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I am anxious all the time. Sometimes less so, and increasingly I don’t ask why. I’m anxious over everything, but also that everything fails a great many material tests. We have all become the people who live near landfills. Cheap remote land invites us, later the county invites a new putrid neighbor (for jobs), even later it becomes something we only notice when it is actively spewing gangrenous vapor. Today and yesterday I smelt it, thought I dealt it, but know with all my heart I had nothing to do with it.

We have rented a new house and are cleaning our current house. We will notify the landlord of the rabbits and the putrid porch carpet this week. We are unsure of his reaction — we suspect it will be fine as we are offering to replace the carpet. He heard we were moving from our new landlord calling everyone in our lives (aka on our application) — bosses, friends, landlords present and past. This caused some chaos and accelerated things. Our current landlord expects to start showing the house soon. We have developed our post-visit decontamination procedure that may actually work — open all the windows for 30 min, disinfect all touched surfaces (door knobs, light switches, counters).

COVID is not over. It may never be over. But it seems over from the perspective of “doing anything” about it. The state has left us to die. And this is just where we are, waiting for the president’s Schrodinger’s health, waiting for the culture war facists to invalidate the last branch of government that seemed to do anything (courts) and awaiting what will likely be a completely invalid election. The failure of the state is obvious, inevitable and already upon us. It has no ability to act other than violence, and even its violence is arbitrary.

The power of the state is at once incredibly violent and malicious without any sense of reason. At this stage it is impossible to suck the tit of empire without being told how and where it is from day to day — one cannot “know” the desire of state anymore without asking those that ostensibly represent it. All acts not explicit sanction MAY be rebellion — though who could be sure. “Just a moment”, “Wait here”, “Put this on”, “Step this way”, “Stand right here”, chemicals, bright lights, and scene.



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