Is It Getting Heavy?

It just keeps happening. It's so heavy, and it's everywhere. It's Fort Hood, it's the DC sniper's execution, it's the woman shot point-blank in the face at the liquor store she worked at for nearly two decades, after she handed over the cash.

It's a friend's stepfather's cancer diagnosis, it's a family member's intense unhappiness with her professional life, it's a neighbor's concern over recent violence, so acute that he meets me when I walk home from the bus to see me safely to my door.

It's job instability, it's a prescription for intensified chemotherapy, it's a feeling of being trapped.

It's heavy. But I never think to myself, like Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips does, that it's already as heavy as can be. It can always get heavier.