[Bob]

it feels completely unreal to even type that, but it happened today. somebody planted bombs in my city because they wanted people to die, and it worked.

even now, on the day of the event, without time to even sleep it off, i can't help but realize on some level that this kind of shit happens all around the world all the time, and how egocentric is it of me to only suddenly feel it deeply now that it happened in the place where i live, where i can't ignore it, but...i still do, it still feels so unreal, so sue me

i'm fine and i wasn't anywhere near the blast when it happened, i work across town, i found out about it through friends, but still. seeing a cell phone picture on twitter of blood-stained ground of a place i've been to many times before, maybe 5 or 10 minutes after the blast, with the simple caption "what the fuck just happened?"...i don't really have a precedent for how to think about that, you know? seeing a picture of the boston public library, where i've met friends, only now the ground is wet with the blood of strangers and somebody's lying there with half their leg missing, that's not something i expected to process today. even saying shit like "i wasn't anywhere near the blast" is something i've gone 28 years without having to do yet, it's...it's weird.

it happened near the end of the work day and i found myself thinking, sort of coldly and rationally, "should i try to take the train home? what's the grace period after a bombing when it's safe to take train again? the train's running, which means the police don't expect anyone to blow it up, and they know best, right? and if i do walk, are there any particular places that people might want to bomb that i should avoid?" that kind of fucked up thing. i've never had to think about that before

i'm impressed by the speed that the authorities were able to respond to it with, and also by the general feeling of love and empathy that's happening at the moment...let's hope that doesn't turn into lust for vengeance too soon, or at all preferably. i don't want to see anybody flayed over this, i just want to live in a world where people don't want to plant bombs in cities anymore

i'm rambling, i dunno. i'm fine but i'm rambling