The Boston Marathon bombings are now a week old. In the interim, the bombers have apparently been captured and /or killed and, apart from possibly coming up with a motive or other co-conspirators , the case has been resolved.
The criminal part of it has been resolved, perhaps. As with most events such as this, it is almost impossible to comprehend the impact it has had on the injured, their families, the other spectators and, essentially, the world in general. Once again, we are starkly reminded of how instantaneously the darkness can descend over the commonplace and joyful.
I am always on the lookout for something to write about here and the bombings fairly screamed at me. I hesitated, though, and I'm not sure why. Very quickly, there was a plethora of very eloquent essays and blogs on the internet and in the papers and it just didn't seem as though I had much to add.
I couldn't even really decide which of my two blogs I would use, when and if the time came. My other blog, "Strides", is dedicated to running and it seemed to make some sense to post it there. On the other hand, the bombings didn't seem to have been aimed at running, per se, they seemed to be aimed more simply at a large gathering of people where there was also a strong media presence.
Make no mistake, though, the bombings affected runners.
Runners are a strongly linked community and it was difficult not to feel targeted. It was also hard not to wonder why us? As much as running can be a social event it is essentially a solitary form of endeavour, impacting only the participant so why on earth would anyone want to disrupt that?
What we have ended up doing is trying to make sense out of the senseless and random. We wonder what we should do, or could have done, differently.
I'm sure some runners may never enter a similar event again. I also suspect that somewhere there is a runner who has stopped running.
My sense, though, is that in most cases the opposite has happened. I suspect that runners are now even more resolved to continue running. I wouldn't even be surprised if someone actually took up running, inspired by something they might have seen or a story they might have heard of from last week in Boston.
I ran in a 5K race this past weekend in Uxbridge, Ontario. Before the event started, there was a singing of the national anthem. Due to the events in Boston, it was decided to sing the American national anthem as well. It was an emotional few moments, as you can imagine, and you could sense the solidarity that existed. During the awards ceremony, the emcee asked if there was anyone there who had actually run in the Marathon in Boston. One young lady had been there, had finished the race and was in her hotel room when the bombs went off. She echoed the general chaos and horror of that day and received a huge ovation from the people gathered there. Nowhere did I perceive any indication that the events in Boston had dampened any runner's resolve.
As I rooted around the internet last week, looking for coverage from Boston, I ran into streams of discussions all over the place as to who was responsible, how they should be punished and how this reflected on our place in the world.
There was much anger and much placing of blame. Al Qaeda was fingered. The U.S. government was accused of conspiracy. People made outrageous statements, in their zeal, and then were angrily denounced by others. There was racism and name-calling. The point was made by some that there are parts of the world where incidents like this are a daily occurrence and that results are quite often much worse. Some people did not want to be reminded of this. It was not hard to see the vitriol being passed around and realize how much latent anger there is in the world, just waiting to be vented. At times, the anger demonstrated by people talking about the bombings was almost as scary as the bombings themselves.
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| These will go on. |
More than anything, though, people pulled together. Those that died, heart-breakingly, were all young with bright futures. They, along with the wounded and maimed, will all have special places in our hearts and minds. Many of us will think of Boston every time we run. Some of us will run as respite from the memory.
The other day I walked into an apartment building in west London. I walk into this building at least once a week in order to see one of the people my agency supports. I've been coming to this building regularly for over twenty years now and, in fact, lived in it myself for a year almost eight years ago.
That day, as I walked in, the building had now become the site of a double homicide this past Easter weekend.
This was a surreal experience. The murders and disposition of the bodies, from all the news accounts, were grisly and not even discovered until the smell of decomposition began to permeate the building. The only suspect has been arrested and charged.
It is not the same building anymore. I spoke at length with the person I support and he is having a difficult time coping. This was not hard to understand. The whole atmosphere of the apartment complex seems to have changed. There did not seem to be as many people around, and there were not the same smiling faces I am used to seeing. The person I support said this has been the case since the murders were discovered. He says his friends in the building, many of whom we support as well, are also suffering varying amounts of anxiety and fear. It's almost as if the building itself has died its own little death and is pondering how and when to rise up again.
We have gone out of our way to describe the murders as very isolated incidences, committed by one person against other persons he knew. We have also said that the chances of this happening again in that building are infinitesimal and that the same chances would be just as good anywhere else you might want to move to. I don't know that any of this helped and I'm not sure that I really expected it to.
For myself, I'm pretty sure that if I were in the market for an apartment I wouldn't hesitate to move back into this building. It could be that this is easy for me to say because I haven't just had my living space defiled in such an egregious manner. Or it could be that I've been able to compartmentalize these murders and shunt them off elsewhere.
As much as I might want to think that eventually everything will blow over and return more or less to normal, it's still hard to convey this to someone who is in the middle of it right now.
A few years ago, a young man and two young boys were killed in a horrific car crash at an intersection in a rural area near London. This intersection is on the way to the school in Delaware I've been driving my stepkids to for the last seven years or so. For a while they asked me to go a different way--they had heard all the news reports and felt uncomfortable passing by the scene where it had happened. I didn't have a problem taking a different route but eventually the talk about the accident faded away and we returned to driving past the scene. Even though we do this, however, it is difficult to see the small crosses which have been erected there and not be taken somewhere unpleasant, all over again.
