I think, perhaps, that when it comes to the content of this piece of real estate, I've always been too self-absorbed to comment about the happenings of the world at large. The inner workings of my vain little self, my preoccupation with the size of my ass, and the woeful state of my love life have always ranked higher - on the scale between the keyboard and my fingertips, anyway - than world terror, human rights, or the general asshattery of the leader of the nation directly to the south of mine.
Also, and perhaps more truthfully but no less shameful, I've never felt fully equipped - you know, brain-wise - to comment on things that smacked of political importance or historical significance, or even just a nine-day wonder in the press. I'm a 'fraidy-cat that way.
When Canada showed its full, national, cool-itude by letting Adam and Steve get married, I cheered. I crowed to my homophobic father and basically got down with patriotism, but I never tried to share it with you.
The Middle-East has been in the "last throes" of terror and bloody chaos for the last couple of years; Michael Jackson and Robert Blake got away with O.J; and that murdering piece of walking excrement, Karla Homolka, finished her paltry 12 years and is now just as free as I am. And I stayed mum.
JetsGo left people stranded in vacation time; Brad and Jen got a divorce, and a little bit of Madrid went up in flames. Every few days, Israeli Gen-Xers strap live bombs to their bodies before boarding a bus and still I had nothing to say.
And then London happened.
It's been a week since I went to check my hotmail and found, on the MSN homepage, that disturbing, disturbing picture of the girl in the mask. It's been a week since I sat there, reading in horror as the city with which I have an ongoing love affair cracked into little pieces of horror and death. It's been a week since I sat and dialled the phone every 15 minutes, trying to reach my head office, trying to find Stewart and the Amazon, and sitting in fear because I couldn't reach them for hours and hours, and in one case, a horrible few days. It was too big - the fear and the anger - it was too big to put into words.
It's been a week since I realized that those motherfuckers hit my old neighbourhood. I lived there 7 years ago, I walked through there for the billionth time six weeks ago, and now it's ruined, forever scarred in our memories because someone thought that that committing this senseless, violent act would actually prove a point.
With great relief, I found out that those I hold close to my heart are safe, and with that knowledge, I also learned that they mean more to me than I ever realized. But then I started thinking about the dozens and dozens of people you don't know but see every day if you live somewhere long enough. The guy who handed me a flyer for a computer shop every morning; the girl who took my money when I bought breakfast on the way to work; my stylist, who I visited faithfully every six weeks of my stay there, and remembered me when I went back to visit 5 years later. Were they there? Are they safe? I think about it and shiver, not because I'll never know, because I'm grateful that I'll never know. My loved ones are safe, and that's what I have to focus on, despite the pain I feel for those whose worlds were destroyed last week.
My London is hurt, and though the city is 3000 km away, this one... this disaster, it hit close to home.
I had to say something.
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