Deconstructing Cho

1.English professors (most professors)are not psychologists. Do not get the idea that we are, or can be, the keepers of young adult mental health. In our culture, the keeping of the mental health of young adults falls to their families, not to their schools, neighbors, peers. There is not a single thing wrong with preventing, say, Dr. Economics Professor from making judgments as to your son/daughter's fitness for participation in society. The professor will often get that just all kinds of wrong.
2.It's called Creative Writing, not Diary Class, not Confession. "Creative" not because one uses imagery and metaphor heretofore unemployed, but because one Makes Things Up. Imagination is really prerequisite for creativity, not just a penchant for interesting style. (though, that certainly helps) Very few of the students who explore the darker regions of the human soul are themselves trapped in those darker regions. They miht be visiting, but not trapped. They might be Making It Up, Exploring. Panicking over every dark poem/story/play/drawing/painting/song/movie will not help. On that logic, we would have locked Q. Tarantino and Scorsese away in a treatment facility a long time ago. And as one prof of CW on a listserv put it: a woman in the class would write nothing but sweet and schmaltzy Hallmark Card verse, light and sunny and violets and bunnies, and then committed murder. -- Style and subject matter are not direct correlates to "state of mind."
3.Giovanni did the right thing. She correlated the content of the writing, which was consistently dark and violent, to the context of the person's overall behavior, which was intimidating, withdrawn, and inappropriate, and acted.
4.Every mass murderer is discovered in retrospect to have emitted signals that he or she was not on the grid with the 'normal' folks. Every one. And each one in their own way. There is not yet, and maybe can't be, a foolproof method of preventing this kind of break with the moral universe, this sociopathy. Interesting thing about sociopaths: many of them are Made, not born.
5.Long guns are hard to hide, and are best for hunting food. Short guns are easy to hide, and are best for hunting people. The short guns need to go. There was no record on Cho to check. Gun shops don't/can't check mental health records, only criminal.
6.Some people are hard to look at because the anger or pain in them so strong, so big. Those are the very people we need to see, hear. Some of Cho's peers tried to befriend him, but he had closed himself in the darker regions a long time before that.
7.In all of our analysis, I hope we can keep the students, the teachers, living and dead, with us for a time. Hard as this is to do.

We are reminded to live well. To care. To comfort the hurt and the departed. We are reminded of the limits of the human being. We are reminded to live well and to care, because the unwinding of the broken coiled soul will happen.

The truth of it is that I've been so awash in 3 dead there, 57 dead over there, 200 dead that weekend, that I'm not finding the deep response I feel I should. It's been numbered out of me. A failing, on my part, as much as history's. And neither is the nation finding that response, to judge by the media. No mourning, no resting in the shock or pain or compassion: Wham! Straight into analysis, background, creepy voyeurism (look at the freak, look at the gore, look at the sad people), causes of the effect, procedure, gun policy, campus and legal policy, Who Could Have Stopped Him? Why Aren't We Safe?? Because facing the loss of the student's families, of the professor's families, the hurt in the hearts of the friends and colleagues and peers, that is too much.

All of which might help in the long run, if we can manage to have a long run with this. Learning here is the best outcome for those of us still breathing. But that learning, alone, feels like insufficient honor to and care for the dead.

But, the jump over mourning denies that we are not Safe. And what we are not facing in all this that we just are not safe, all the time, everywhere. That kind of safety is not possible. That is what we don't want to sit with. That in spite of all our best efforts, our care, kindness, caution, and good defensive strategy, being alive is a risky proposition. Which, is a very hard thing.

At least no one said, "Today, America lost its innocence." Because we obviously keep refusing to do that.

Sitting with it, that's the next thing to do for me, until that connection I miss feeling for that community comes back.