incidents and accidents
Need I make a statement? What is there to state? What could I possibly add to the breathless Breaking News coverage that has been covering the news that has broken for the last seven hours?
It's weird, isn't it, how public events such as the worst school-shooting type event in American history just kind of pokes itself into things?
We were at a hole in the wall (with a name and a menu), one TV tuned to CNN, one TV tuned to Fox News, both tuned to Breaking News coverage. Two student dudes came in, slid sideways into the big and sticky wooden booths, then looked, naturally, as we do, to the televisions, and they both stopped. A little hitch in their get-along. Their mouths opened and one looked sideways at the other as they processed Breaking News - perhaps for the first time?
I looked over again a few minutes later and they both slumped in the booth, shoulders hunched crookedly, chins on palms, one pulling at his lip as they silently watched Fox News's Breaking News coverage across the room.
Three tragic things have happened in the last two days, each of varying closeness to me, none being too too close, though. And yet it still feels weird to feel normal. You pat yourself up and down, nodding, but proceeding a little bit more cautiously. Every once in a while your thoughts are yanked back to these things - you run your tongue over them, thinking how things might have been different and objects might so easily have not moved in that precise way that they did and everything would have been okay; or how it might have been you there instead, or your child or friend, if things were different enough. And we come to rest on these little platforms, stories of blame, stories that do something to reassure us of our own security ("she must have been drunk," etc.).
So: try not to rest too long. Think about the families. Sign cards, go to funerals, make donations. Bear witness.
It's weird, isn't it, how public events such as the worst school-shooting type event in American history just kind of pokes itself into things?
We were at a hole in the wall (with a name and a menu), one TV tuned to CNN, one TV tuned to Fox News, both tuned to Breaking News coverage. Two student dudes came in, slid sideways into the big and sticky wooden booths, then looked, naturally, as we do, to the televisions, and they both stopped. A little hitch in their get-along. Their mouths opened and one looked sideways at the other as they processed Breaking News - perhaps for the first time?
I looked over again a few minutes later and they both slumped in the booth, shoulders hunched crookedly, chins on palms, one pulling at his lip as they silently watched Fox News's Breaking News coverage across the room.
Three tragic things have happened in the last two days, each of varying closeness to me, none being too too close, though. And yet it still feels weird to feel normal. You pat yourself up and down, nodding, but proceeding a little bit more cautiously. Every once in a while your thoughts are yanked back to these things - you run your tongue over them, thinking how things might have been different and objects might so easily have not moved in that precise way that they did and everything would have been okay; or how it might have been you there instead, or your child or friend, if things were different enough. And we come to rest on these little platforms, stories of blame, stories that do something to reassure us of our own security ("she must have been drunk," etc.).
So: try not to rest too long. Think about the families. Sign cards, go to funerals, make donations. Bear witness.
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