, and yes I am. Every morning there's dead people, and the wrong ones. My mourning morning routine is to basically not think about it. I spend much of the morning in self-care, because other-care is too scary. I sit in a club where only Whites used to sit and think things only Whites used to think, like what do I think about this? Still I feel the ghost of the apocalypse everywhere, their stares through my phone screen, their tapping on my car window; the broken glass, the shattered past, the interminable present. Everybody lives with all this dying and I'm just everybody. But I can't help but feel like we're missing more people every morning.

My favorite part of recent history was where 'Israel' was being bombed every day, that felt like justice. My second favorite part was where the American stock market was crashing, hitting them the only place they feel anything. My least favorite parts are every other day, when the White Empire entire keeps lumbering on, eating children and making us watch. What I look for in the morning is bad news for them, because that's good news for the rest of us.

Of course, the news is still White news, with anything bad for them whited out at the deep assumptions level. They simply cannot fathom that they're the bad guys and miss the whole plot. Or, more accurately, they're in on it. My guy from the New York Times emailed me about writing about Nepal's collapse (they like to see us failing, then all is right with the world). I told him to fuck off and that I hope they all get Julius Streichered, AKA hung. My wife told me not to do that but it's done. Small rebellions. My inbox is full of the genocide they incited. I can't believe I let them entice me once.

Young me used to believe in the New York Times, before it was revealed as the New York War Crimes. But I can't help but think I could've known better, and sooner, that they were wrong. As a kid in Ohio, I remember clipping out graphics of the F-16 like it was a toy car. Even until Trump 2 I used to read the NYTimes religiously, that was my morning ritual. My God, what a false God. They were killing millions then, while I killed time reading false explanations. That version of me is dead now, drowned also in the Al Aqsa Flood. As Yeats said, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere, The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

I think of this, as I look around. Everything looks fine now, but it's not. We're all like drowning men coming up for water, but the gasps last for years and give the illusion of some return to normal. But the water's only rising. As I wrote in my most popular post on Medium, “Collapse is just a series of ordinary days in between extraordinary bullshit, most of it happening to someone else. That’s all it is.” When I wrote this it was somewhat controversial with Americans, but it's amazing how facile it was to go fascist.

Now I'm shadow-banned from Medium and FBI-banned from America and everybody thinks this is normal now. As someone said, collapse is a series of bad things filmed on mobile phones, until you're the one filming it. I think of this in the morning, or more accurately, I assiduously don't think of it, making it a constant negative impression on my soul. We all die someday, and I fear we will be judged. I die a thousand times this way, and carry my cowardice like a cross.

I think of the Buddha, seeing all the suffering around him and leaving everything to find a way out. Then I think of myself as a bad Buddhist, giving some paltry alms and putting it off till next lifetime. It's not that I don't know what the right thing is. It's just too damn hard (Scent Of A Woman). So I take care of myself, while others go without. I raise my own children, while others struggle to bury theirs. I can feel my soul broken into a million pieces and I can feel other souls crying out to me as they're being snuffed out. I can hear God clear enough, but I don't listen. I don't want to. I hit the snooze button on salvation, just 15 minutes more, that's my morning routine, applied to mourning. Until the Gaza genocide ends, how do I even start?