🏜 arizona :: maybe for the last time 🏜

(this is a substack that i just published)

i just spent nearly two weeks in the united states. i was very conscious the whole time that it might be my last trip there. our daughter is moving back to europe this summer to continue her studies in portugal. without her in arizona, i won’t really have any compelling reason to visit there again, despite still having some friends there. i still have family in the midwest, including my sister, but with the situation being what it is, i have to wonder if there will be a united states to go back to a year from now.

what struck me most during my visit was just how normal everything seemed. people were driving their cars, doing their shopping, picking up their coffee at the starbucks drive-thru, dining in restaurants, enjoying happy hours. just going about their lives as if there wasn’t a circus being performed from the whitehouse. as if the entire post ww2 world order wasn’t being torn asunder by a merry band of unqualified, unserious nitwits and the world’s (formerly) richest man and his minions.

i looked on in fascination. and i did all those normal things too - drank margaritas at happy hour, ate delicious mexican food, stopped by trader joe’s for those new light pink strawberries everyone on tiktok is talking about, got a new tattoo, shopped at the gap and old navy, went antiquing, picked up starbucks and ordered the best breakfast burritos ever from door dash. i even celebrated my birthday while i was there.

and it all felt so normal. it was just a really nice holiday in sunny arizona.

is everyone just avoiding reality? i honestly don’t know. i do my share of protecting myself from the daily deluge of the news, as i just can’t take the pace at which it’s coming. but i do follow along and know what’s going on. i do know that those clowns shared classified battle plans on a friggin’ signal chat, on which they included the editor of the atlantic (and any number of russians who were surely listening in as well, since at least one of them was in moscow at the time). i know that trump continues to threaten to take greenland and to insult denmark for being a “bad ally.” i read today that the european union is advising everyone to have 72 hours of food supplies laid in (that doesn’t really sound like enough if you ask me).

how can any of us think this is normal? how can we go about our normal lives, drinking cocktails and eating chicken & waffles for brunch? how did i do that? i honestly do not know.