we are virginia tech

Convocation Address - April 17, 2007
(Nikki Giovanni)

We are Virginia Tech.

We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech.

virginia tech

blood was shed yesterday in a place that was my home.i walked those halls,
i sat in those classrooms,
and a part of me was lost yesterday.

i think of the tragic events of april 16th and my heart breaks.

blacksburg and virginia tech will never be the same again.

in fact, one senseless act has forever changed the world.

a moment

“we do not remember days… we remember moments.” (cesare pavese)

[we live a lifetime of moments, some beautiful, some painful, all fleeting. there are a few moments that keep coming back to me, despite time and distance. i'm going to share one such moment, a fragment of time, captured here before it is lost forever. more will follow...]

i knew in that moment, as you knelt before me with your head buried deep in my hair that we would not make it — that we would not be together forever. and so i held you tighter, convinced that if i didn’t let you go the truth could not steal you away from my arms or my heart.

we could live forever in this moment.

if it were only that simple.

shadows

“you’re running scared, i’m chasing a shadow…” (charlotte martin)

some people pass through our lives so quickly that we almost can’t be sure they were ever really there. fleeting moments, brief exchanges, and then, nothing.

i will never quite understand people who choose to live this way. moving amidst the shadows, coming and going silently, no obligations, no expectations, nothing ever invested, so nothing ever lost.

what makes it so sad to me is that nothing is ever gained. sure, it’s safe and protected, but its also insulated from all the wonderfully messy things that make life so painfully beautiful.

*this*
is all we know.

*life*
is all we have.

and we have it for such a brief moment.

why would anyone choose to live in the shadows?