Marathon

Day 94

Race medals

After 9/11 I was too paralyzed, horrified and sad to have continued with something as basically useless and mundane as creating a guitar a day to spark my personal creativity.  After the events in Boston yesterday, I am almost too angry to do one – but not quite.  I have a daughter in law who is a marathoner (not in Boston yesterday) and I had a close friend who ran the New York Marathon every year, almost until he died.  I’m thinking of these people this morning as well as those killed and injured and irreparably damaged by the attack yesterday – I haven’t watched the news since 4 pm yesterday, so I have no idea what “they” are calling it…but it was an act of cowardice, whatever.  There is no political, social, religious nor moral high ground to claim in an attack on people like Marcy or John – gentle people who run races against themselves, mostly, against time and the inevitable, against apathy.  They run races to raise money for cancer research, for homeless shelters, for animal welfare, for children’s programs.  So if a group has taken credit for this, or if they haven’t, how do they explain the action?  How does any group of cowards justify attacks on schools, on markets, on the places where people gather to conduct the everyday business of life anywhere in the world?  An attack on home soil is no more nor less horrifying than those anywhere else.  But enough.  I am not alone feeling this way.  Today I honor those changed forever in Boston and everywhere.  And I spit on those responsible.