Tampa is a long way from Orlando, but it still felt a little too close to home. Ft. Pierce is a far place from which to drive for to murder 50 people, to murder 1 person, to even entertain the most nebulous intent. They say that before the attack he called 911 to declare allegiance to ISIS. This shows some vanity, a sense of doing this for the record, for posterity, for the greater glory not of Allah but of himself. That’s a bit of slippage. A chink in the armor.
I know somebody who used to live in Upland, CA. The night of the San Bernardino attacks she was writing me a letter. The letter stopped mid-sentence, leaving the rest of the page blank. Continued on the other side of the page she continued: Had to stop, I got word of the events in SB and had to call family there. Upland and SB are, as she tried to explain, cities joined at the hip, or at the very least she was made to feel this way while living there. She felt it necessary to explain so as not to let me think she was exaggerating her connection to the incident, glomming on to make herself a magnet for sympathy or some sort of post-traumatic awe, however feeble, from those of us with no connection to the events but whose solitudes reflexively reach out for some connection.
How often do we do this? Some of us are fucking shameless about it. An old friend of mine lost some of my respect when I asked if if he knew a certain individual who had died months earlier. At the mention of that person’s name my friend’s face lit up, and he proceded to boast of having been at the person’s bedside during the moments of his death. He was unmistakably bragging, and I would see him do the same in later years as friends and acquaintances became deathly ill or incapacitated and somehow he would inject himself into the moment having not communicated with the imperiled individuals for years.
Death magnets. Terror drones. Wayward flies drawn to shitpiles of the human spirit’s excrescence.
No more time to talk to myself today.
