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" Saturday, April 21, 2007. 10:23 p.m. Today was a normal day. I ate breakfast, wrote a little, watched baseball highlights on ESPN. Made lunch, read part of a book, and went to work, like normal. Then, I took my regular evening run -- a four to five mile jog down a country road, until I hit the subdivision. Halfway into the run, my muscles were already burning. I hadn&amp;#039;t run in a week. I flipped through songs on the iPod, looking for something that felt good. I settled on New Order and quickly fell into a rhythm with the beat, running towards the sunset, right at the western mountains. The orange sky hung like a photograph over Blacksburg. I switched songs, picked up the pace, and felt a stitch develop under my rib. Minivans and SUVs whizzed by, nearly forcing me off on the road. My chest began to tighten. I gasped for air. My eyes welled with tears as the wind whipped by face. In the middle of a quiet, safe, pedestrian residential neighborhood, I started to cry.  I stopped, and sat on the side of the street with my head in my hands. Two cars drove by. A third. I kept crying -- no one was watching. I wiped my nose on my T-shirt as a navy blue minivan slowed down beside me. In it was a young mother with a group of kids in the back of the car. &amp;quot;You need to call the hospital?&amp;quot; she asked. &amp;quot;No, I&amp;#039;m fine.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You sure?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yeah, I&amp;#039;m fine, I&amp;#039;m fine.&amp;quot; I sniffled a little, and looked at her. She was wearing a maroon polo shirt. She put the car in park and got out. &amp;quot;Wait just a sec, kids,&amp;quot; she told the van. I started to stand, and then she hugged me hard. She hugged me even as I tried to pull away. She held my limp body, as I bawled all over a complete stranger. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s okay,&amp;quot; she said, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s okay.&amp;quot; And I just kept crying until her kids started crying, too. Friday, April 20, 2007. 12:04 p.m. &amp;quot;Is there something about this small town that attracts tragedy?&amp;quot; A reporter asked me over the phone last night. &amp;quot;No.&amp;quot; I said, reluctant to talk to the media, wondering how the hell she got my cell number. But later, by myself, I had time to dwell on the question. Over the past four years, Blacksburg keeps popping up on CNN for some kind of tragedy, and every time I&amp;#039;ve been nearby. I could feel like a magnet for terror, but honestly, it&amp;#039;s hard for anyone to hide from tragedy in a town about five miles long. Before I was in college, I was in a punk band, touring the United States and putting out records. The Blacksburg punk rock scene was bustling -- bands from all over the country came to play DIY house shows at the Solar Haus, a three-story house with giant bay windows. The venue had been putting on shows for two decades, where bands like Coheed and Cambria would rock out in the third-floor living room long before they ended up on MTV. But in September 2003, that came to a sudden end. A show at the Solar Haus -- which is just blocks away from Virginia Tech -- ended with one person dying and five others being critically injured. There was nothing particularly unusual about that day. The bands played on the third-floor, with mattresses covering the windows to help control the noise. About 80 people were there, a typical crowd. I was against the back railing near the stairs when kids began moshing. The pit got more and more aggressive, pushing towards the mattress-covered windows, when finally, the glass broke, the frame of the house ripped loose, and bodies began spilling out of the third-floor windows. I ran downstairs to help clear glass from the concrete, but there were bodies all over the lawn. Blood spattered on the green grass, like a Rorschach test gone horribly wrong. Another tragedy happened this school year, in August 2006, on the first day of school. A prisoner who had been escorted to the hospital for injuries had escaped and killed two police officers. The prisoner was a local kid, Will Morva, who had done a year-long stint in prison for armed robbery. I knew him. He lived in the apartment beneath me for a while and I&amp;#039;d almost gotten in a bar fight with him last year. Classes were cancelled as Morva ran around Blacksburg for two whole days before he was caught, triggering similar feelings to the one we all hold now: How could this happen here? Students used the day off from school to drink and party and while it was a serious matter, some students blew it off and made jokes about it. The town took it much harder. The cop-killer attended high school in Blacksburg. He drank in the coffee shops and walked the streets of this town. The reporter&amp;#039;s question rolls over in my mind again. I remember Monday morning, before I knew there was a shooting. Blacksburg felt so average. Growing up here, tragedy never crossed my mind. After all, there are towns all over America like this one. Friday, April 20, 2007. 