Tag: tragedy

• August 8, 2013

  Getting Lost in Tacoma

  

  I’ve always been good with directions. I can orient myself almost anywhere and I usually only need to go somewhere once to memorize the route. But my new home is proving more difficult to navigate. The city is more or less a grid, full of numbered streets that should be easy to figure out, yet I keep getting turned around. I think the biggest mental hurdle to make is simply to comprehend the size of Tacoma. It’s a big city and I find myself constantly forgetting that crucial fact. I’m not in Flagstaff anymore. Not everything is within a 10-minute driving radius of everything else.

  Still, not all who wander are lost — and not all who are lost are wandering aimlessly. My mistakes have brought me across several charming pockets of Tacoma. The quaint urban village of the Proctor District; the neighborhood around the University of Puget Sound where huge deciduous trees drape over the road; the gentrifying area around the Stadium District; the pebble beaches of the West End. There is so much to explore. I have to remember to take it slow or I could go into shock.

  It will take time to peek around every corner and investigate every cafe. And that’s what I like the most about my new city.

  

  But with the excitement of discovery comes frustration and even tragedy. Finding an apartment has been an agonizing process. I gave up my U-Haul yesterday and moved all of my worldly belongings into a carport as the search drags on. I may have found a promising candidate, but I said that yesterday and the day before. Nothing is certain when you’re making a big life change.

  As for the tragedy, I was driving through Gig Harbor (a suburban/rural community across the bridge where I’m staying with my girlfriend’s family temporarily) when something jostled the car. I screeched to a halt. In the rear view mirror, a motionless form lay in the middle of the road. My pulse raced. I hadn’t seen anything run across the road; it must’ve jumped out as I was passing and hit the back wheel.

  I turned the car around. If it was a dog, I felt it would only be right to call the owners. There, on the pavement, lay a raccoon. It looked at me with wide, sad eyes. There was nothing I could do for it.

  Welcome to Washington.

  — 30 —

  Jonny Eberle is a writer in Tacoma, WA, who recently moved from Flagstaff, AZ. Please feel free to comment or tweet him at @jonnyeberle.

  Update: Longtime Washingtonians inform me that raccoons are evil and that any raccoon out in the middle of the day was just asking for trouble. Even so, I feel bad out about it.

  Related Posts:
  Revenge of the Raccoons
  The Mystery of —30—
  Death of a Goldfish
• March 29, 2013

  Ripped from the Headlines

  

  A man was hit by a train in my town today. No one knows why he walked in front of the oncoming fright train as it barreled through Flagstaff early this afternoon. We’ll probably never know for sure whether he thought he could outrun it or if he intended to die there on the tracks.

  Life is full of these little stories. For a writer, the scraps of details we receive from the news aren’t enough to satisfy our hunger for the full story. Mystery writers in particular are famous for skimming the police logs for strange burglaries and unsolved murders. This very scenario — a man hit by a train — was the inciting incident of a novel I started working on in November.

  We rip stories from the headlines all the time. But when is it appropriate to do so? How long must a real life tragedy lie fallow before the seeds of fiction can be sown? I think fiction is a great way to wrestle with and explain the unpleasant accidents and cold realities of life and death. It allows us to process tragedy and maybe find meaning in the inexplicable. At what point is it okay to fictionalize real world headlines? Where do we strike that balance? I’m not sure I know.

  Some things are too painful to face immediately. It took years before novels set around the events of 9/11 were published. Surely the Newtown shootings will eventually make their way onto bookshelves and maybe even the man who stepped in front of 5,000 tons of steel and screeching wheels today. Writing and reading about death can help us prepare for it in our own lives. When times are darkest is when art is needed most.

  — 30 —

  Jonny Eberle is a writer and photographer in Flagstaff, AZ. You can find him on Twitter at: @jonnyeberle.

  Related Posts:
  An Examined Life: In Memory of Dr. Joel Olson
  Waitin’ on a Train
  Immortality and the Written Word
• September 11, 2012

  Remembrance

  

  There are no words. Words have power, but there are none to heal the scars or erase the pain. There are no words to call back the dead. We are quick to speak when tragedy strikes; quick to blame and quick to out-grieve our neighbors. Even eleven years on, we mark the day with solemn speeches and rhetoric. We ask people “Where were you on 9/11?” We tell stories of death coming on wings and tears that fell like ash; cries of anguish that rose like smoke where towers once stood. The words flow, but they mean little to the victims and their families. Words cannot change history.

  So, we remember. We remember because it was so terrible. We remember because the words don’t do justice to the loss. We remember as a sign of respect and solidarity. We remember because it is impossible to forget.

  — 30 —

  Please feel free to leave your comments, share this post or follow me on Twitter: @jonnyeberle.