I have been taking a bit of a "self-care" time-out myself, James. Been watching football. Did a Tarot card reading for a friend's daughter (in her 20s), and left her smiling and happy and energized, and she spontaneously gave me a hug afterwards--mission accomplished for a Tarot reader (though the hug was uncomfortable -- autism), and then I thought, well, I should check in on Medium.

And here I am. I think I am going to take a week off. I am in need of A LOT of self care. It is all becoming too much. But I do want to comment--and I'm a compulsive writer, so this will be a lengthy comment.

More and more the thought has been in my head "can we just stop the hate?" Even aside from the virulent forms (that have always been around), many more people in the last few years seem to be taking a perverse kind of satisfaction in just hating for hate's sake, like it is all a game and they congratulate themselves if they "score points" against the "other side."

And now it has come to "scoring points" against any rainbow and striking against the autistic as collateral damage just to make sure rainbows are banned? Really?

I have an obsession with thunderstorms (non sequitur, I know, but follow me) I will stand outside in the whipping wind, even stay there when the rain starts pelting down, just to watch the lightning. It is obsessive. I have been known to stand like a statue for an hour, wind rustling my hair as i stare unblinking (can't blink for fear I would miss one) at those amazing mystical bolts from the sky. As a kid, I used to even climb up onto the roof to watch lightning (yeah, not wise, but nothing was gonna stop me). It is almost a spiritual thing to me, feeling like the lightning and the thunder are physical manifestations of some raw spiritual power. A power that connects to me and me to it.

Nothing baffles me more than seeing that other people are NOT doing what I am doing, stopping and staring at it. How can they not join me in staring at it? Yet other people just keep on with their lives, maybe pausing for two seconds to give it one glance, and then continue with whatever stuff they think is more important, like taking the groceries inside from their car, or whatever.

As though anything could be more important than a thunderstorm!

And when the storm has passed, and if the angle of the sun is just right ... RAINBOW! The most singularly mysteriously stunningly powerfully beautiful, mystical, spiritual (not Biblical with its hocus pocus fairytale stories, but genuine SPIRITUAL) thing on this Earth.

It makes sense that THOSE PEOPLE, those haters, spit upon it. They spit upon life itself, in all its glorious and fierce and stormy beauty. They live their hollow, black-and-white lives.

I'm not angry at them. I feel sorry for them.