Feels like I'm writing this more for myself than anyone else. Doesn't seem much point to getting down my earliest impressions of this latest bombing for posterity or anything. I guess that's why I'll never make a good reporter. Just feeling a profound absence of sense at the moment, and hoping the act of composing words and sentences may help foster its return. Feeling really exhausted today. I was already run down when I got the news of the bombing, leaving me ill-disposed to process it.

Got back to the apartment to be met by neighbors ready to punch numbers on casualty reports and compare "Where were you?" stories. I just shut down from it all. I couldn't get – I can't get – my head around the discussion. I felt myself at a loss for words. People were expecting me to talk about stuff, but I had nothing to talk about. I was thinking about how happy I am that we had the party for my after-school community service club today, because I got to tell my kids how proud I am of all the work they've done this year, and celebrate with them, and give them certificates of recognition. And because, otherwise, I probably would have gone to the gym earlier and then headed down to my favorite spot on the waterfront to read. A spot which no longer exists.

Nutritionists and health authorities extol the life-extending qualities of regular exercise. I never thought of it saving my life so directly.

And then it feels so funny to have been at the gym. To have been worried about how in shape I am as this was happening. Seems funny to think of the things I had planned for this week -- the mindless little activities and distractions. And some of the plans for my time back in New York. I'm feeling less enthusiastic about the concert I just bought tickets for. Just wondering about how fruitful it is to spend time on some of these things. Or how fitting it will be for me to be celebrating and rocking out with a bunch of hipsters at an outdoor concert. Feels odd to think about.

And there was something about having seen my neighborhood on the TV in flames that set me off or, rather, shut me down. My dad helped me find the words for it when we talked on the phone. He said the experience I described reminded him of a scene in Good Morning Vietnam, in which Robin Williams' character passes a nightclub that was bombed and sees the bodies of people he knew being carried out. The experience changes his perspective on the violence he had been reporting. There's something about seeing these images on television, normally. There's this two-dimensional image, quotes of numbers, strange names and place names. It's all Styrofoam. When I saw the images on the television today, of a place that lives so vividly in my consciousness, with those images contrasting so sharply with mine, something came unlatched for me.

And, then, there's been no end to sirens. They seemed to be whining nonstop for the last 4 hours. Then a parade of protestors sailing by on their scooters down below, honking and chanting. Odd how Lebanon always seems to respond in numbers and noise – reminders that others are still here, even if some are now gone.

None of this seems to be bringing any sense, though. I feel like I'm painting some cubist portrait. No, even less coherent than that. Random slivers or shards of an image, perhaps. Throwing darts, not even at a board, but at a wall. I don't even know if there's a larger image suggested by all of these pieces placed next to each other. My experience? Would that be the title? There's some desire I have to find some coherence to my experience, but it doesn't feel that way. In life, we so quickly grow accustomed to having names we feel correspond to the feelings we experience. When I move outside that circumference of experience, it's really disorienting. But surely, it must have been like that in early childhood.

I don't know how to close, but don't know what to keep writing. I failed in what I'd hoped to do when I began typing. Maybe it's just time for bed. Have to hope that sleep will help in some way. Maybe dreams can step in and make sense when reality fails to.