International Leather

Stepping into Spain with a suitcase full of black leather and a head full of questions, we set out to test whether “international leather” is a real thing or a hopeful myth. From Madrid’s meetups to ILBS Sevilla’s tenth anniversary, through Torremolinos’ Eagle nights and Barcelona’s Boxer Café, we map how a shared aesthetic travels while each city protects its own pulse. The takeaway surprised us: gear is a language that crosses borders, but community lives in calendars, group chats, and carefully marked spaces for social connection versus cruising.

We unpack what happens when there’s no dedicated leather bar, how WhatsApp threads become glue, and why timing your trip around socials beats pinning your hopes on a single venue. You’ll hear how a plaza of 150 folks in full gear can erase language barriers, and why kindness at European events felt different from the quiet competitiveness we often bring to U.S. rooms. We talk practicality too—planning travel around local fetish nights, finding hosts through social platforms, and using familiar signals like boots, hankies, and uniforms to be legible without saying a word.

The journey closes on a raw note: navigating political dread and creative fatigue while choosing to keep making space for each other. We don’t pretend to have a script for hard times, but we do argue for small, sturdy practices—showing up, reaching out, and letting friendliness be infrastructure. If you’re plotting your next leather trip, looking for community in your own backyard, or just need a reminder that the language of gear still speaks loudly, this story-driven episode offers both a map and a nudge.

If this resonated, tap follow, share it with a friend who travels in gear, and leave a review with your city’s best leather social—we’ll shout out recommendations on a future show.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage From Spain
• 2:26 Defining International Leather
• 4:22 Inside ILBS Sevilla
• 5:35 Language Gaps And Gear As Bridge
• 7:20 Friendliness And Spain’s Local Realities
• 9:18 Events As Hubs Across Europe
• 11:13 Social Spaces Versus Cruising Spaces
• 13:00 Openness Abroad Versus Competition At Home
• 16:08 Barcelona Reflections And City Scenes
• 18:20 Bars, Socials, And The Vanishing Leather Bar
• 21:42 Planning Trips Around Socials
• 24:20 Shared Signals And Aesthetic
• 27:44 Listener Feedback Invitation
• 28:47 Ask Segment: Podcasts And Film
• 31:33 Raw Political Reflections
• 39:20 Choosing To Keep Creating

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:04

Let's talk about international weather. This podcast contains material intended for a mature audience. Before proceeding, please check your local laws and confirm that you are an adult. And please, forgive my Spanish. But the point is that I am in Spain as I record this podcast for an extraordinarily special episode of Full Cal. We're going to be thinking about international leather. What does leather look like across borders in different countries? And what does it mean when you travel to other countries and experience their leather scene? I am in Spain for three weeks. I am extraordinarily excited about it. I will be visiting Madrid, Sevilla, Toledo, Tormelinos, Barcelona, and Sites. And I will be attending an event by International Leather Boots Spain in Sevilla. I will be going to the Eagle in Torre Melinos, and I will be meeting local leather people, both here in Spain, but also some leather folk who are traveling from Copenhagen and from England. And I'm hoping that in this episode we can think about what it means to move across borders in leather, what things you should be aware of if you travel, granted, that is a privilege, but also a lot of different perspectives of how different communities approach leather and what that might mean for all of us. Right now I'm recording this opening in my hotel room in Madrid, and over the coming weeks I hope to record segment by segment to both share my journey, but also to reflect on what it means when we think about leather in an international context. Greetings from Toledo, where I am sitting in my hotel room enjoying vistas of this ancient city and reflecting on my experiences so far in Spain, having been to Madrid and to an event put on by International Leather Boots Spain in Sevilla. And I'm trying to find the threads of what international leather looks like, not leather tourism. That is, is there a thread that binds us internationally into something like a single tribe, something that might justify international title holding, international events? And when I talk about international leather, I'm really using it as a proposition, not a given. Consider this a kind of investigation of what does bind us together across differences of nationality, of culture, of language. Let me also acknowledge again the amount of privilege I am traveling with, not only the economic privilege that would enable such a trip, but the cultural privilege I bring as a figure in social media. In both Madrid and Sevilla, there were people who knew me from social media that provided me contacts into the local culture that not everyone might have access to. So I want to acknowledge that some of the insights I am coming to, some of the conclusions I'm coming to, may actually reflect me specifically and may not be generalizable. Despite that, I do feel that leather culture feels fairly global, but at the