The Next Marathon

It’s been mere hours since someone (or someones) took the lives of strangers into their hands for reasons that cannot possibly be justified. And in doing so, they showed me that despite my well-practiced cynicism, there’s still a raw nerve, a sliver of sentimentality in me that can be pinched and leave me gasping for air. It is there for the simple and shamefully obvious reason that this time, it was my city on TV. My city full of smoke, my city on a constant loop, screaming in discordant unison like wet wood in a fire. My city that was violated. My home that will never be where I left it.

I don’t pretend to know what the fallout from these bombings will be. I can only tell you what it felt like, as someone who grew up in Boston, to be far from home when it abruptly became a different place altogether. There is a feeling of helplessness that comes from watching such destruction unfold at a safe distance to people who you do not know yet cannot help but see as your people. There is a frantic rush to contact everyone you know who could possibly be in harm’s way made all the more terrifying by the inability to make phone calls. Texts serve as a temporary, impersonal substitute to actual human contact. And then a second rush to contact your friends to make sure their families came out equally unscathed. All of this is coated with the uncertainty that more violence could be coming, more chaos.

Misinformation and false accusation abound. I was lucky. My parents were at work. My sister was on a subway train headed for the finish line, but was still miles away when the bombs went off, her roommate still a mile from finishing his race. Today, no more happened to me than any of the other 5 million people in the greater Boston area. But I cannot shake the feeling that I have lost something. I don’t want to say my thoughts are with the injured and their families. It feels obvious and trite, a rote shorthand for every tragedy that comes across the CNN ticker. There is already an image online that will live on, one of a man without his legs being rushed through the street in a wheelchair. “Thoughts and prayers” doesn’t quite cover it.

What seems abundantly clear is that “Boston Marathon” will join the ranks of other formerly benign phrases suddenly imbued with a new and horrible gravity. These are places like Oklahoma City, Munich and the World Trade Center. And this is part of the tragedy.

For those of you who don’t know, Patriot’s Day is a special tradition for everyone in Massachusetts. Schools are closed, even the Red Sox play early in the morning, so everyone can line the streets to watch the greatest road race in the world. I grew up just a block from “Heartbreak Hill,” a devastating obstacle that slopes steeply upwards just as runners hit the wall, having already put themselves through 20 grueling miles. In elementary school, I would set up a lemonade stand (no, I’m not kidding) with a friend on the grassy median that bisects Commonwealth Avenue. As I got older, kids would rove up and down the hill in packs like teens cruising a small-town drag on a Friday night. I wonder if next year, kids will be so lucky.

I’m trying not to compare the events of Monday to September 11th; the difference in scale makes this comparison almost offensive. Yet it is inevitable that I do so. I have no other point of reference for my feelings, and I fear the exploitation of these feelings will occur in much the same way. As I watched the news, I could not help but think that this is another event in the endless and clandestine war, in which all the world is a battlefield and every one of us a combatant. As Hunter S. Thompson wrote in the aftermath of that September, “Make no mistake about it: we are At War now–with somebody–and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.”

The truth is we have always been At War with Somebody. We do not know who attacked us on Monday, but in many ways, it does not matter. I do not mean this just for the victims. I mean that whether domestic or foreign, left or right, we will forever be fighting Them, forever trying to ignore Them. When They make themselves known by enacting horrors upon us, we will fight our instinct for vengeance (and often fail). We will hope that by sheer goodness we can cure our society of this sickness. But that is an illusion. It is a lie we tell ourselves, so that we can go back to work.

In Boston, and indeed in the United States, we will continue to learn the lesson that New Yorkers learned, that Israelis and Londoners and Afghanis and Pakistanis and Iraqis and everywhere that people who suffer through persistent terrorist violence have learned: the only recourse is not to forget but to continue. Business as usual will resume. But never forget for a second that this can happen again. It can, and it will–so hold fast to one another.

And yet, I do not despair. Though this marathon will forever be associated with death, there will always be another marathon. Why? Because we need it. Because sport and tragedy bind community like nothing else in this country and indeed around the world. Because those thousands of people – willing to train for months just so they can struggle against the limits of their own bodies for 26.2 miles–will not be deterred by some lunatic who thinks he can break their will in a few seconds. Because when the bombs went off, those same people who had run all those miles turned and ran back to help. Because one year from today, they will stand behind the starting line, and we will all put ourselves through it all over again. I can’t fucking wait.