A few days ago, a woman had her throat slashed at my local railway station at 6.15 in the morning. A man grabbed her from behind and demanded she give him her handbag. She gave him the bag but he slashed her throat anyway.
The woman survived, as did another young woman exactly a year ago who was walking her dog in the park across the road from my house when she was struck on the forehead, dragged along the ground and sexually assaulted at knife point until her dog bit the attacker, who ran away down my street.
It’s not exactly the Bronx, but in Brunswick we aren’t strangers to violence. Hardly a random attack, but in March 2004, Lewis Moran, father of slain underworld brothers Mark and Jason, was shot dead at the Brunswick Club, directly across the road from the church where I worship most Sundays.
It’s hard to feel quite as upset about the likes of Moran meeting what seems a logical end, but even in the gangland killings, innocent bystanders can be literally caught in the crossfire.
You could get complacent about violence, in a country where most homicides are committed by a person known to the victim. This week’s completely random attack at the station our family members use daily was a reminder of the fragility of life.
And this week, no one needed to be told, as the horrific events in Oslo and on Utoya Island unfolded. It was Port Arthur all over again but worse, the body count climbing horrifyingly higher than when Martin Bryant took to the blood-soaked penal settlement with his gun.
Yes, we need reminding. Not about random violence so much as about the fragility of life - a thing large populations of the planet know intimately. As we reel in horror from the Norwegian massacre, on the other side of the world, in the Horn of Africa, several million people face likely death by starvation.
In countries in South America, in Myanmar, university students go to take part in protest marches and their parents never see them again. Not so long ago, in Uganda and Southern Sudan, school age kids were forced into The Lord’s Resistance Army and trained to kill people in their own villages.
Until comparatively recently, people everywhere lost as many babies as survived. Women died in childbirth. In Indigenous communities this isn’t just something that happened in the past.
We know this, of course. At some level we are all aware of the brutality of the 21st century world, despite the advent of human rights charters and antibiotics. I sometimes think this awareness is like a cloud we carry with us wherever we go, or a chill undercurrent that leavens every occasion of euphoria and saddens every moment of pleasure.
This week’s events in Norway and in Albert Street Brunswick didn’t make me want to barricade myself and my loved ones in the house and never brave our parks and streets. But it did remind me of what my sisters and brothers in other places know from vivid experience – that life can end or change dramatically at any time, for anybody.
Which means I need to protect it, treasure it, value every moment. Be grateful for every morning I wake up breathing and functional, healthy and safe and loved.