before and after. it was calmer, but not really, as soon as we went in it seemed the water grew angry again, or more angry, or angry still. it was violent all week and i should have kept waiting for calm. i don't know what made me enter. mister was hesitant and i should have listened. he's ok but i hurt my foot getting him out safely. i don't think there's riptide at our spot, but the concrete is continually shifting and the waves are continually crushing. the lake is changing. the water is high and i say it is angry, and naturally so. it is rising with nowhere to go. perhaps that's what is happening with people. i'm angry too, with nowwhere to go, by turns angry and deeply sad. i was thinking how we adapt to a culture of violence. how can we adapt to violence, other than by resistance or turning inward, or joining the force. anger's a natural response. nature can't accommodate the human system of violent control. we refuse to adapt to nature and nature can't adapt to us. it may not be like us, angry at ourselves, suffering ourselves, destroying ourselves. it may not be angry, it may just be crushed in the same crucible we put ourselves in. extreme pressure explodes the host. we may control populations with war and mass incarceration and torture, but nature will explode with a far greater chaos.

the camera switched itself to cross process between the before and after we climbed out of the watery chaos. 

when we got out to the grass and mister rolled i saw our friend with his running jacket that says military teaches violence and crossing spider bridge i thought the whole culture teaches violence and what we teach we create. we made this world of violence and it makes me so angry and so sad by turns until my soul spins and they become one spinning thing. 

when kids lack nurturing in a culture of violence they tend to become violent themselves or victims of violence, addicts, or suicides, desperate responses to a culture of despair, desperate to escape the culture that is everywhere and inescapable. is it even possible for the culture to shift? violent cultures typically end in violence, the violence increases until the culture can't sustain it's own level of internal violence and explodes in conflagration. that's where we are now.

a culture of violence has no respect for life. in a culture of violence life is meant to be used, and taken. we should be angry, and we should nurture our anger not turn away, and begin to create an alternative, of peace. but how do we sustain peace in a culture of planetary chaos and war? 
this is where we are now.