As the pictures go up on Facebook et. al. of the towers and we are counseled not to forget, I wonder what it is about us that holds on so strongly. I get that this was important, that the towers were not only physical structures that held the flesh and blood of so many people who lived and loved, were fathers and sons, daughters and mothers, but perhaps more. Perhaps they were the force field that was supposed to signify the divide between us and them and that what shocked us all so much, myself absolutely included, was that the divide was so easily conquered. To some, 9/11 was the day that a war began. To some, it is more personal. To many, it will never end.
There’s a part in us all that likes to take ownership of tragedy. To say, “I was there,” to stake a claim that we feel more than the guy next to us, or across the country from us. It’s a cousin to that original feeling, the one that held us separate, that divided us. I don’t know what you feel. Though I was in Manhattan that day, my ears were turned off to the screams of sirens, my heart to the fall. I was a quiet observer, trekking uptown through swarms of people who smoked in the streets of a midtown packed, like it was a street festival. We looked up and the day tingled with a feeling of something different, new, no school today.
No, it wasn’t until my train peaked through the tunnel and my exodus completed that the sound came rushing back into my ears and I felt. In the safety of my bathroom that night, in a shower that washed the smell of soot from my hair, I felt. I felt terrified. And I felt that the world of foreign policy and boring pages in front of the style section of the New York Times were coming to get me, to shake me into wakefulness, so that I knew that it was real. That people in pictures or who moved across the screen from me in the blue light of the television were actual. That speeches made from the pulpits of politicians held meaning. That legislation was connected to something that could affect even me.
Of course we won’t forget.
But will we remember what we learned?
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Yvonne Johnson
Arlene Green
Emily Conyngham
Susan Mihalic
Jan Wilberg
David McClain
Salon.com
Comments
It will become like MLK, Robert Kennedy, Vietnam, WWII - another American history class.
Well done. / r
Remember to thank the government for its role in this.
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Over a century ago the English lost nearly 17,000 on their retreat from Kabul before they reached the Khyber Pass. The Red Army lost over 100,000 before they pulled out. By 2014 we'll probably lose nearly 3,000 before we end our ten year long war in the "Graveyard of Empires."
And after we're gone, how long before the training camps return? Not trying to be disrespectful to those who lost their lives or survived 9-11-2001, but your question provoked some serious angst in my war weary mind.
As you point out, there were important lessons learned that day - on personal, as well as global levels, I think - and what will happen? Will people forget? Thank you for this thoughtful, honest post that didn't seem to exploit this horrible event like I feel sometimes is the case with articles and such this time of year.
but most of the men on the planes were saudis and there is a reason for that.
it's easy to remember the horror of the day, but if you don't know why it happened it's also easy for sociopath politicians to divert the rage to making war on, for instance, iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. 100,000 or more iraqis died from that criminal attack, will you remember that?
but why remind you, again. wallow in your sorrow, insulated in the ignorance of what america has been doing from its beginning.
it's easy to ignore politics in america, because you are frozen out of the management of the nation. no democracy in the 'defender of democracy.' but those 3000 people were in the same position as the 100,000 fried and poisoned at hiroshima. your government took you to war with the people of the oil lands and brought death and destruction to the middle east in pursuit of power over oil. unlike the japanese government, which told their people they were at war, the american government kept their war a dirty secret.
until one day in manhattan, the war had two sides...