The longest day of the longest year. A day when I feel like I should be deep in a forest, communing with the sun while waiting for revelation or hunting for a reset button, even though I should know by now these things are fictions. But I’m glad we’ve reached the point in the year when we’ll start making more night.

C. and I spent the evening on a Brooklyn stoop with some friends, all of us chattering and burning off some exhaust as we tried to wrap our heads around this year. The fireworks were relentless as we talked. Big-budget fountains filled the sky followed by window-rattling blasts that set off car alarms and emptied your head of thought. They were heavy-duty and close-up, the kind of firepower that’s sold across state lines. Black Cats, M-80s, and Lady Fingers. Neighbors stopped each other in the street to make sure they’re not imagining things. “You couldn’t sleep last night, either?”

Booms have been ricocheting through the night until two or three o’clock in the morning. It’s been like this since the protests began. People are edgy, their dreams infected with anxiety if they can sleep at all. What started as a rumor is cohering into a theory: the firecrackers are coming from the police. A psy-op tactic designed to disorient and destabilize. A way for cops to prove their worth by keeping the possibility of gunshots in the mind. Sinister as hell, and I don’t know if it’s true. But it’s certainly more plausible than the idea that people can’t wait to celebrate America’s birthday this year.

Vatican Shadow – Unknown To The Peacock The Serpent And Scorpion Conspire (Alessandro Cortini Remix)

American Flesh for Violence | Hospital Productions, 2019 | Bandcamp

It’s been a very Vatican Shadow year.