Walk On

I am supposed to be working today, my vacation day, grading papers and worksheets that have accumulated over the last two weeks. I set this day aside for this dedicated purpose but it is now the furthest thing from my mind. I know we're supposed to carry on, that carrying on is the only option in the face of unpredictable horror. But I am a little bit stuck, stuck in the repetitive newscasts, stuck reading my Twitter feed, stuck on Facebook. As during the early hours of 9/11, I find myself simultaneously drawn to and repelled by the constant speculation and the never ending loop of gruesome, scary images, images of bloodsoaked concrete, bewildered faces, staggered and staggering bodies.

I need to shut it all off but I was born in Manhattan. I've lived in both New York and Boston. My friend Nada's apartment was at the finish line on Boylston. I am tethered to these places by my own history, my family's history, and the history of many of those with whom I grew up and studied side by side. Many of my former students currently attend college and graduate school in Boston and I frantically scoured Facebook for news of their well-being. Considering the alternative was simply too much, too much after Newtown made me imagine over and over again losses so unfathomable that even now, months later, I write with tears in my eyes.

Most of us will spend the day hoping, praying we don't personally know anyone harmed by these circumstances but inevitably we will. It is a knowing rooted at the very level of our DNA. We share the same atoms, breathe the same elements, come from and return to the same stardust. As humans we are linked by gossamer threads of love and beauty which radiate in rippling concentric circles so that none of us can ever, ever remain untouched, unscathed, unaffected by such tragedy. There is no not knowing. 9/11 taught us so. 9/11 also taught me that the courage of the first responders and the bystanders and the doctors and that of the Bostonians who opened their homes to those who needed them yesterday should bolster my resolve. My God, what those people do and see. Did and saw.

Perhaps it is self indulgent to sit as a bystander with the same 9/11 confusion and disbelief, reliving it on this day as so many others must also be. After all, such paralysis is counted on, acts like these purposefully aimed at keeping us immobile, frozen, unable to move forward. To luxuriate in such sad stillness might be framed as the ultimate act of selfishness given that so many of these runners, their family and friends, have literally lost their limbs, legs which carried them to personal and national victory. But the spirit of ambulation inherent in being human need not be limited to the course of one marathon. To honor these victims, their spirit, the essence of what it means to be human, I will have to leave that indulgence aside for a few moments today, to at least walk on, even if just the tiniest of steps.