Back to Normal?
The hardest part of last week for me was feeling the existential angst of my home city and feeling like I had very few people to turn to in my adopted one. I felt heavily what Boston was suffering but only from afar. The nerves of the whole city were shot I'm sure (mine surely were) and yet we were so blessed to have a medical team placed so near the finish line. Thank God for our bevy of world-class hospitals and the particular can-do-spirit of everybody in Boston, Massachusetts on our very own Patriots' Day. It's a small but mighty city that left no nook and cranny uninspected.
I admittedly became a little unhinged with guilt and monomania. Housesitting in Twin Peaks starting on Monday afternoon, I became glued to the cable channels (a novelty for me) and clung to one of my chocolate labs for comfort as the news spilled out over five days. Many men in my family work for law enforcement or security. Heck, I even manned the campus of Harvard Law School for a whole year, just down the street from where Sean Collier was killed at M.I.T. Of course, a few of my friends were running the marathon and most everybody I knew acknowledged it in some way if not cheering for the Type A's from the precarious sidelines.
For the most part, California rather carried on and it annoyed me to no end. A few people took to the streets running in solidarity or wearing their Sox caps. But it seemed a classic case of out of sight, out of mind. And for that I cannot blame my fellow San Franciscans (how often do I think of the poor folks in Damascus?).
April truly is the cruelest month. The historic trauma of this first warm month in this country reads like a devil's grocery list: the Boston Massacre, Waco, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma City, etc. Is it the sun burning through rash Aries on its way to serious Taurus that makes this mid-April week so very manic and merciless? And what about the places under constant violence? Are the limits to empathy based upon race, color, class and proximity? And how do we change this? Or more importantly, do we want to?
Lastly, I often think of media exposure in times like these. What does society value in thought, speech and action? What am I bringing into the world by thought, speech and action? And, the more vexing question of all, am I doing enough to make the world a better place? Asking this last question means that I come from New England, from Boston, the Athens of America that seeks to improve the conscience and character of this country. And by the evidence of last week, we've already shown the country what real character and community looks like.
For the most part, California rather carried on and it annoyed me to no end. A few people took to the streets running in solidarity or wearing their Sox caps. But it seemed a classic case of out of sight, out of mind. And for that I cannot blame my fellow San Franciscans (how often do I think of the poor folks in Damascus?).
April truly is the cruelest month. The historic trauma of this first warm month in this country reads like a devil's grocery list: the Boston Massacre, Waco, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma City, etc. Is it the sun burning through rash Aries on its way to serious Taurus that makes this mid-April week so very manic and merciless? And what about the places under constant violence? Are the limits to empathy based upon race, color, class and proximity? And how do we change this? Or more importantly, do we want to?
Lastly, I often think of media exposure in times like these. What does society value in thought, speech and action? What am I bringing into the world by thought, speech and action? And, the more vexing question of all, am I doing enough to make the world a better place? Asking this last question means that I come from New England, from Boston, the Athens of America that seeks to improve the conscience and character of this country. And by the evidence of last week, we've already shown the country what real character and community looks like.
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