I have no idea what happened.
My back was to the stove and I heard this BANG! I finished what I was doing, then turned around to see this:
It kept making cracking noises, and I’d swear that I saw a few cracks form as I watched it. I did, carefully, pick up the lid: the glass didn’t scatter.
Kinda bummed about it—I use that pot a lot, and I like a glass lid—but I have to admit, it also looks cool.
And that the glass, shattered, nonetheless remains intact within the ring? Very cool.
Another mass killing.
Which mass killing? Syria? Aurora? Does it matter?
As so many others have noted, there will be tears and words and denunciations and defenses and what-ifs and what-nows and then nothing nothing nothing until another mass killing.
I have no answers; I’m not even sure of the questions.
But a killing is a diminution, always, even if the person killed is bad, even if a killing is necessary (as when someone kills another in self-defense); life is gone, the world is smaller.
That’s bad enough for those of us who are strangers; for those who knew the victims, their world is shredded, and for the victims, the world is gone. As that line from the Bhagavad Gita notes, I am become Death, shatterer of worlds.
And out of this, I think I finally, truly, understand that Talmudic saying: Whosoever saves a life, saves the world.
In our purposefulness and carelessness, we constantly shatter and save our world, and wonder at our sorrow and relief.