10:06 a.m. Rain clouds hung over Blacksburg for most of yesterday. I decided to go to the batting cages, and was surprised about how therapeutic hitting an eighty-five mile-an-hour fastball can be. The University has given us the option of ending our semester now or continuing until the beginning of May. I haven&amp;#039;t decided what I will do. How can we go back to school and sit through classes after this? Other Tech students filled the slots next to me and as I listened to the whoosh and thwack of the cages, I knew we were struggling with the same decision. Later, walking through downtown, I passed a tattoo shop with a couple students waiting out front. One of the guys had a bandage over his bicep, and when I passed I asked what he got. He pulled back the bandage slowly, and revealed the thick black color and bloody edges of a tattoo that read &amp;quot;4/16/07.&amp;quot; I wondered what it would be like to be able to forget all of this instead. Thursday, April 19, 2007. 10:37 a.m. When Nikki Giovanni, a poet and Virginia Tech professor, read a poem at Tuesday&amp;#039;s Convocation, she said her bit, tried to help bring the community together, then humbly sat down like the rest of the speakers. The audience gave her a tremendous ovation. Then she stood back up, held her arms to the side and twirled around like Julie Andrews in Sound of Music, basking in the attention. And she hasn&amp;#039;t let up for a second since, appearing on countless TV programs, making all kinds of pronouncements to the media about the killer and talking about &amp;quot;troubled&amp;quot; kids -- not her area of expertise. It&amp;#039;s just ridiculous. This little gem comes from CNN.com: &amp;quot;As tales of Cho&amp;#039;s worrisome behavior continued to surface Wednesday, a renowned poet and author who taught the 23-year-old gunman called the notion that he was troubled &amp;#039;crap&amp;#039; and said he was &amp;#039;mean.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Are you kidding? To say that this killer, this sick kid, who was declared mentally ill by the state of Virginia, was anything but troubled is unbelievable. &amp;quot;Mean&amp;quot; kids give you wedgies during backyard football games. This is not a wedgie. And for a renowned poet to call the idea that he was troubled &amp;quot;crap&amp;quot; just seems so tasteless and insensitive to the victims and the victim&amp;#039;s families of this tragedy. Later, Giovanni spoke with Time.com: &amp;quot;There was something mean about this boy,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;Troubled kids get drunk and jump off buildings. It was the meanness that bothered me.&amp;quot; Troubled kids get drunk and jump off of buildings? Is this the alternative? Is this what we want kids who are mentally or emotionally fragile to see? In a time of intense mourning and sadness are we going to continue to beat a dead horse? Should Giovanni continue to trivialize the horrific events with comments she&amp;#039;s not even qualified to make? Thursday, April 19, 2007. 12:11 a.m. When I got home from driving around town, I turned on the television to an image of Cho pointing a gun at me. Then I heard him speak for the first time and I slowly sat down on the couch, still cluching the remote. Maybe the media won&amp;#039;t be leaving after all. Wednesday, April 18, 2007. 6:07 p.m. Campus is usually bustling on Wednesday around 3:30, but today it&amp;#039;s not. I spent the afternoon staring at the A-frames that students have written messages on and saw parents picking up their kids. I wandered over to the steps of the War Memorial, the site of the vigil, covered in bouquets of flowers. The heavy winds that had ravaged Blacksburg for the couple days have died down. People in the distance are playing lacrosse again, but most students have already packed up and left for the semester. If this weren&amp;#039;t already my home, I would probably join them. The media is leaving us, too. Stray satellite trucks can be seen around the campus, and the Virginia Tech Inn is still littered with brightly colored news vans, but it&amp;#039;s nothing like it was on Monday. I mentioned the evaporating news vans to my friend Peter, and he noted, &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;ll be back when classes start on Monday, they&amp;#039;ll be back next month for graduation, they&amp;#039;ll always be around, from here on out.