George T. Mormann

On days like today and the event which unfolded therein, I always think of that Catholic tradition of relegating certain days to each of the Saints. Feast days, I think they’re called. However, for the U.S., the days would be relegated to various shootings and tragedies. Keep up with this cycle of frequent mass casualties, and the calendar will be inundated with Days of Remembrance for a plethora of isolated incidents, workplace violence, ill conceived forms of vengeance en masse, and who-knows-what-else-or-what-next.

Daily candlelight vigils and moments of silence.

Church bells ringing in congruence with the moment of the first shot or explosion, which occurred a year, five years, a decade prior, everyday in perpetuity.

Debating the absurd fluidity of what a terrorist is.

It’s as if our only catharsis is to busy ourselves with mourning and to commemorate commemorate commemorate, like expressing some sort of collective guilt because not a single resolution is ever followed through or simply agreed upon. And it’s always too soon to talk about until the dawn of the next shooting.

The cycle then repeats itself.