castalie | Je suis Charlie

So I started writing an entry not long after I posted my last one but in light of what happened in Paris yesterday, it felt a bit inappropriate to go into fannish and mundane talks.

Yesterday has been so odd, you guys. Internet and social media always add another dimension to events like what happened at the office of Charlie Heddo. Because you follow everything live, you follow things as they happen. And it did feel like everyone was riveted to their screens all day, following by the minute what was happening and trying to make sense of a senseless act. My family has a Whatsapp group where we exchange daily about just about everything that happens in our lives and since yesterday we've been in a messaging frenzy. Especially as one of my cousins is in the Gendarmerie nationale.

As I said yesterday, I know, rationally, that there have been worse attacks in the past. In a world when men can break into a school and shoot hundred of kids, you can just expect everything. But I suppose proximity makes everything more painful somehow (and how egoistical is this, really? But such is life) and the fact that the shooting happened literally in the same city where I work, at the office of a magazine we all know in France (although I've never been a reader of Charlie Hebdo, and will not start now) just made it all the more shocking. And the reason behind the attack, so incredibly senseless, insane... how could it come to this?

Also, one of the casualties was part of my childhood (and the childhood of most of my generation) as Cabu was the cartoonist of one of the most (if not the most) famous (and beloved) French childhood program in the 80/90s. We were all "not 'our' Cabu", surely? It shouldn't make a difference, should it? Again, somehow, it does. But more than this, it is the whole idea behind the crime that shocked and outraged people.

I worked till past 8.00PM yesterday and couldn't really go to Place de la République for the vigil but my parents went in our stead and it felt a little bit like we were with them. I love that they went together. I'll try to go tonight after work. Behind the cut a little collage of the three pics they took JeSuisCharlie

Here's another one, from twitter this time, that should give you an idea of how many people gathered at République yesterday.

Today has been declared a national day of mourning and people have been paying tributes to the victims (all of them, incuding the policemen), everyone hold a minute of silence at noon, the bells of Notre Dame tolled in mourning, subway drivers stopped their trains, tonight the Eiffel Tower will switch off lights as well. It is so odd seeing a country in mourning.

And there was this other shooting this morning, which is keeping everyone in suspense because apparently it is not linked to yesterday's event but another policeman (policewoman, in this case) was killed and there's a manhunt and what the hell is going on? The world is crazy. Not a surprise. Nothing new, but still...

Anyway. Yesterday was odd. And sad. Needed to let that out.