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