Hi.
Coffee: Maxwell House Drip, Office Coffee
Sometimes it feels like you speak things into focus. You’re thinking of something and all of a sudden it’s everywhere. 1985’s movie ‘Cocoon’ – now see how many times you notice ‘Cocoon’ coming up in conversation.
Yesterday, I wrote my blog in part about Charlotte. Today, two people were murdered by gun violence at UNC-C.
These days, nowhere feels safe. Every morning you take a serving of mass shootings with your toast and coffee. Places you assumed were impermeable are criss-crossed with bullet holes. It feeds itself – the less safe we all feel, the more on edge we all are. Our hands go quicker to our holsters.
Truth is, though, the world’s never been safe. In fact, even in America, there are communities that have suffered constant, consistent gun violence for decades. They just happen to be largely black or brown or poor, always marginalized. The papers don’t cover what they expect to happen, just the juicy stuff. We’ve been expecting poor minorities to die violently, but now we’re shocked when shots are fired at college kids.
None of that is to take away from the tragedy. It’s just perspective.
Anyway, I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted with the violence. Isn’t a peaceful life wretched and heart-breaking enough?
There’s no news yet about the motives of this shooter. No news about the lives of their victims. I saw one picture of a shot-out glass door at the UNC-C library. A long time ago, I opened that door on the way to meet up with someone who loved me. Now the glass is gone and there’s no more border between warm, book-laden hallways and the long-fanged outdoors.
Currently Reading: Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain
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Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
E.F. Schumacher
Livesay Writing 
Poignant to say the least. Glad you wrote about it.
Anytime this happens it always takes me back to when Columbine happened when I was in college.
We had a group of theatre/medieval times groupies who always wore black trench coats long before it happened. My school’s reaction was to bully them about wearing them after the Columbine shooters had worn the same thing.
It struck me then that we never cease to focus on the symptoms (or nebulous things that don’t matter at all, that are not even symptoms but rather personal preference) in this country and rarely if ever the cause. Years later we are paying the price, even still, for not wanting to dig deeper. For bandaiding war wounds…
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