Disclaimer: I am drunk.

All my family are from small towns that are now nearly dead -- at this point they're filled with drug addicts, despair, and people too old to move anywhere else, and little in between. I remember when these places were vital, respirating organisms, teeming with life of all kinds.

It's insane to me how far we are from what we need to flourish. The shape of society, the shape of culture, is so distorted from the shape that can hold life without mortally wounding it.

It's been interesting, and hopeful, to see people in my orbit start to think about how maybe some of what we have can be re-imagined. The neighborhoods where none of the residents know each other; towns where the only visible form of life is cars; work paradigms where you defer anything sweet in life for some imaginary future decades away, and in the meantime grind in service of that other person who will hopefully one day come into existence.

The most recurring lesson for me, and the biggest, is that when you put something into the world, reality can cohere around it. It has been remarkable, the times I've managed to do this. A whole host of invisible allies solidifies from the mist like de-cloaking predators.

The bad news is that things are so fucked. The good news is that remarkably quickly after you staunch the bleeding, the flesh starts to knit.