I'm tired of crying. I'm getting out of town this weekend, far away from CNN and the newspaper. Hate me for being selfish, but I cannot cry another night in front of the television. I cannot hear about another person's last cell phone call to a loved one moments before his or her plane struck its target. I cannot. I cannot hear another newscaster ask a frazzled rescue worker what it feels like to pull pieces of his brothers and sisters in service out of the dusty wreckage. I cannot watch another person thump their chest screaming for retribution as if this attack happened for no reason at all (see kto9's daylog above or read anything about Middle East history written from a non-American perspective.) I cannot risk being in front of the television when (God forbid, God forbid, please God forbid) the first praying Muslims are killed by a drive-by redneck with a Molotov cocktail. I fear I may go mad.
When I close my eyes I try to see blackness. I try to ignore their soreness. I try to squint away the distended capillaries. I try to resist the urge to crawl into bed and stay there until it is all over as if that were possible, as if there were enough days in the calendar. But I cannot do these things. I cannot so long as I am a person with warm blood flowing in my veins. The best I can do to salvage myself is go off, into the woods, and thank God that I can walk away for a while, that I am alive and my loved ones are safe, that I am free and able to seek the refuge of green trees and clean air, that I do not have to look out my window every day and see that dusty open sore in Manhattan or Washington or Pennsylvania. So that is my plan for the weekend. I'm sorry, but that is the way it has to be. I need to go into the wilderness and learn what it is mine to do, how I can be a light for those who are in the dark, how I can help. The television will be there on Monday for me to cry in front of.