same time deeply local. And it's really about moving between those poles that allows something like international leather to exist. So throughout this segment, we're going to be thinking about what happens to leather when you cross those borders, not just the geographic ones, but the cultural ones. And I think a really great example of that is an international leather event. Now, let me say that this event, ILBS in Sevilla, it was their 10th anniversary meeting. It wasn't just Spanish. First of all, there were people from all over Spain, but there were people from all over Europe attending, including major title holders from Italy and from France and as well as from Spain. So part of what an international letter event does is bring us together into a single place and a single time. This creates a kind of compressed world where many different cultures are negotiating a single space at the same time, and some differences show up. There were certainly some language gaps. I certainly appreciated how many people spoke English. I certainly appreciated people's patience when I tried to speak Spanish. But there were times when the language just wasn't happening. This was, I think, especially true for me at the awards dinner where there were a lot of speeches in Spanish, and I was just not able to follow along. I was able to clap when people clapped. And I felt a little excluded from that, but also I was supposed to be excluded. This was the awards dinner for this group, and it was for them to know and understand what was being said. There were lots of other times, however, where I felt that gap disappear. And one of those is simply in the presentation of gear. One thing I've noticed about European leather people, and I don't want to generalize this too much, but let me say they take their gear very seriously. I was in the Plaza de Espana in Sevilla with 150 people in full gear. I mean jackets, uniforms, gloves, boots, covers. And even though it was a cool day, the sun was out, and it was really, you know, black leather has a tendency to absorb heat. And all of these people showed up to represent in a really public space, but with the kind of classic, formal Tama Finland type leather that I certainly value. So that was a very common language I think we spoke. It was the language of gear. There were other places where we were able to connect. There were several men, for example, who were smoking cigars, and I was able to connect with them around that. And there were simple commonalities of the fact that we share common desires. I can't say that anything made me feel like I stood out as an American in those spaces. I felt fairly at home. Part of that, I will note, is how friendly people were. Now, I'm not sure if this is typical of all European leather events, but I found that everyone was friendly, would come up, would say hello, would ask where I'm from. And I have to imagine that's because at a lot of these events, people are coming from all different countries. Now, in the United States, we might have people coming from all different states, but somehow that doesn't prompt us to create the same openings for connection and linkages that seem to be happening in Europe. It was something I really very much appreciated. It also struck me that people were so friendly because they were coming from all different parts of Spain. Now my experience in Madrid suggests that while there certainly is a leather community in Madrid, there are some incredibly handsome, incredibly handsome leather men in Madrid. There's no specific leather space in the city. There is no leather bar in Madrid. There are some bars that might have fetish themed nights, there are some places where people may gather, and I think there's also a kind of sex club element that I didn't explore because it's not my thing. But there isn't the kind of leather bars that you might find in the major cities of the United States. You know, in Wilton Manors, we have the Eagle and the Ramrod, and many other major cities, you will have a singular leather space. And so my sense is that across Spain, these people are coming to events like this one to really be visible as a community, to have space together as a community. And so beyond simply saying hello to everyone because they're from other countries, it's also saying hello to everyone because they're from other parts of Spain. There was an extremely active WhatsApp group connected to the event with people sending great messages to each other of excitement to attend, the joy of attending, the gratitude of having attended. And so what I was able to see is how local communities really connect in these larger spaces to create a kind of visibility that they may not necessarily have in their home cities. Now this will be interesting in the next segment as I travel to Tormelinos, which does have something of a more visible leather community. It has an eagle. I'm looking forward to being at their eagle. And so I'm wondering to what extent that sort of localized international leather community feels different from the more event-focused international leather community. I will let you know. I will say though that these observations I'm having are not unique to my experience here in Spain, but actually reflect some of my other international, very limited international leather experience on experiences. It ironically, I am recording this in my hotel room in Toledo at the beginning