Dream Oven, 57th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Electra): Since this has apparently become a weather blog, I note that an area of low pressure is expected to form off the southeastern coast of the U.S. early next week. Slow development of this area, the western end of a frontal system, will be possible while it moves slowly landward. How this low-pressure system interacts with the high-pressure heat dome forecast for next week, I have no idea.

The weather is the real-time manifestation of climate change, and in my own experience, storms are becoming more frequent and more intense. I'm also still traumatized by the tree that fell on my house in October 2020 (PTSD, anyone?) and every storm warning now has me looking at the tons of timber still towering over my house in the form of tall pine trees. 

The eccentric English writer and lecturer Alan Watts claimed that consciousness evolved as a sort of radar system to detect danger to an organism, and if we identify our ego-self with consciousness, our warning system, then of course we're going to feel in constant peril and live in a state of anxiety. The American writer Michael Pollan reminds us that brains evolved to support bodies; bodies aren't life-support systems for brains.

The Facebook algorithm has picked up that, in my PTSD state of weather anxiety, I interact with posts about storm warnings and extreme weather events, and so has started feeding me a seemingly endless steam of storm alerts, take-cover warnings, and pessimistic prognostications about the weather. That's not healthy and it isn't helping any.

And yet . . . the sun outside is shining and birds are singing. Chipmunks and squirrels scurry around my yard, unperturbed about next week's weather, and deal with storms when they arrive. Ignorance, it's been said, is bliss.