I live in Boston, and I am fine.

I live in Boston, and I am fine. Most of us are fine here. A small number are not fine, are wounded, some badly. Three are dead. The city is shaken but people are going to work, if they have jobs. Copley Square is cordoned off while the feds and others investigate.

Do they know who did this? I don't know. What exactly happened? I'm not sure save that something big, two somethings, exploded. Tis said more were found. I don't know this for sure. Tis said something happened at JFK Library, not anywhere near Copley Station. A fire, maybe.

I was uneasy all night. Two possibilities ran through my head: someone within the power structure, or someone opposed to the power structure. And what a perfect day to commit this act: Patriots Day. A celebration of . . . something. Just the name. In truth, it's a day off for most, there's a Red Sox game, and the Marathon of course. It's the one focused day this metropolis has all year. And the eyes of much of the world. Nobody will fail to notice, and the reaction will be one of terror, no matter how many are killed or wounded.

The reaction from Obama was careful. The memories of the stupid reactions to 9/11, and the civil liberties crushed, the lives destroyed by war and incarceration and the like, remain fresh. Also, nobody has taken credit, brayed the laugh of evil triumph. Maybe that's scarier, not knowing who to blame or why they did what they did.

Tis said the devices were remotely detonated. So no suicide bombers dying for a cause. So maybe they are laughing but keeping it to themselves for now.

Nobody was searching bags at my train station this morning, a station in the suburbs of Boston. But there was a cop or two, and lots of MBTA workers around, fixing things. I don't think that bombers ride trains with their wares anyway. Trains get stuck too often, get crowded, slow. I'm just glad that the hammer of punishment isn't coming down on the whole population.

Really, oddly, life goes on for most. That's how these things seem to work. Tragedy strikes, the media descends, the cops surround, chatter flies. But most of us worry if someone we knew was there, was hurt. It's strange but true. We are creatures of association, and our empathies are vast but finite.

This event was and is part of human history, of the gaining of power, the opposition to it, the struggle for it, the justifications involved. Someone felt this was necessary to communicate their presence among us, their fury, their helplessness to communicate in other than deadly ways. I have no sympathy for them, for they won't win anymore than anyone else. Having forsaken the possibilities that humans can as a race emerge from the brutality and ignorance of its own long history to calmer, sweeter times, they will live their mortal lives in the sense of defeat. More than many of us, their fates are sealed.

This does not offer much comfort to anyone, especially the wounded, those killed, and their loved ones. For them, this is a loss, no matter who did it. Just a damned loss. I have no words to offer them, because I don't think language exists for such a purpose. Not yet anyway. They need to be held, and sang to. Even this will help only so much.

So I am OK, most of us are, sort of. Hoping the authorities don't go bat shit, hoping it doesn't happen again. Knowing it will. With self-awareness and mortality comes a sense of who you lord over, and who lords over you. Strangely, we don't seem to have come to any consensus on how to handle either of these without harm coming to most of us.

Peace,
Raymond