Christiansburg, the Day After
Everything was really quiet around here, considering the influx of people for the convocation. The outskirts were like a ghost town, except for the lines of students in school colors. I was in the 460 business district, right next door to Blacksburg; everything had kind of a strange and surreal quality. Outside a clothing store, clerks were hanging big bunches of ribbons, the kind you'd see on homecoming weekend, but there were big yellow strips dangling out that read "In Memorium." Inside, wandering through the racks of clothes, I could hear the Talking Heads: "Once in a Lifetime." Of course.
Afterwards my mother and I try to escape by ducking into a Mexican restaurant. It's full of TVs, one in every corner, on every wall. Every one of them tuned to the convocation. Governor Kaine's voice rose in power as he talked about Job, about the empty feeling of despair: "God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And then he emphasized the community, Virginia as a "commonwealth" and not a state.
His words rang with power.
Eventually the media circus will go home. Eventually people will get to grieve and remember outside of the camera's eye. The flags will rise again, the ribbons blow away in that knifelike, gritty wind. The grief will still be here, but so will the sense of connection.
I'm a teacher. Education is my business. And the fear will NOT shut me up, the shadow of this massacre will NOT send me running home. And all the whacked-out, narcissistic, masturbatory killers in the world do not have the power to do that one miraculous thing--to awaken a sense of wonder, in this magnificent and terrible world.
Afterwards my mother and I try to escape by ducking into a Mexican restaurant. It's full of TVs, one in every corner, on every wall. Every one of them tuned to the convocation. Governor Kaine's voice rose in power as he talked about Job, about the empty feeling of despair: "God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And then he emphasized the community, Virginia as a "commonwealth" and not a state.
His words rang with power.
Eventually the media circus will go home. Eventually people will get to grieve and remember outside of the camera's eye. The flags will rise again, the ribbons blow away in that knifelike, gritty wind. The grief will still be here, but so will the sense of connection.
I'm a teacher. Education is my business. And the fear will NOT shut me up, the shadow of this massacre will NOT send me running home. And all the whacked-out, narcissistic, masturbatory killers in the world do not have the power to do that one miraculous thing--to awaken a sense of wonder, in this magnificent and terrible world.