Last week I wrote an article for The National about the newly ironic question of “where do you feel safe?” That’s the second question people ask when I tell them where I live, as if Abu Dhabi is some terrifying city “over there.” But this question in the context of America’s gun insanity, now has to stand on its head.
I was in a movie theater yesterday, watching Ghostbusters (yay, women are funny! and smart! and don’t need a boyfriend to be successful! IMAGINE THAT), and herd of loud teenagers walked in: big kids, unlaced sneakers, yelling and teasing each other. There was some kerfuffle over who was sitting where, and you know what went through my mind? “Oh, shit, I hope no one has a gun.”
Yep. Sitting in a movie theater on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, at 11AM, with my kids and father-in-law, I thought for a split second that maybe we were all going to become statistics.
Ask me again where I feel safe.
And then, the day my column came out, Nice. With the additional irony that when you write the name of the city, it looks like, you know, nice.
Another tragedy–what an empty word–another instance of ideology trumping respect for human life (and god, it’s awful to have to use the word “trump.” We are going to need some synonyms, stat). More bombs, more death, more loss. Endless loss.
It’s an entire summer of loss, of memorials and funerals and devastation.
The violence seems never to recede, only to accrue; it billows outward, covering everything.
It’s a sunny day in New York City right now, but somehow the light seems very far away.
prayer flags in Bhutan