&amp;quot; Wednesday, April 18, 2007. 11:15 a.m. It took me nearly two days to realize I had sat next to the mass-murderer, Cho Seung-Hui, for an entire semester. On the day of the shooting, a name or picture wasn&amp;#039;t released. It wasn&amp;#039;t until last night, when word spread that he was a creative writing major and my inbox started flooding with e-mails from other students, that I finally put two and two together. It was like swallowing a handful of Vicodin. Complete numbness, followed by a sour stomach. We both sat against the back wall in our advanced fiction workshop, a class that required participation and discussion of student&amp;#039;s stories. He never wrote anything in the class. He never turned in an assignment or critiqued anyone&amp;#039;s work. The only time I talked to him, I asked if he would be workshopping one of his stories, but he never replied. He never spoke. I just assumed he was an ESL student who didn&amp;#039;t speak English -- someone in there to soak up more about American fiction, a ghost, a shadow in the back of the class. A friend who took a playwriting class with Cho, told me he looked over at him and made eye contact. Cho just nodded, hunched over his desk, and focused on the composition book in front of him, jotting down notes. He was wearing a maroon Virginia Tech baseball hat, the one he wore everyday, pulled low, shadowing his eyes. How could we know he was capable of this? It&amp;#039;s such a helpless feeling -- knowing I was around Cho for four months, and never seeing a sign or sensing that he was capable of this, and thinking &amp;quot;What could I have done differently? What if we had been more outgoing? Would this have happened? Could we have done something to prevent this?&amp;quot; This is a collective feeling, one that has swept the campus. Sadly, I think the answer is no. Wednesday, April 18, 2007. 9:39 a.m. Traffic was sparse on the streets of Blacksburg last night. After the candlelight vigil, I met with friends who at an off-campus house together, where people mostly sat around a big screen watching Old School and nursing bottles of beer. A girl in the corner cried, silently. In a bedroom covered with Led Zeppelin and Foo Fighters posters, a group of ten of us drank cans of Country Club -- offered to us by a tearful host, who, in spite of everything, was still trying to be positive, still forging a smile -- talking about the last two days, as well as trying to laugh about movies and television we&amp;#039;d seen recently. This is our grieving -- solemn glances, quick smiles, a can of cold beer, and people we care about. Discussion about the massacre ends up in one of two camps. It&amp;#039;s either: &amp;quot;If it was twenty-four hours later, it could have been me.&amp;quot; Or, &amp;quot;I used to talk to so-and-so everyday after class.&amp;quot; But that&amp;#039;s not all people are talking about, topics like Kurt Vonnegut and Sofia Coppola movies come up, too. The pathos between the tragic and the banal coexisted peacefully over cheap cans of beer, and it was heartening just being able to talk like normal college kids, if only for a couple minutes at a time. When the gathering ended, I walked to my car parked downtown. I tried to see inside some of the bars, but most had closed. A group of three guys with gelled hair and dress shirts stumbled across the sidewalk behind me, obviously hammered, and yelled &amp;quot;We haven&amp;#039;t had pints at the Cellar yet!&amp;quot; I shook my heads in disbelief. At another bar, students milled around a karaoke machine singing Green Day, as a couple, carrying huge beer mugs, danced together. I imagined news personalities would start reporting on &amp;quot;college grief&amp;quot; and the ways students handle it. Tuesday, April 17, 2007. 5:46 p.m. I park my car. The first person I see is Dan Rather, followed by his cameraman, trailing a couple wearing Virginia Tech T-shirts. Across the street, news van satellite dishes block my view of the Virginia Tech Alumni Center, where the media are encamped. I want to see my mother, who works there. She&amp;#039;s been up most of the night, helping families with missing children. And the media. Katie Couric walks by. I haven&amp;#039;t eaten in two days. I&amp;#039;ve been watching the television instead. My mother hugs me, and gives me a muffin. I&amp;#039;m en route to the convocation -- a giant grief counseling session, essentially -- that is taking place at Cassell Coliseum, home of the Hokies Basketball team. I pass a reporter from Finland, and Nancy Grace strolls by, eating an orange. I feel like I&amp;#039;ve walked into a George Saunders story. A shuttle comes to pick us up. I am seated next to a group of people in matching yellow shirts that read &amp;quot;Volunteer Scientologist Minister&amp;quot; and a group of Tech students who live off campus. I share a sullen glance with my peers. &amp;quot;You know someone?