It is difficult to know what to say about the Boston Marathon bombing. I thought earlier that there was something profound in the phrase, "And so, once again, the Good shall seek the profound in the senseless." But I decided before I posted it that "profound" and "senseless" are not so incompatible semantically that what I had written was really so smart. In fact, I found it more profoundly ironic than anything, and so, self-consciousness crept in, or I suppose it did. In any event, it didn't go up.
I think the thought, though, (This is all very much an annoying, alliterative meta-mess at this point.) was that you can't expect to find meaning in an act of sheer ignorance, as all viciousness must surely be characterized, simply because the task of fitting words to an act so horrible that it overwhelms the limits of language necessitates calling into action the greatest insult we know. That is, without a doubt, "ignorant".
There is simply no vocabulary to measure what happened yesterday, though there are several unfortunately obvious precedents just as invulnerable to description. It is so predictably fruitless an effort to try, though, that I don't know why we do it, much less why we have several 24-hour news networks (some of which we won't watch for no better reason than they're not to our taste) dedicated to this impossible task. Perhaps it goes some way to explaining the apparent willingness of these same networks to put anyone at all on television. I don't know. Maybe the order of the day is just "more talk". "More talk" because is it as if anyone could say anything insightful about it anyway? You can't have insight into things outside of language. The most you can do is run up to the boundary of it and report back, "Yeah. Can't see anything." Maybe we just need to have people around, and people need to talk, and be talked at, and none of it is going to be any good, but it fills up the time.
I think I've developed an intolerance for cliché whatever the event. Truth be told, though -- they are convenient when there is a serious need to say nothing at all, and when saying it does actually do a lot of good. I have not found myself fond of the personal commenting policies of those who feel a need to respond to the Boston attacks with URLs for twin bombings in Iraq taking three times the lives. I find it difficult to accept that there is now no expression of sympathy that isn't apparently a symptom of some kind of blended moral and political myopia. That just can't be. It's too sweet a mixture of political pop culture for me. Nor, to this point, can I really say I have been fond of Pray for Boston. Pray for the families, yes; of course. But, making no claim to the city proper myself, I've got to say that you've got to go a good distance further before the most stubborn people on the fucking planet need praying for. A region that obsesses for 86 years over something as trivial as a baseball championship will neither forget (certainly not victims or the offense) nor change. It is, after all, not an empire we're up against. No red coats or pinstripes.
So, what can be said? It's sad. That's it. Beyond that, I think the one comment I did quite like sounded like a slogan: "Today we mourn. Tomorrow we fight." There is, I think, just enough literalism in the the first and metaphor in the second to give me, at least, something from home to hang my hat on. Whatever works for you, though, I suppose.
