how you live your life

it's impossible to describe how you live your life after terrorists set off bombs in your city. you avoid saying the words "terrorist" and "bombs" because they still scare you. you wake up every morning crying because your alarm is set to npr. you don't change your alarm because you don't know how to feel other than sad.

you work from home because terrorists set off bombs four blocks from your office. you leave the tv on the news all day, even though it upsets you with it's content and reporting. you have multiple tabs open on your computer to different twitter feeds, constantly hitting refresh, refresh, refresh. you hope that someone will say something to make anything make sense. you need to know every story of heroism, death, injury. you need to feel connected to your people, your city. you contemplate never leaving boston ever again. you need to refresh.

you go to jamaica plain for lunch because you have never been there and always wanted to go. you sit by a pond and eat a sandwich, watching teenagers, adults, eight-year olds walk around the path. you want to hug every single one of them. you wonder what you would tell a child. you wonder how to explain that there is no way that anyone could have stopped this. you can't cry anymore. you watch a bad movie instead.

you wake up crying because terrorists set off bombs on the street you walk to and from work on. you take the train to work, passing national guardsmen and a blacked out copley station. you are thankful for sunglasses. you have meetings and want to scream that none of it matters because people have died. you look across the table and see red, bleary eyes and realize you are not alone. you refuse to respond to people from out of town who try to talk to you about things other than your city and its people.

you go for a walk at lunch. you stop at the makeshift memorial that has formed two blocks from your office and watch a monk pray. you see a tv news man push a girl trying to deliver flowers out of the way so he can get a good shot of the monk. you leave. you buy three hydrangeas from the three of you for the three of them. you elbow reporters out of the way to drop them off. at night, you see your friends because you can't be alone. when you are alone, you watch only the news and then none of the news. you can only fall asleep with murder, she wrote on in the background.

you wake up in the middle of the night and forget that terrorists set off bombs in your city. you remember. you cry.

you walk to work, thinking it will feel less weird. you get to the street you normally walk down and make a left at the metal gates covered with flowers. cops stand in groups of two, three, four, shoulder to shoulder in front of the local businesses. "there's nothing wrong," they say. "we're just here to make you feel safe." military police walk toward you, always in groups of two. you see more cops than you do non-cops. in the eight blocks, you pass eight metal barriers guarded by cops, decorated with flowers, signs, and teddy bears. you pass four armored trucks. you realize how easy it would be to dissolve into a police state. you take a right and see a middle aged woman ask another, wearing a marathon jacket, if she can hug her. the survivor agrees. they embrace.

you pass the same memorial you left flowers at the day before. it's less crowded and you walk toward it. someone has replaced the chinese flag with an american flag. there are more flowers. people have started taping notes of love to the cement. you are thankful for sunglasses.

you watch the news conference releasing the pictures of the suspects, the pictures of the guys that look like your brothers or your friends. you hear the words "armed and dangerous." you feel the words "armed and dangerous." you don't want to get on a crowded train to go home. you don't want to go home. you want to do anything. you leave work. you go to dinner with your friends. you wonder why anyone would want to blow up a marathon. you think about hats. black. and white.

it's impossible to describe how you live your life after terrorists set off bombs in your city because you are not living your life. you are living your new version of life.

missed stop

i missed my stop on the train today. i was on my way home from work on the tuesday after a three day weekend and the day before i leave for vacation, also known as a Busy Day. i was texting two friends separately about the same conversation i had with a third friend, a conversation that just so happened to be about one of the friends being texted. there was a lot on my mind and nothing on my mind. 

i looked up as the doors were closing, expecting to see the stop before mine, and instead i saw the roof of the little hut where people stand to wait for the train, clearly announcing we were at brookline village. immediately, i saw a version of me jump up, scream "this is my stop!" and run toward the door. i'd seen any number of people do the same exact thing. 

two nights ago, i was at getting on the train at boylston. the doors shut and all of a sudden a woman was banging on the doors yelling, "my daughter! open the doors! my daughter!" in her haste, she turned her head and was yelling toward the back of the train, not the front. other passengers yelled, too, and the doors open. she got off the train and scolded her four year old, who had gotten of the train without her permission. 

there were two possible options for me if i jumped up and ran to the door. i could make it, sneak off the train, and be home in three minutes. i could also miss my chance and have to ride for two minutes to the next stop with people who had seen me act like a complete crazy person. i stayed put. 

i got off the train at the next stop. i'd seen it from afar any number of times when my friends were giving me rides home, but i'd never walked to or from it before. the light drizzle that had started on my walk from the office to the train was beginning to pick up. i looked across the tracks where i could wait for another train to come and take me back the one stop, and looked up the hill in the direction i was pretty sure was home. might as well give it a try, i though, and started up the hill.

it turned out to be very easy to get home. i walked up the hill, took a left, walked half a block, took a right, and was at the end of my street i usually ignore. instead of passing apartment buildings and city shops, i passed three story houses as wide as they were tall. Many were duplexes, some had porches that wrapped around the side, one had a bench in front with a wicker back, lit up with christmas lights.

in one house, light flowed from a window in a back room. i looked in on a family sitting down to eat dinner together. i wondered how long they had lived there, if there were children who grew up in this house who still came home to it during the holidays, what it would have been like if i grew up there. i wondered if they knew that people walked by their house, looking in on them, dreaming about all the things that could possibly be. 

it took me five minutes to walk that way instead of three.

tarot

my friend shannon read my tarot cards last night. what that really means is i shuffled a deck of cards, she dealt them, and then she read what a book said that they meant while i took notes. we were doing a yearly reading, so there was a card for every month, a card to sum up the year, and then we did a clarification card at the end. i wrote the month, the card, and what i took to be the most important point from the two paragraphs of fortune she read. 

we created this story for my year. up through august, things were going to be rough. i was going to have a hard time, go through some things, and have some hard decisions to make. then, life would start to become clearer, i would start to travel more, and by the end of the year, be starting something new. i was pretty sad at first, hearing that i was going to go through turmoil and confusion, through hard times that were going to last through most of the year.

as i continued to write, though, and my year started to turn around, i began to wonder if the point of the tarot reading is not what the reader tells you but what you write down. i went into 2013 with a distinct plan on what i wanted to do with my life, without thinking about what it meat to execute that plan, what it means to go through each day of this year reeling, waiting, dreaming, crying. the tarot made me look that plan in the face. it made me understand that at the end of this year, the most i can hope for is hope for 2014. 

but knowing all of that, it's still okay. i have this feeling sometimes. it's like i'm high above and see where i am in the context of my life. i can vividly see everywhere i've been. i can make out what is directly in front of me. beyond that, there is a vast openness. i keep my head down, pushing forward, not knowing where i'll end up, but knowing that it'll be exactly where i need to be.