Thursday, September 30, 2010

i'm sick. my body is achey and i have a weird sense of exhaustion. i had a sore throat earlier-- this concerns me, all are symptoms of mono. however, i do have a friend who recently suffered swollen lymph nodes plus all of the above and tested negatively for mono. however his illness plagued him for awhile, and i don't have awhile. i've mostly slept on and off for these two days.

what have i been doing when i have some clarity of mind? reading about Columbine shootings, something that happened during my lifetime, very memorably, but as with most events that have happened in my lifetime I only took in the information as it came, and never really looked at the whole story. today, i tried looking at the whole story, and i feel more than ever that at some point, much later in life, i should return to school and afterwards assume a position of some sort of criminal rehabilitation therapist. on the one hand, this stuff is horrifying, but on the other, especially in the journals of the depressive, Dylan, you can see plainly the pain that could have been confronted, that is relateable, treatable. More than that, there is a puzzle, to me, in these events. I don't think one person could have swooped in to prevent it all and save both of these troubled kids, but of course it could have been different. Why did it play out this way, exactly? And what about fate? The most intriguing bit of the entire story, to me, is this other kid that had had some falling-outs with the gunmen, but had started to be friends with them again towards the end. When he saw one of them (Dylan I think), the day of, he asked him why he had missed class. The gunman responded that the kid should get out, and leave school, "I like you now," he said. Without questioning, he kid left. I don't feel that this means the gunman was merciful, necessarily, I certainly don't think he was somehow convinced by his more "psycho" friend, Eric, to kill everyone- he was gleeful where his partner was stoic, he enjoyed the killing. But by chance, amidst all that, the vengeful, on-the-edge gunman decided he liked his old friend that day, and he warned him.

Now I'm reading about Virginia Tech. I'm sure this research is partially motivated by some sort of horrible taste for the morbid side of things, though I hope not. I think, generally, the inner interest is the puzzle-- right now, in every way, it seems as though nothing fits together. The tragedies are like that. You think, now that it's all happened, that all these people are dead and the killer has desposed of himself, maybe you have all of the pieces and you can fit them together so it can make sense. Then you can hold up the complete picture and see if it matches anything else, you can make sure it never happens again.

..But it does happen again. And apparently it just gets worse (13 < 32).

3 comments:

Sonja said...

I hope you feel better soon.

I admire you for being able to research the shootings. I don't think I could be able to handle it. Just out of curiosity did you ever read "19 Minutes" by Jodi Picoult? I'm not really a fan of Picoult, but it's about a high school shooting and the person who does said shooting. I haven't read it, though it's been on my reading list for a while.

K said...

Weeeeellllll I don't know if it is admirable, like I said, some part of the interest I feel stems from my morbid curiosity. We always wonder what makes us mostly sane people so different from someone who could kill not just one other person but a MASS AMOUNT of people. I do, anyway, and considering the country's apparent obsession with primetime forensics (how many CSI shows do we have now?) I venture a guess that quite a few others do, too. Still, both of those incidents were SUCH huge events in our lifetime, and I never watch things when they're actually IN the news (rebellion? not sure).

Never read 19 Minutes. I told Emily I'd try reading Keeping Faith, but... Picoult.... I don't know.... sister's.... keeper.... must....resist....

Sonja said...

I hated Sister's Keeper. Especially the end. x_x