Remembering the London Bombings

A year ago yesterday, I waited half an hour for a bus that never came. Deciding to take the tube, we walked towards Liverpool Street station, right into a news scrum outside the gates of a London hospital. Ambulances, helicopters and police cars made it impossible to hear the spokesman give his press statement. On the other side of the street, women in head-to-toe Burqas shopped in the Bangladeshi vegetable market. We walked through Brick Lane, and past the police presence at Aldgate East. People were still being evacuated from Liverpool Street Station. A guy in a suit came up to us warning us to stay away. "Terrorism," he said with an air of self importance. "It's the fucking Arabs." I bought a newspaper with the headline "Terrorists Bomb Tube, Scores Dead" only to find no article inside. It only happened , like, half an hour before. What could they know that I didn't.

Yesterday, I was on a bus from New Orleans to Austin Texas. At Houston, five recently released convicts came on wearing their prison regulation pants and shoes. The first white people I'd seen on a Greyhound since New York City. They all had only one red mesh bag, big enough for a change of underwear and big box of condoms. Except when one tried miserably to hit on a blonde girl, they all just sat and stared forward, arms crossed, shirt sleeves rolled up Tattoos bulging.

Last night I saw Danielson at Emo's. Tomorrow, Albuquerque.