of Dublin Leather Weekend, which I was able to attend a couple of weeks ago. And I remember when I went there, one of the things I found most striking is that very few of the men I met were actually from Ireland, that it was an event that drew men from across Europe. And I'm wondering to what extent that is sort of more common here in Europe, where countries are smaller, where travel between countries is a little bit easier, that men are more likely to attend events internationally, and women as well. There were some leather women at the Sevilla event. I'm wondering if that's simply a factor of what community and leather looks like as a community, what it's like in Europe versus the United States. But I do think that in enables the kind of friendliness, the kind of openness. I will say that for most of the event I didn't detect a lot of strong competitive cruising energy. It was deeply social, deeply focused on connection, on joyfulness, on humor, on taking a lot of photos, I will note, but people getting to know people. And the place where that changed is the very end. They had a party uh the last night at a sort of small slash bar slash sex club. And then that was clearly the space that was delineated for more cruising and sexual energy, because there was also the space there to do something about it. And I wondering to what extent that also might be more common in the international leather community, that there are spaces that are about being social and connecting, and then there are spaces that are about cruising and being sexual. And those may not always be the same space. In fact, I'm wondering if perhaps they're always slightly different spaces. I don't know. Throughout all of this, I am hoping that all of you will speak back to me. My experience here is very limited and tinted by the particular cultural privilege I bring in the leather world. So I'm very curious how people from around the world, and hey, I looked at this at the stats. I know I have listeners around the world. I'm very curious how people around the world view international leather. Whether or not you feel there's some sort of common thread that binds us, that enables us to gather in different spaces, that enables us to connect to each other without necessarily the hang-ups of, well, conceitedness, ego, national pride. I don't know. I uh but my experience was that it was just very open to people knowing people. It sounds silly perhaps, but it felt really nice. I think I'm used to, like when I go to American leather events, I bring a kind of compare and despair attitude that I am constantly in my head comparing myself to everyone else. I am constantly in my head falling short and constantly in my head beating myself up for falling short. Like my experience of American leather events is that even without a contest, even without being in the contest, even without anything close to a contest, I always feel like I'm in competition with the other attendees. And I've had to work very hard to resist that. And the way I do that is being intentional about my connections. I actually set plans with people I want to get to know. But I don't know that for most of the American events I've been to, I've never felt the kind of openness and conviviality I have felt here in Europe. I don't know if that is skewed by my own history, experience, cultural expectations, or whether or not it's true. So I'd be really curious to hear from all of you. I will say this, I think perhaps the closest I've gotten to the experience I'm having here in Spain is Mates in Provincetown, which is a leather a pretty small leather event, and allowed, I think, a little bit more connection. But even then I felt a lot of intern, I brought a lot of internal competition. And that's not something I felt at all here in Spain. Instead, I just felt excited to be here. Sevilla is a stunning city, and the men were just so kind and so open and so welcoming. And um, it's also very interesting. There were a lot of side conversations in other languages. I was traveling with a friend of mine who is Italian living in Copenhagen, and that was a great experience to be traveling with someone who was European to help kind of negotiate some of the cultural expectations. Although I barely spoke Spanish, he barely spoke Spanish, but his Italian helped him understand a little bit of Spanish. Regardless, um, there were moments he would connect with other Italians and they would be speaking in Italian. And there were several moments where people from similar national locations or similar linguistic backgrounds would connect in their language. I was quite, I think, surprised at the number of people who spoke English. I'm not sure to what extent it is a common leather language. I don't think I want to make that proposition. It just feels too imperialistic and culturally snobby. But I certainly had no problem communicating with people. A lot of people spoke English. At other times they were speaking to each other in their own languages. So the big takeaway I've had so far, and this is really based on experiencing a big city, Madrid, where I was able to meet some of the local leathermen, not all of the ones I wanted to because my time there was a little hectic, but I was able to meet some local leathermen and connect with them one-on-one. This this is also driven by largely by my experience at the ILBS event. And it'll be very interesting then to see how this