The shift from tasteless to anxious was instantaneous when I saw marathon runners with names scrawled down their arms and legs ("Go Jack! Run, Lu... I think Lucy?") starting to call and text as they loped by at mile 22 in Brookline, Massachusetts. Some, but not all, were running with smartphones, and I very much wish now that they had been vanity-Tweeting, shouting to the world that they were indeed doing the marathon. They were using their devices because they were being inundated by notices and updates humming through their phones to the point that they could no longer ignore.
Something was wrong. Those that stopped running early were lucky. Hours later, after night has fallen, there is a pile of hundreds of discarded equipment bags near Copley Square, left in a panic after the explosions. Each bag contains a runner's ringing, vibrating phone, buzzing over and over with notifications that will go unheard.
Their family members are trying to find their runners.
It was a relief to realize how quickly I was able to communicate with friends and family after the Boston Marathon went to shit. There were nerve-wracking moments where I just knew that Murphy's Law was going to choose that day to become hard and fast, when the networks were jammed up and cellphone batteries were being drained, and you couldn't get an email out, let alone a text message, or, God forbid, an actual call. I was well away from any danger, a few miles back up the marathon's route from the finish. The city is small though. There's always the chance that anybody could have chosen to head up to the finish line to watch.
Fixed in silence back at a friend's apartment, five of us absorb repetitious footage -- video, photo, audio -- and Twitter reveals that some marathon runners have kept running after the explosions, heading a few miles further up the river towards Mass General Hospital, intending to give blood if they need it. They're exhausted and their blood is already like syrup -- nobody will argue against that personification of psychotic humanity. (Runners, man.) The TV news tells us little and a majority of their language is edgy and bordering on sensational.
Traversing Facebook, I realized how many friends I had working at hospitals, each of them were taking a moment to dispense with minor details about what they'd seen. The mood was professional and loving, thanking their friends for the support, if appropriately somber. Everybody we knew was okay and those in the position to do something helpful were given the space to get it done. There weren't any concrete details at that point in terms of the explosions' higher-level specifics -- who, why, all of that would likely crystallize when it could. What we did know was that we were doing what we could, making sure everybody we know was safe.
One friend shows me an image of a ruined sidewalk caked in spilled garbage, dismantled fences, and blood stains -- it was posted to a sports blog. The next few hours are devoted to fact finding and nothing new surfaces. We know when enough is enough and stop ourselves from drowning in minutiae.
I make a miscalculation. Going farther afield from the details more personal to me, I examine the comments left on the continuously-updated news stories. I become reacquainted with my pride and my hatred. Cynics on message boards struggle out of their hives in the ground, enraged, lashing at measured pleas for hope. A senator from Kentucky says that Americans have become complacent since 9/11. Hucksters have begun framing Boston-area newspaper front-pages for April 16 and selling them on eBay at a profit. Others are calling for the rote conspiracy theory without evidence of motive. I feel a knot in my stomach then, in some bitter clarity, I realize my resilience, and my city's resilience is above being effected by such bullshit.
You see, Boston is built on the bones of trolls. Three days since the bombs, it's all the more obvious that aggravating us is inadvisable, so, son, just don't. We are not afraid. We are sad. We are just ourselves. That won't be un-invented.
We had switched from an exuberant holiday mood into crisis-management mode in a heartbeat. Whoever decided to make an enemy of the US, and of Boston, on this occasion, had better realize that we aren't complacent, or jaded, or exploitative, as some would have you believe. We're compassionate and daring, but we're fucking Red Sox, and we're also fucking piranhas. We've fought tooth and nail to become who we are, and to maintain what we've built. There's no way that this ends well for the cynics on either side. I look around at the people near me, in Boston, and around the world reaching out to make sure that we're alright, and there are more of us than there are of you.
Deconstruction is the worst color. It's out of season.
-- @Alex Crumb (originally published 4/17/13)
Image, bbc.co.uk/
