Hey, all.
Hopefully this is the end of the posts about the shootings. That isn't what this blog is about, after all. But that being said...
My neighbor escaped serious injury. If the bullet had gone one way, spleen, the other way spine. But she's gonna be okay.
My wife is organizing the neighborhood. A news team found out about it and put her on the air last night. She screamed for a police presence on the block, which was immediately followed by a shot of the chief of police explaining why they weren't going to put anyone in our neighborhood.
We had two officers on the block last night. If Karen says a pissant's going to move a bale of hay you may as well clear a space for it.
My reaction to the whole thing? I believe the technical term is paradoxical. I'm pretty much nuts and have been going through a rough patch of the crazies lately. But put me into an actual crisis situation and I calm right down. I've been eating and sleeping. While I worry it is much less of an issue for me than the free-floating anxiety I've been dealing with. No fear; just concern.
I guess I need to live under circumstances where my overdeveloped fight-or-flight instincts aren't overdeveloped. I am just not fit for decent living.
Oh, well.
4 comments:
Shit, Sean, and I always thought I was going to a better neighborhood when I was visiting you. You know, I always park across the street from your house. Maybe you should be visiting me here in safe Oakland. Except for major holidays, I haven't heard a gunshot since we moved back to Fruitvale.
Heh. Yeah, that parking spot is right by where my neighbor was hit.
"Except for major holidays..." I think that's going to be my favorite qualifying statement of the day.
I don't, for the life of me, understand how your wife can put down roots in a place like that. I think it's wonderful that she wants to organize the neighborhood and work to stop the violence, but...
I mean, has she considered that, if you lived elsewhere, you might NOT have to put a futon in front of the window to avoid potentially being shot? What's the priority, here?
Well, it's like this. First off, this is not something typical. Right now it's an event -- but if it becomes a condition then we're going to have to reevaluate the situation.
Next, Karen's been living here since nineteen seventy-three. She raised her kids here. She knows most of the people in the neighborhood.
There's solid logic behind just moving out to a safer area -- but the personal and financial difficulties are prohibitive right now. But as I said, it's all contingent on how things shake down.
My feeling is that this is just a flap, a one-off event. But if I'm wrong, well. We shall see.
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