shifts once I move to Torre Molinos. And again, I am hoping all of you will really participate in on the backside of this episode through emails, through comments, through voicemails, to really enhance the perspective of other people who've experienced leather internet international context. My big takeaway right now is that there's a clear, very familiar leather aesthetic that ran across Europe. All the people from all the countries had very similar aesthetic that I instantly recognized. There was an extraordinary diversity of nationalities at this event. There were people from all over Europe and also other people from the United States. There was a real sense of openness, a real sense of curiosity, and a real sense of friendliness. And that all of these things really set my European experience apart from my American experience, which I bring to American events, and actually I bring to American communities, a kind of inherent competitiveness where I'm always comparing myself to others and often losing in that competition. And that inhibits friendliness, openness, conviviality, all of those things. It inhibits connection because competition and connection do not go well together. So that's my report so far. I hope you're enjoying this episode. I will say I am enjoying Spain. It is a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous country, and I feel so grateful to be given this opportunity to explore it, but also grateful to share my observations with all of you. Greetings from Barcelona. I am wrapping up my extraordinary adventure in Spain and reflecting on some of my experiences broadly, but also specifically in terms of leather. And I shared what it was like to go to a leather event in another country as a way of helping you navigate the international currents of leather. And in this segment I want to think about instead what it's like to practice leather into a leather community in a city specifically. And the two that I've or three I've visited that I think most reflect that navigation are Tormelinos, Barcelona, and Sitches. Let me index again the amount of privilege I have that may be impacting my ability to navigate. And perhaps in this sense, even more than my cultural, financial, biological privilege, is the specific leather privilege I bring as someone who is well connected on social media. And therefore, there are people in all of these areas who I knew at least from online and who were able to sort of guide me into the local community. Not everyone may have that. I will say, however, that if that's something, if you're going to travel internationally, that's something you may want to cultivate. You may want to look for people who live in a local leather community, ask them questions, see about meeting them at their convenience for coffee or a drink or to go out or whatever. That's not only a great way to get a sense of what that local leather community is, it's a great way to start building connections. And this is something I do in Fort Lauderdale pretty frequently. If people are coming to town, I'm more than happy to eat them up uh to meet them out. If people have questions, I'm more than happy to let them know what's going on in the leather community locally. So uh even though I sort of come pre-built with a certain amount of access, I would recommend to you that you also think about building that access before you travel internationally to a city that you know has a leather community. Now, my experience in these three cities, Tormelinos, Barcelona, and Citizens, really reflects much of my experience in the United States. Each of them had a kind of bar that maybe was leather or where the leather people went to. I went to the Eagle in Tormelinos, I went to Boxer Cafe in Barcelona, and in Citizen, a little less so. We went uh to Bears Bar. I think it's called Bears Bar. But certainly Tormalinos and Tormalinos for sure represents itself as having a leather bar. It is an eagle. We recognize that as a kind of signifier of a leather fetish presence. And Boxer Cafe is connected to Boxer Barcelona, a manufacture of fetish gear and leather. And so it is sort of the fetish place. And Citrus, of course, has a very seasonal population. And uh actually Tormelinos and Citrus were really familiar to me because they reflected Fort Lauderdale in many ways, not only in its coast, not only in the fact that they were coastal and sort of resort towns, but also very seasonal, obviously, like Fort Lauderdale. One thing that struck me as very familiar is that in all of these spaces, all of the fetish spaces that I went to in com in cities, there wasn't actually a lot of leather there. And this happens in my own city all the time, that I may go out, I may see a couple people in gear, but there aren't a lot of people in gear. The other thing I've noticed is that in these cities there are particular nights that maybe call the fetishists out. There will be a fetish Friday or a rubber social on a Sunday or whatever. There will be specific designated moments in time that really invite people to gather and be out in their leather and fetish gear. And that's also true in Fort Lauderdale. We have an enforced dress code night at the Ramrod, the third Sunday of every month. And that's when a lot of people do show up in gear. We have other events, um leather dinners, for example, where people do show up in gear. I think that speaks more broadly to the precarious existence