Since it’s the eve of the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I feel I should say something about that. But I don’t know what to say. I don’t have any profound comments waiting to pour onto the proverbial page. I guess I’ll type out what I wrote in my [paper] journal on Sept. 15, 2001:
“I guess I should say something about all the crap that’s been going on. Tuesday (the 11th) terrorists crashed hijacked planes into the two towers of the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon. The attack in New York was by far the worse. The two towers ended up collapsing. Now there’s just a pile of rubble where the WTC used to be. I saw it all on TV Tuesday, and it didn’t seem real. It was the end of that day before it all really sank in, and then I just started sobbing. I can’t stop thinking about New York - my friends there, NYU as a whole, how strange and surreal life there must seem now, how odd the view south from Washington Square Park must look now… and of course the thousands of people who are dead. I’ve heard from Kimb, Matt, and Tom; I haven’t yet heard from Kira, Sara, or Jill. I have no reason not to think they’re okay, but obviously I am still worried. Kimb said she stepped out of the subway that morning just in time to see the second plane hit the tower. Tom watched them both collapse from the place where he works at Madison Square Garden. I just can’t imagine. I feel so helpless. I keep feeling like I should be in New York, I feel this urge to be there. Which is ridiculous, of course - like why would I want to put my safety at risk. And it’s not that. It’s not like I seriously want to go up to New York right now. I just feel like, that was my home too, and I should be there. I don’t feel guilty. I just feel… well, I can’t describe it. I’ve done the best I can here to try to describe it accurately.
“Monday I’m going to see about giving blood.
“NYU evacuated a bunch of the dorms, including Lafayette St., where I lived my last semester there. It’s about ten or twelve blocks from the WTC (or what used to be the WTC). There are about 1600 displaced students. I think they reopened Lafayette St. and Broome St., but the ones further south are still closed. Tom lived in Water St., which was evacuated immediately. He couldn’t go back home so he was left with only what he had with him that day. He’s been staying with some friends in Union Square. Students who couldn’t find someone to stay with have been sleeping in Cole’s. Monday NYU is sending them all to the Sheraton and some other ritzy hotel, until whenever the dorms reopen, which may be a while. NYU is also giving each student $200 to buy toiletries and clothes, and giving them free replacements of all their textbooks. Their classes resumed yesterday (Friday) but I wonder how many people actually went. Matt said he was going upstate for a while.
“In a weird way, I feel like I’m there. Or, as I said before, like I should be there. I’m kind of walking around in a daze. Today when I got Tom’s email I started sobbing again. I went to sleep at 8:30 pm because I didn’t feel like I could do anything else. Woke up at 10:30, ate a baked potato, and have kind of been sitting around feeling strange since then. It’s almost 1:30. My hand really hurts. I have so much more to say, though. It is hard to make myself write slowly.
“I’m scared. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t want there to be a war. I have a really bad feeling about it. I never thought of World War III really being a possibility in my lifetime. Now I feel an incredibly forboding sense, that I just can’t shake. I want to cry a lot. Actually, I have been. I’m very scared and feel weird. That’s the bottom line. Guess I’ll stop writing for now.”
So that’s what I wrote a year ago four days after the attacks. It’s weird… this whole year, I’ve gone about life as usual, thinking about daily and personal stuff, and I’ve thought about 9/11 a lot, but it’s like you have to think about it in this weird, detached way. Every once in a while, when I really think about it and remember that day and how I felt seeing everything happen on TV and hearing it all for the first time, I remember exactly how I felt and this overwhelming sense of sadness and scaredness (is that a word?) and a profound pain comes over me again. I guess we have to detach and push that stuff away to an extent in order to survive from day to day. Maybe we’ve just been so sheltered and priveleged here in America that we’re not mentally equipped to deal with the reality of such a tragedy. But then, I don’t know if anyone is.
I will say this. I am not pleased with the way the media is handling it. They’re going to be replaying all that footage all day tomorrow. And plenty of places (like Newsweek, for example) have acknowledged and printed articles about the families of the victims, and how they say they wish the media wouldn’t force them to watch their loved ones die all over again. But then they just go ahead and do it. It’s like, oh, let’s give lip service to that, let’s pretend to be caring and compassionate, but then let’s just give into sensationalism anyway. Or worse yet - let’s print these heart-wrenching statements from the victims’ families as just more of the publicity, using their feelings to totally the opposite purpose of their intent. You know, the first few days after 9/11 last year, I thought that America would change. I thought we would all take a step back and look hard at our lives and our values, and re-evaulate and change for the better. And maybe we did for a few days. Maybe some of us did. But then it all went back to the way it was before. The sensationalism, the crap, the materialism… America, you just don’t GET IT! When will you catch on?? You want to know why so much of the rest of the world hates us? Take a look in the mirror!!
And the worst part of it is, there are plenty of people out there - “patriotic” folk (yeah right) - who will say I’m un-American for saying that, or even worse, accuse me of sympathizing with terrorists. I really wish they would yank their heads out of their asses, but the sad thing is that I know for some people it’ll never happen. People get so damn defensive, and are so absolutely assured that they’re 100% right, and could never be wrong about anything, and that’s that and anyone who dares to question that must be a terrorist. I HATE THAT!!!
I hate the way Wal-Mart has its shelves piled up with plastic American flags, American flag lapel pins and coffee mugs, water coolers with a cheap plastic cartoon eagle and America flag plastered on the side… way to capitalize on a tragedy! It makes me sick to my stomach. If some good can come out of everything, one would hope the 9/11 tragedy would have stopped that kind of crap - would have made people think about what’s really important. But I guess not. It’s like Jenny said… “Why do I still live in this damn capitalist country? Oh, because I can’t afford to move anywhere else. The irony.”
I need to back up my weblog files on a CD or something. I’m not keeping a paper journal anymore, and I know paper is a hell of a lot longer lasting than anything on the internet or other digital media, but I want to preserve this in some form. Hopefully CD-ROMs will be readable for a long while in the future. I don’t want to lose this record of my thoughts and feelings.
Anyway. Tomorrow’s the anniversary. It’ll be a weird day. I just hope no one does anything stupid like attack Muslim students or something. People piss me off sometimes. As for me, I’ll be trying to go about a “normal” day with classes and work, but I think I might catch myself choking up once in a while. I won’t ever forget the footage of those towers falling. I can’t imagine how Kimb must’ve felt stepping out of that subway.
I love you, New York. :-(
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