The Aurora Shooting and the Interminable Questions

Another mass shooting in a small Colorado suburb. (I don't even know what part of that sentence is most sickening, "another" or "mass shooting.") The answerable gets asked, for facts soothe the shocked. What How Where When Who go first. After those have settled, the unanswerable haunting Why comes up. Articles vomit their theories; loose gun laws, social inadequacies, negligent parents, media influences, and the maddening mundaneness of the American suburb.

Can we really handle the answer though? How many times did we read Eric Harris' diaries and watch Seung-Hui Cho's homemade videos? How many books will we write, how many weird indie films will we make, how many more pieces to this puzzle do we need before we take responsibility?
Maybe they were insane or maybe they were just a magnified version of us: angry, in pain, and lonely. The disparity lies in their despair and not, I maintain, in their access to weapons, for we all have access to weapons but we do not all go on a shooting rampage.

We collectively ignore the misfits around us, and then we collectively believe that if we take away the means, we will erase the turbulent cause. Not that the argument is unfounded: if we banned cigarettes, we would likely have less cases of lung cancer; if we take guns away from our children, we will likely have less mass murders among our youth. I am absolutely in favor of gun control- if we can prevent the How, then why don't we?- But neither "solution" soothes the cause, and we simply cannot ignore that. Our angry young men will still be angry young men. Their desire to indiscriminately kill others still stirs within them, and what do we intend to do about that? Numb them with Prozac and do away with violent entertainment? Guarantee every child in an American suburb loving and attentive yet ambitious and successful parents who can pay for a college education that will give them a fulfilling career?

Theories and questions don't change the tragedy, the sadness, or the loss. But we must study it, we must ask questions, we must be moved to tears by this, we must scream at the top of our lungs, and we must not stop thinking about it for a moment, for the instant we move on with our lives, it will happen again.

The Miracle of Life

I wanted to write about the 12th anniversary of the Columbine school shootings, as I did last year, but my mind was empty all day. Instead, I looked through one of my albums on facebook, "practicing the miraculous in everyday life," and found inspiration there. I started this album two years ago, as an attempt to focus my attention on the beautiful parts of my life. I decided not to care whether my pictures came out cheesy, artsy-fartsy, or self-indulgent. I was just going to take pictures of things that made me smile and share them.

It worked. I became increasingly more aware of what inspired and moved me. My surroundings played a bigger part in my appreciation of life and beauty. There was room in the album for nature, city life, silly faces, loved ones, funny moments, melancholy, nostalgia, and, of course, love.

It is my collection of miracles, and it has restored my faith many times.

It is through some of these pictures, then, that I will honor life today.

Practicing the miraculous in everyday life. 2009-2011

The steps to the fountain in Washington Square Park, where I go when I need inspiration, or just a little love from the city.


Sunset on the 4th of July, view from Brooklyn. Kerri and I ran up that crazy hill in Dumbo on that night, trying to get to this sunset, and then to the fireworks. Worth it.

Footprint on the sand in Hermosa Beach, CA. I love wet sand, and my favorite is when it has that moonlike consistency, where your footprints kind of rise up for a few seconds. It delights me.


I found this one day in Central Park two summers ago, when I really needed to restore my faith in love and romance. It also reminds me of Notting Hill, which happens to be one of my favorite movies. (I know. Whatever. Leave me alone.)


I have a passion for face masks, especially bright blue ones (the smurfier the better, I say, for smurfs have such good skin!), and this picture became an instant classic.

The Massacred Children of Rio

I have been searching and struggling for a way to pay tribute to the massacred children of Rio. I am speechless, but I am not without thoughts or feelings. I am angry, confused, mesmerized, shocked, and saddened by this tragedy. Every image played and replayed on the news cuts me, but I can not keep my eyes off the screen. The sitcoms go on, as do the reality shows, at their scheduled times, as if nothing were happening-- I could distract myself there, but I can't. I won't.

Last year, I blogged about Columbine on its 11th anniversary. School shootings are something that deeply perplex me, and I have always been inclined to finding as much information as I can about them. I admit I thought they were not something that happened in Brazil. I am guilty of having once said to a fellow American, "Brazilians kill because they're starving or fighting for their rights, Americans massacre each other out of boredom." I confess to believing it was an illness that manifested in neglected American suburban teenagers, victims of bullying and misunderstandings. This wasn't supposed to be a Brazilian problem. Like a friend posted on facebook, "WTF, this shit doesn't happen in Brazil." We have enough problems. Our children carry guns, yes, but because they are raised in utter poverty and know no other way to survive. This desire, this need, to kill fellow classmates for no apparent reason just did not happen here.

I now stand not only corrected, but ashamed.