of the leather bar in the world today, impacted by a number of factors, not only the rise of digital connections online through apps, but also the incredibly rising price of real estate in the major cities that would be able to sustain a leather bar. In general, I think there's a shift I've seen in many countries towards socials that may or may not take place at a fetish space. Bluff has a very strong history of doing bluff socials in many cities around the world. But I'm also thinking about Oink out in Kink, which is in Dublin. I'm thinking about the Leather Social in Glasgow. I'm thinking about Hunter in London. To my knowledge, which is perfectly incredibly limited, the only real city that has leather bars as we classically imagine them, as a new show up and there will be people in gear, the only city that really is able to sustain that, to my limited knowledge, is Berlin. And so depending on where you're coming from, if you go to a city in another country for gear, with gear to experience the fetish scene, be aware that that city might have a space that welcomes and recognizes fetish, but you may not locate a lot of fetish in that space. In fact you may want to do a little bit of research beforehand about events that are happening that would call forth the local community more. So the first time I went to Dublin, I happened to be there on an oink weekend and was very pleased I did and met some great friends who are still friends today. When I was planning on going to Scotland, I specifically timed my trip to make sure I hit the Leather Social in Glasgow and in Spain, I was fortunate enough to yes make the ILBS event in Sevilla but unfortunate in that there's about to be a leather weekend here in Barcelona just a couple of days after I leave. So when traveling internationally my experience is that it's not that similar from spaces I've seen in my home country. And so whether you're coming to the US or you're US and you're going someplace internationally, if we're thinking about the Western world Europe, North America, parts of South America, you know, the the sort of Western imaginary, you might find an experience pretty similar and therefore you might be thinking not so much about fetter spaces as much as fetish socials and looking for those leather socials in your planning. Without those, without even a leather bar or a leather space, there's still that possibility for local connection which is worth pursuing. Social media has all kinds of disadvantages but certainly one advantage it does have is that it allows for connections that can be very social. Huh there's actually a bit of social in social media not all the time but there is a bit of social in social media. And so you may want to see who you're following who's in a city or see who's in a city and posting online see who's representing themselves as a presence and reach out to them for information at least connection perhaps so my experience overall in Spain has been really hmm actually I don't even have words for it yet. I have to get home and I have to digest it all, but it has been certainly quite an adventure. And not all of that adventure has had anything at all to do with leather. In fact leather has been the smallest part of this magnificent trip I've been on, but it has been a part. And as I reflect back I think about how familiar these leather spaces the leather men I happen to meet leather people perhaps in general how familiar they are that we share a common language even if it's not the actual language language. I should say we share common terminology we share common forms of signaling we share common forms of cruising we share something that doesn't make us a tribe in that I don't think leather is unitary or united or unified but it makes us some sort of affiliation that if you understand leather where you're from there's a good chance you'll be able to exercise that communication wherever you're going in what you wear and how you wear it in the hanky code in cruising in talking these things do seem from my limited experience to be kind of international. Let me re-emphasize again that this is only my experience that this is an experience deeply colored by privilege and this is an experience that's deeply limited. I've only been to a few countries. And so while I wanted to introduce this topic as a way of helping people think about what it means when leather moves across borders I really want to invite all of you who have far more experience, who have far more perspective to contribute to this conversation by giving me feedback that I can share in the next episode. But for now I think I'm going to sign off do a little bit more shopping at Boxer here in Barcelona and wrap up my final day before heading home. And um thank you all for listening and I will have more soon all right it's time for the asked segment where I answer questions from all of you. If you would like to submit a question you may do so online leaving a voicemail at speakpipe com slash leatheredge that's speakpipe com slash L T H R E T G E. You can also send me an email at ask at fullcow dot show and those links are available in the show notes. And um this episode we have one and a half questions I'll explain. The first question comes from Theo and he writes Dear Edge I have maybe a little boring question for the podcast but I'd be very interested to know what kind of other podcasts or audio resources you would recommend