To my fellow Rosarians. I have been an occasional "poster" to this forum since 1997. I am also a 'wanna be' writer.

The events of this week at Virginia Tech instigated an essay a from me a bit different than I would expect.

Looking at it, I see we can only struggle to understand the incomprehensible by reconciling it to our own lives. Our hates, fears, Obsessions.

I want to share it with you, the Rosarians who helped develope my own obsession:

Obsession

"Why so many 'frickin' roses?"

Why indeed?

Not the little wimpy ones growing in bud vases. The ones that are over-bred and under-scented.

No.

The monsters. Thorned, beastly things growing to thirty-two feet. The ones that devour houses and trees. Those whose thorns seek victims to impale just to validate their reason for being. Those whose flowers appear reluctantly, but when they do, occur in the thousands on a single plant: perfume smelled from 100 yards. Seductive fragrance laced with 'pricks' rhapsodized-over by generations upon generations of poets: whose lines become written off as trite ballerina figurines bought from second-rate artists.

Jump forward one, two, three hundred years, and the monsters in their infant forms await just the right spots in the dirt, and are jokingly referred to as 'pot ghettos' by rose-crazy suburban gardeners. Internet sites and catalogs selling rare breeds are not so jokingly called 'rose porn' by those same individuals: they spend nights in online orgies of rose-sensuality partaken by 70 year old retirees and recent college graduates. The only discrimination coming from preferred breeds and vendors.

Because they know.

They know obsession. It pulls you in and feeds, energy increases as you make more-- obsession.

What starts as one or two becomes 20, and soon different types are discovered.

Then it happens. A new Rosaholic ends up with 400 roses in 300 different varieties and he can no longer see the house covered with a particular infamous specimen that grows to 50 feet; he must cut a hole in the wall to allow it to grow. It consumes his life.

Like any good obsession.

Obsessions CAN be good.

Oh yes. The problem is, the obsession I just described can be used for any object.

Alcohol. Tobacco. Firearms.

It was none of those.

The obsession fed none of those things.

I have not watched the video of the 'shooter' yet. I don't have a television; this means I can avoid reality for a little longer.

I've read the stories about all those people who died. I did it the first day, but haven't been able to go back.

People who seemed destined to help a lot of other people. Researchers in reflexology, teenagers whose majors had not yet been declared, and future psychologists who spent their summers since childhood helping handicapped kids.

But now that's over and I am not ready yet to hear why.

But I see it anyway.

I can have nightmares with horrible violence that I can't remember an hour later.

And I can think.

What could cause a person to annihilate so many others? One person managed to fatally shoot 33.

It's incomprehensible in one way, just because similar things in the past resulted in far fewer deaths.

What could cause the atmosphere in this man's mind that allowed him to do it?

He was involved. I think. Fantasized. Maybe for years. An immersion in the culture of each "accoutrement" necessary to accomplish such a horrible result.

He did obsess about those 'things,' I am sure. In truth, the obsession had nothing to do with firearms, had nothing to do with any simple "object," nothing to do with anything we can understand in conjecture. Those were merely symptoms.

But I know he thought about it. Romanticized it.

Made it important.

Spent hours obsessing about details.

Grew strong from it even as he became more ill.

Became silent, the outside growing more different from the inside as he got closer.

Until obsession and action merged.

Until the monsters: Thorned, beastly things growing to thirty-two feet became 33.