Sarah – Everything changed.
Joseph – No, people just say that. Honestly, mostly nothing changed. We thought it would, or might, but it didn’t. Life went on. I didn’t receive any mail in the post for a while, and the supermarkets were grim, but life went on.
Sarah – I disagree. I meant, I suppose that it is easy to think like that, to just brush it away and admit that, while you think of London every now and again, its absence isn’t a day-to-day impediment. And it’s not except it alters the sense of cultural concomitance, the shared and collective understanding of who we are. When tragedy strikes there is a before and an after, and even though an individual ten months either side of the tragedy seems the same, they have still experienced it and been impacted by it.
Joseph – Yes, but that isn’t my point. You say that everything changed and that comment is supposed to be understood as profound. Instead, I say, no!, it isn’t, and it didn’t, and it won’t. I am not a fatalist, I believe that life has meaning and purpose, but I cannot abide by the laziness of people saying that, “thing have changed and on well.”
Sarah – I know. And I agree. But at the same time I find that what you are saying is utterly false. Intellectually, I think that we are in agreement, but the reality of what I perceive each day suggests otherwise to me.
Joseph – Oh, look. Look. I miss London.
Sarah – I do, too.
Joseph – But it doesn’t change how I think.
Part of the Railroad Perfection series