to your full cow community. Thank you for your work good question. Not not boring at all. There are only two podcasts that I'm really aware of that speak to Leather and Kink. Now part of that is because I produce a podcast but I have to actually listen to podcasts and that has to do with the way I devote attention when there is audio. So I'm very used to having music on in the background whenever I'm doing something working or being around the house and so my default mode is to not pay attention to audio if I'm doing something else. So if I were listening to a podcast whatever task I'm actually doing would become the focus of my attention and I just wouldn't pay attention. I would just lose track of the podcast. So I don't tend to really tune well into audio resources. However, the two that I know of there's the Kinky Boys podcast which is long running and which I have listened to at least one episode I think their episode on mind control which is a favorite topic of mine and I've actually given them some support for their podcast. The other one I know is what's the safe word W-A-T-T-S What's the safe word which I think is pretty prominent as a podcast and many people may already be familiar with it. I don't know a lot of other audio resources or podcasts but if anyone out there does please send me a note send me an email and I'll mention them in a future episode. Now the second question is really a half question. No one's actually formally submitted it but I've had two or three people ask me about the movie Pillion and what I thought about it. Now they were asked these were people who were not in the United States and they were asking before the US release of the film. It was just released um I think less than a week ago here in the US and I have not yet had a chance to see it. I do believe there was a special screening at MAL but I was in Spain at the time. So I am hoping to take a look at it and give a sort of report on the movie in a future episode. Certainly if you've seen it and if you want to share thoughts on it please submit something and I will share that here on the podcast. Unfortunately that's all the questions we have for this time I want to encourage all of you to send me questions. They don't have to be deep or profound. They can be simple or what Theo thought was boring and they don't have to be about Leather and King they can be about my regular life or anything. This is a segment that only exists because of you and if people don't have the wherewithal to submit questions then we don't get this in the podcast. So please please if you want to support me a really simple way is to spend a few seconds and send me a question. And that's it for Ask Edge this time. I felt quite compelled to add one more segment to this episode in particular to speak about the political situation here in the United States and a lot of stuff happened while I was in Spain and while it was a bit of a blessing to be disconnected from the daily endless news blasts I was checking in back home and I was horrified um I don't you know I am I'm doing this segment off the cuff and so it's going to be a little raw because I think it needs to be a little raw. I don't know how to react to what's happening in my country and I sure as fuck don't know what to do. It is a feeling a little bit like how I felt on September 11 2001 that moment when all of us kind of realized what was happening. It was a kind of disbelief it was an utter shock it was a kind of paralysis and I'm feeling that again ongoing because every time I think I've wrapped my head around some atrocity in my current country there's a new one there's a new level of horror and I don't want to do just sort of basic virtual uh virtue signaling and say fuck ice although certainly I do say fuck ice like it is beyond horrible what they are doing. It is beyond horrible what the quote unquote leaders in my country are doing and I don't know what to do. Part of me feels like I should continue to produce content that that content is still needed that in some way life needs to go on people need something that is a refuge from the horrors part of me feels like not taking concrete action in the world is contributing to the problem. I don't know what concrete action in the world would look like for me. I did feel like it would be utterly remiss to at least not speak to this, to speak to what's going on in some way I I think there's a kind of responsibility to people who are content producers who have an audience to acknowledge that this is very fucked up and this is happening. And I think others are much better at navigating that I am still in this shocked paralysis. I've not been posting on Instagram I've not been doing educational videos on the rest of my social media I just don't have it. I don't have it in me. I don't know what to do on a daily basis. And the truth is one of the reasons I was going to Spain is because I'm thinking of retiring early and moving there. And I don't know if that's running from the problem I don't know if that's saving my life I don't know if I'm ready to abandon everything here and start over. So although I wanted to speak to the situation really all I have to offer is my utter confusion of what's going on really and what to do. And I will acknowledge this is utterly inadequate. I wish I could say here are the steps to take here is something you can do in your community here's an actual action you