How do we digest all of this? Elation and sadness, reflection and triumph. I feel uneasy. I feel a mound in my chest that I can’t spit up or swallow. I feel like people have already moved on. One girl on facebook said just that, “Moving on to more important things, I got my BRITNEY TICKETS!” And then I heard someone else say, Osama Bin Laden, 2011 winner of the longest game of hide and seek.
I stood in line for a sandwich, a long long line and no one seemed any different. The sky gray, roast beef in the air, I don’t remember if there was music playing inside or not, but The Wizard of Oz was everywhere. On cards, the song keeps playing over and over in my head because people have already said it. “Ding Dong” and I can’t get it out of my head. Last night, falling asleep I jolted awake for no reason. You know the lull right as you drift off, the jerks of an arm or a leg, but this was a full body jolt. I don’t even remember thinking about falling or dreaming about falling, but my whole body jumped in the air.
The newsroom is quiet. Much quieter than I thought it would be. I’m not sure how to be in the world today. I went out as much as I could, but nothing seems any different and I don’t know how that’s possible. My landlord asked for my rent check like nothing was new. And that’s how it happens, the world doesn’t even stop for one breath of air. It just keeps spinning and changing without even knowing where to go from here.
a no skin day
Comments
4 responses to “a no skin day”
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so true. so strange, this day. life as usual, yet a man is dead, a bad man, but still his death is on someone’s hands, and that makes me sad somehow.
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Angella,
yes. I know what you mean. It’s been hard for me to concentrate today on anything else and yet I have to a little bit to get through the work day. My initial reaction was not joy. It’s still not joy. I feel mournful, I feel scared of what is to come of the world, I feel uneasy and overwhelmed. I feel my chest and my head pulsing. I feel a very strange energy in the grayness of the sky. A bad man IS dead and for so many it has brought them closure and comfort and I’m glad those people are able to feel that way. I’m glad that some of their pain is eased. But the wildness of it all scares me somehow. It makes me uneasy.
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Uneasy, yes, and not entirely trusting the news, any news, for we are told every sort of thing and that doesn’t make it real. I forget who said, “The death of any man diminishes me.” It does. xo
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Marylinn, I found the quote: “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
— John Donne
I’m just in shock at how blood thirsty people are – we got a woman calling the newsroom yesterday wanting to see a picture of him dead, wanting to see the bullet wounds and she couldn’t believe that we didn’t have any pictures of it.
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