I can still feel slight reverberations of fright running through my body as I’m writing this. When it happened, I wasn’t even on campus. I was at home when the news started coming in. I watched the news develop, bringing in more and more details about pipe-bombs and shotguns and the terror that was about to hit us all, and my head started spinning. The shock will settle in later, uneasiness comes first. Then come the questions.

Authorities say DeGuzman kept a journal meticulously recording how he would attack De Anza campus. He also posted websites full of anger, hate, f-words and disturbing statements, such as “I’m going to load my rifle, sit in front of a mirror and see what it would look like to paint a room with my brains!”

I wonder, then, whether this is just about another troubled teenage soul, deprived, perhaps, of proper guidance and so confused that he actually crossed over the fine, invisible and sometimes indeterminable line of right and wrong, reality and fantasy? That’s probably part of the picture, but that’s not all of it.

I wonder whether this is about wholesome violence presented to us every minute, every day on visual media screens to such an extent that some statistics say the average ten year old has already seen about 6000 murders on TV? DeGuzman was reportedly “feeling” for the Columbine killers, who themselves were supposedly “inspired” to their massacre by the 1999 Hollywood blockbuster “The Matrix”. The omnipresent graphic depiction of abstract violence is certainly part of the puzzle, but that’s not all of it.

I wonder if the vast amount of information ready at hand on the Internet is part of this picture, too. Do we treat pornography and blueprints of pipe bombs as less disgusting and dangerous because we have easy, everyday access to them? The information highway is part of the equation, but that’s not all of it.

Is this country’s poor gun control the problem then, I wonder? The unfortunate upheaval of the conservative force that now is pulling the policy-making strings won’t help restrict the availability of firearms and other weapons in this country. However, that’s just part of the issue, but that’s not all of it.

I even wonder if the hectic pace of our Silicon Valley is startling our inner clock and mental balance. Perhaps it is. But that’s not all of it.

And that is where the real tragedy lies. There is no single answer here. This is not a simple case, and the blame cannot be placed on one isolated and simplified issue.

This is about society itself: shattered, perplexed and so out of order, that we not only have to fear the worst we could imagine but feel the worst of it happen every day. Society’s sanity is crumbling down in little bits and pieces.

Pay attention and try to mend the little pieces that make up who and what we are. Listen to those close to you. Give them an open ear and have an eye on them. Be an active consumer of information; select what you want to see on TV and what you want to get from the Internet. If you don’t want weapons on your campus then find out what you can do so that the weapons don’t even get to your state.

My uneasiness remains. So will the questions. I still can only find that one answer that we just have to try to keep the little bits and pieces together the best we can.