can take here's something more than just virtue signaling. I don't know I don't know what to do and it is troubling and it never stops being troubling. Part of the problem is that every day I wake up and a huge chunk of my available energy is spent pushing away the doom utter doom that is all around me. I have to spend a lot of energy simply making enough space for me to get out of bed, for me to take a shower for me to get dressed for me to go to work and therefore I have less energy left over to serve my community through content to take concrete actions to fight the fascism that's going on in my country. I just don't have all of the energy to both live my life in this environment and take concrete steps to make a change. And I feel I'm not going to say like a failure but I feel like I should be doing more and I don't know what that looks like. So this is a very disjointed segment I realize I decided not to kind of plot it out not to script it in any way which is something I do on lots of the segments you hear I just decided to share where I'm at and where I'm at is shock semi-paralysis loss near depletion of my inner resources I as fast as I fill my well the well is being emptied and not being emptied by the things I'm doing in my life but being emptied in trying to find the strength to continue to survive to continue to do to continue to live and not give in to utter crushing despair so um it is very much my plan to return to video educational videos on social media on Instagram on X on Blue Sky because I think people have sort of commented that they would like to see those. I'm not sure how to do it yet. I'm not sure how to do it in a way that acknowledges the horrors of the situation in the world right now while still providing people information and knowledge they might need. And I also I'm not sure how to do it in a way that preserves my inner resources so that I can continue to move through my own life but also make room for others and make room for my community. So that's all I just felt like silence on this was wrong. So I felt like I had to say something but I don't know what to say and so this is what I am saying and sharing with all of you. If you are in the United States I hope I hope you're finding a way to live it is very hard to live right now and as I've said many times I have all the privilege I have great financial security I have a lot of stability in my life I I I my skin is not brown my language is English right like I'm I'm not the immediate target although as recent murders of U.S. citizens have shown I could be a target and I have to wonder if you're in the United States and I not a lot of people have as much privilege as I do I have to imagine what kind of struggle you're going through and I don't know how to support you in that except no I don't I don't know how I mean words are empty. I don't know how to support you in that but I but I'm but you're in my thoughts which is horrible right thoughts and prayers do nothing but I'm not unaware of the fact that if you're in the United States life is hard for just about everyone if you're not in the United States I can only imagine the way you must see my country right now. And part of what's frightening for me is that the US is really really bad right now but we're not the only country that is leaning towards the right leaning towards xenophobia leaning towards hatred leaning towards division leaning towards fascism and that's even more frightening because it's one thing if I'm like all right the United States that was a it was a good experiment it is ending. Let's get the hell out of here let's start over somewhere else but there are so many places in the world that are struggling with the same issues and then it becomes really troubling because it's then it's sort of like wow man is this the end times and sometimes it does feel like the end times. So I think if this is the end times I'm going to choose to be the violinist on the Titanic playing music till the end to help people stay a little calm. So that is the best analogy I can choose for myself in this moment. That is the best path of action that I know to take right now. And so I will continue to do this podcast. I will eventually return to videos on social media because maybe some people just need some normality. Maybe some people need the kind of education that helps them live their desires in a way that cultivates more energons for their soul, for their well. And if I can help with that maybe that's something so that's all I have and I'm very sorry it's not more I'm very sorry that it's not clear. I'm very sorry I'm very sorry that I'm not doing better. And I I think I'm sorry I think that's for me, right? Like I feel like I wish I could be doing better for me. Not that I'm disappointing others but somehow I'm disappointing myself and not being able to do better. But at the same time I am where I am and I will do my best to move forward with strength and courage and conviction and land on the right side of history if at all possible so for everyone out there please at least do your best to keep living because that's the first step to winning and that's it. I'm sorry I'll I'll talk to you next time there's more episodes coming that much I know and that's it for this episode thank you so much for joining me. Please consider subscribing or you can send feedback to edge at fullcow.show as always may your leather journey be blessed