&amp;quot; One of the students asks. &amp;quot;Yeah,&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;You?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yeah.&amp;quot; At the coliseum, foot traffic and cars collide. Thousands of people are being turned away. Ten thousand were already seated an hour before the convocation was to begin. Members of the media swarm a crying girl. The overflow of turned away mourners flows to Lane stadium -- where the Hokies&amp;#039; football team play, down the street from the coliseum. Everywhere you look there are people in orange and maroon, the school colors. I wear my grey Virginia Tech Basketball shirt. It&amp;#039;s a zoo. Cameras everywhere blocking the flow of traffic. The state police reprimand a cameraman. A news reporter approaches a Tech student -- she turns him away with an angry glare. Inside Lane Stadium, I find some friends. Their eyes are languid and sunken, the by-product of too much television coverage. Hundreds of people sit on the football pitch. A child rolls around in dead grass. Students shield their eyes with dark sunglasses. We will watch the convocation on the giant television screen at the end of the stadium. &amp;quot;What are you doing after this?&amp;quot; I ask my friend Matt, a member of the Red Cross Club. &amp;quot;Giving blood, man. Short supplies.&amp;quot; The president&amp;#039;s motorcade arrives at Tech, and a procession of dark SUVs attracts the attention of most of Lane Stadium. People run to the west end of the stands hoping to catch a glimpse of President Bush. Behind the stadium, in the woods, are men wearing dark glasses, Secret Service agents, I assume. The stadium falls silent as the convocation begins. The Vice President of Student Affairs opens with this remark: &amp;quot;Loved ones lost in yesterday&amp;#039;s tragedy can never be replaced in our hallways, and in our hearts.&amp;quot; I imagine the scene inside the Norris Hall classrooms. My stomach turns. Virginia Tech President Charles Steger speaks, his tie loose, his shirt ruffled. He&amp;#039;s been up for hours. Virginia Governor, Tim Kaine speaks, invoking the image of Job, and then introduces the President. A girl near us in the stands holds a balled-up tissue to her nose. A boyfriend consoles his girlfriend by rubbing her back, and I notice their matching iron-on T-shirts that read, &amp;quot;April 16th, 2007, today we mourn.&amp;quot; Then I realize that sometime in the last 24 hours, they took the time to make those. They must have. Before the convocation ends a chant heard at football and basketball games begins, &amp;quot;LET&amp;#039;S GO! HO-KIES!&amp;quot; Everyone in attendance screams this. It&amp;#039;s cathartic. Kinda. I leave the convocation and head across campus by foot. A news reporter asks me if I&amp;#039;m from Ohio. I pass West AJ, where the first shooting occurred, and remember hanging out in a third floor dorm room my freshman year. Cops litter the campus. I get a phone call from someone I haven&amp;#039;t spoken to in years, asking if I&amp;#039;m all right. These kinds of calls are being made all across the country. The drill field is empty. I&amp;#039;ve walked this route a thousand times. I see Norris Hall, where the murders took place. Yellow police tape blocks off the crime scene. I speed up to get away from it, but at the architecture annex, I can&amp;#039;t help myself. I look back. On the second floor of Norris Hall there is a window that&amp;#039;s cracked, spider-webbed from a bullet. Underneath it are students with stoic faces, looking up, as if waiting for an answer to appear. Tuesday, April 17, 2007. 12:27 p.m. Sleepy Blacksburg, a once-quiet town nestled in the Appalachian mountains -- where I&amp;#039;ve spent all twenty-three years of my life -- is now the site of the deadliest shooting in American history. Media trucks and television personalities have swarmed the campus, zooming in to record every gasp of shock coming out of this small, horrified town. Virginia Tech&amp;#039;s beautiful stone buildings are now crime scenes. In the distance, the Blue Ridge Mountains have become a grim backdrop as a community -- my community -- tries to recover. For the next few days, I will be reporting on the scene in Blacksburg, and around the Virginia Tech campus, trying to give -- with a most objective eye -- the stories and thoughts of this quiet community as it deals with the horror, the longing for loved ones, and the ways to heal such open wounds. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a2731/blacksburg0407/>