So there are spaces around us all which, if not actually haunted themselves, still haunt us with the memories we associate them with. I doubt very much whether I will ever be able to enter that west London building without thinking about what happened there. I do only need to go in it once a week--the tenants of the building will enter it constantly and lie there in their beds imagining all manner of thing. Or not---we are all individuals and cope differently with such traumatic experiences.
I can only hope that the people who live in that complex do eventually come to grips with this tragedy and move on. Whether they do this emotionally, physically or a combination of both, I hope they do find a way to separate the evil that goes on in some persons' lives from the all the good which goes on in their own.
Coffee is my friend. I think coffee is friends to a lot of people, so this is nothing new to most of us. I'm not even sure when it was I started drinking coffee, I believe I was in my mid- to late twenties. My parents were coffee drinkers and I have vague recollections of sipping from the dregs left in their cups when I was quite young and enjoying the taste.
Most of the coffees I had in the beginning were of the social variety, getting offered them after meals and whatnot. I don't think I even started making my own til after I was married and started having children (probably needed it by then!)
I do have a fairly clear memory of my first coffee "rush"--it was one of those holy cow, so that's what they were talking about kinds of moments. All of the sudden I could feel my eyes getting a little wider and my awareness picking up and my senses heightening. I thought this was pretty cool. And legal, too!
I think that I've built up a bit of a coffee tolerance these days, I very rarely get that same kind of rush anymore, but I still enjoy the coffee. I can even drink it fairly close to bedtime and it doesn't seem to keep me awake. Occasionally it keeps me awake enough to make it bed.
There is a bit of a feeling that I'm reconnecting with something whenever I sit down to a coffee. This might be because it is such a social drink and there does tend to be someone with me when I'm drinking one. At the same time, I get a very similar feeling when I'm drinking one at home, alone. I can be sitting there in the livingroom, at loose ends, and then it occurs to me that I can have a coffee. It almost seems like a revelation, oddly enough. Then, when I take that first sip, it's like settling deep into an easy chair and life is fine all over again.
I spend a lot of work time with various different people I support, visiting coffee shops. There is the occasional day when, by the time the work day is over, I've had perhaps three or four coffees. At times like this, I feel as though I'm never going to want to see another coffee again. And then the sun rises on another day!
I am somewhat undecided on whether I drink too much coffee or not. I occasionally see warnings about the effects of coffee and then I see other sources saying it's good for you. As with most things, moderation seems like the best way to go. This is occasionally hard to do with coffee, though.
I am also not one of those people who goes for fancy coffees--espressos, cappuccinos, lattés and the like. Nothing intimidates me much more than a trip to Starbucks! No, I am quite unapologetically a regular coffee kind of guy. I drink regular, I take it regular, and I drink it regularly and usually drink it with the "regulars".
Hard to say what life might be like without coffee. I certainly remember when I didn't drink it. In fact, I remember being a bit if a tea granny when I was a kid. If worse came to worst, I imagine I could still drink tea. I just wouldn't want to. Life without coffee would also mean life without coffee shops. I find this very hard to imagine--it just seems as though much of the social fibre these days revolves around visiting coffee shops. I'm not sure whether this is because much of Canada becomes a cold weather country for large chunks of the year or not. There is something about a regular stop in a Timmies that seems to connect you with your community. Likely because if you've stopped to drink, you have also stopped to talk. Not only do you talk to whoever you might be with but you also end up vicariously taking part in all the audible conversations around you. A lot of the time this will keep you on top of current events but some of the time it also keeps you abreast of people's private lives. Most of these conversations are eminently forgettable but, in their own way, they are also slightly reminiscent of your own life and are a reminder that we are all interconnected.
Coffee has us in its grasp. Generally, it is a loving embrace and one to be both nurtured and cherished. My search for pics for this post took me to Google Images, where I simply typed in "coffee". More than any other post I've done the same thing for, the images which appeared before me were all inviting, warm, mellow and friendly. I almost got a caffeine rush just looking at them and I would heartily recommend doing the same search yourself, should you need a gentle break from whatever your laptop is assailing you with these days. On top of everything else, there is no fickleness to be dealt with, for sure, coffee will always be there for us.
As I'm finishing off this post, I'm also finishing off my morning coffee. Breakfast, coffee and the newspaper constitute my daily morning routine. If, however, circumstances dictated that I could only have one of the three, I would most certainly choose the coffee. I'm really not sure why this is. I'm not addicted to the stuff (although most addicts would tell you the same thing about whatever it was they were addicted to), I simply would describe it as a strong preference.
So there you have it, my little ode to coffee. Written, for the most part, while I was drinking one. I would not have imagined that coffee could become a whole blog post. I guess I am a writer who is invested with his subject matter! I also think I'm addressing this to the many like-minded out there, you know who you are. Meet me at Tim's and we can discuss it!
