"Death in the afternoon"

Evening. The world seems ghost-like, full of specters. "The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets." I've realized within the last hour or so that I've been submerging my reaction to the murders in Colorado. As though it did not affect me. Yet, in reality, it has deeply struck me.

Again Death has made the news. Mass murder at a high school. I've wanted to think that these were acts that defy explanation. But the true horror is that they seem not implausible. Again and again, references have been made to the prior "outsider" status of the shooters. Disenfranchised, marginal, orbitless. (These are terms that creep through the last fifty years of American history in many forms and guises.)

It is far too simple to say that the shooters were insane. In saying that, we isolate ourselves; we become removed from the causes and reasons. Maybe there are some of us who are programmed by genes or chemistry to be different. A difference that is reflected in a heightened sensitivity to sensations. Or it could be that this is the cause of the differentness. A cycle also starts: harassment by others, followed by increasing anger, continued in more differentness. There will always be those others who seek dominance, so the cycle continues.

No simple solutions. No magic formula. Only continued journey.

PAX!