A scene plays over and over again in my head; a mother being told her child has just been shot several times. She falls into despair at first, but then she looks up at the sky and is relieved. She is certain that God would not do that to her. She will have to identify the body, and she is still certain that God protected her little girl. She is even more certain when she sees the body. Those bloody clothes are not her. Those bones are not my child. Whenever reality settles in for this mother, if it ever does, I pray she finds the strength she needs to survive it.

For those children who lost their lives yesterday, I am saddened and I give them my prayers and the guarantee that they shall be remembered. For the children who were injured and scarred by the event, I honor them as survivors and hope that they are given the care they need at this time. And for the parents and families of the children who died yesterday, I send them all the love and strength I have.

To the children of the Rio school shooting of April 7th, 2011, you are remembered and honored.




Image from here.

How Did That Happen?

Eleven years ago, on April 20th, 1999, I was a regular 8th grader, going about my business as usual, hopping from class to class, half-daydreaming, half-present. I expected nothing from that day, as I expected nothing from any day at school. I was certainly not prepared for the announcement I would hear at my algebra class right before lunch. A news report had just been distributed to all the teachers at my school, a news report so dreadful it paralyzed my otherwise perfectly-in-control-math-geek teacher. She stood before our class, not knowing how to deliver the news. We, even at 13, instinctively knew something was wrong. We sat in silence and waited. Finally, she started saying, "It seems like there was a mass..." and her voice started breaking. She took a deep breath and then started again, "There was a massacre at a high school in Colorado today. It looks like some students got some guns and... " Her voice trailed off again as her eyes got watery. The class was stunned into silence. We sat there and said nothing for a while. Then we started asking questions. We wanted to know everything. And once all the facts were given to us, we sat in silence again.

We were silent for days.

For some reason, it hit me really hard. I watched and read every news coverage on the story. The images and stories imprinted themselves in my heart. I had no connection to any of those kids or to that high school in Littleton, Colorado- I had never even been to Colorado- but I was deeply disturbed and forever changed by that tragedy. I searched- I am still searching- for the answer to the most-asked question, "How did that happen?" How did those young boys, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, with their whole lives ahead of them, get to the point of such despair that they decided to buy guns, walk into school with them one day, and shoot their classmates, then themselves. Twelve students and one teacher were killed, and many were injured permanently. I wanted to know who they were, I wanted to know how they had been raised, I wanted to know more about the culture they had grown up in and what their high-school experiences had been like. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to understand.

I sought to understand what I, or anyone else, could never really understand. But there was something about them that I did understand, and that I would grow to understand even more deeply as I had my own high-school experiences. I had good parents, I had a great relationship with my brother, I had friends, I went to a high school that provided counseling and support, and I had my love for theatre to get me through any rough teenage times. But I also understood what it was like to feel like you did not belong. I knew what it was like to know you would never be the most popular person in your high-school, not even close, and to have to pretend, every day, that you didn't care. I had friends, close good dear friends, but I knew what it was like to secretly wish I had more friends, which would mean that more people liked me. I knew what it was like to feel invisible, at home and at school, and to never feel like what was important to me was important to anyone in charge. I knew what it was like to be terribly, dreadfully, unbearably lonely. And I could imagine magnifying those circumstances: never feeling like I could talk to my own parents, living in a town where nothing ever happened, where maybe I wasn't even invited to uneventful basement parties, going to a school where there were no subjects that interested me in any capacity, having only one friend- and I'm sure the list could go on. And although I can't understand the boys murdering their classmates and then killing themselves, I can start to understand their need for a violent gesture, their need to be seen, and their deep, desperate need to get out of their lives.

I am still obsessed with the Columbine shootings. I can't even write about it right now without shaking. I can't do much about it, I can't even do much about understanding it and answering the question "How did that happen?". But I can remember it. And I do. Eleven years have gone by and most people don't think about it anymore. April 20th comes and goes. Columbine high-school was closed today, and a few articles were written. Some students there still think about it, still wonder, still go to school with ghosts. And the families of the murdered teenagers still remember this day when they lost a piece of themselves. I can't imagine what Eric and Dylan's parents do on this day, what they do with their lives, how they have managed to get on.

And I, who never had any connection to anyone at Columbine, spend my day thinking about it. Not only thinking about the tragedy and mourning the losses, but also still wondering what propelled it. Wondering who Eric and Dylan really were. Wondering if it really could have been prevented by simply making guns less available, or some other explanation that was thrown at us by the media. Wondering who's to blame. Wondering if we've learned from it. And lastly, wondering, perhaps forever and to no avail, how it happened.

April 20th, 2010. Columbine, your victims are remembered.

image from http://www.freewebs.com/alifetimeofwords/Columbine%20High%20Remember.jpg