When I sit down and think about the crucial moments history has intervened in my life, those surprisingly few important events since I was born that I can say I have experienced and lived through, I can remember exactly how I felt when each happened, where I was at each moment in history and how each one affected me. I am not talking about the day my sister was born. Nor am I recalling weddings or funerals. And especially not the "firsts" of my life. I am referring to those times when I felt more than just myself, when I felt I was a member of a larger, collective group, my family, my city, my state, my country, my species. I cannot remember the Challenger explosion at the time of its occurence, but I count it because I have read about it, studied it, and really because I have read and reread President Reagan's speech to the nation a million times and because it has moved me and inspired me and made me tinge with patriotism and loyalty and pride. And most conveniently because it happened while I was alive. Technically. So what if I wasn't yet four. I was alive and surely saw something related to it on TV. I was just too young to remember. But that's not what I am writing about here.
I can remember when the Bulls won their first championship. The anticipation before the game began; the gathering of large groups to simultaneously watch magic happen; the amazing suspense every minute of the game; and the intense release and sheer joy as the final seconds gave way to the confetti and balloons and hoopla; and the greatest celebration ever had in the City of Chicago. Until the next year, anyway. I can remember my first live Bulls game and hearing the earth-shattering opening by Ray Clay and getting chills and feeling so important and awed at the same time, like I don't belong at something this special. I can recall each and every Olympics since 1988; the World Games always make me feel cosmopolitan and truly American at my desire for our great country to win every event. I know where I was when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed in Oklahoma City. I was at home on an Institute Day watching television and turning down my friends' invitation to play poker. But that's not what I am writing about here.
I remember when Princess Diana died over Labor Day Weekend. I was in high school and I was babysitting my cousins; my Aunt came home and stunned and in disbelief, asked "Is it true?!?! Is she dead???" But that's not what I am writing about here.
I of course remember where I was on the morning of September 11, 2001. I was in my dorm room, sleeping, when my roommate who had an early class and had just came back from eating breakfast, turned on the TV and caught the news. It was on every channel anyway. He couldn't watch anything else. He told me as I woke up and I really didn't register much in the way of what I would feel later. And it wasn't because I was half-asleep. I didn't feel immediate grief, or sadness or anything. The only thing I felt during those first few minutes, before the second plane hit, was this was an event that was going to bring the world together. I was anticipating the world's response. But it didn't register as a huge event; rather I just thought that a plane crashed into a building. I didn't think terrorism, I thought mistake, error. Then the second plane hit. It's hard to say when I realized that it was a terrorist attack, because that would not have been my natural reaction, despite watching the second plane deliberately fly straight into the middle of the South Tower. I don't recall whether it was the anchor of the newscast I was watching that gave me that knowledge or what, but I was the naive American. Then I watched MSNBC all day long. Literally. I began a love affair with Ashleigh Banfield. Around the early afternoon when I actually sat down and began my viewing, I began to feel the gamut of human emotion that everyone felt that day. I was so saddened by the people lost, the sheer number of innocent civilians dead. I was so angry that this happened and at the terrorists. I feel staunchly patriotic at the President's drop of a pin, but what I felt on and after September 11th, I never had before and I often still do: I felt so purely American, so faithful in our country, so trustworthy of our leaders. The music especially moved me and can still send chills down my spine. I taped the Telethon for America; I pledged money; I listened to the songs; I taped VH1 that night and sometimes pull those tapes out and feel it all over again. Nothing has been more haunting, more intense, more surreal than that day in history. And I remember being so surprised at the lack of feeling those immediately around me showed. Perhaps that's why I felt so alone and isolated after the attacks. I was not near my family or my friends. I would talk about the day's developments with my friends at school and they would change the subject; I would be laughed at and became a joke because I became a news junkie. That may be the exact time and date I began to realize how much I needed a change, and that the first move was to distance myself from those people.
Today is the one-year anniversary of the attacks on America. I spent some time at Borders reading the 9/11 themed magazines (those issues of Time, Newsweek, US News, etc.) and came across something I had forgotten, but became as enraged as I did when I first saw this on the news. There is a Frenchman, Thierry something, who wrote a book in France. The book is about this American hoax, contending that September 11th didn't really happen and if it did, it was at the hands of the American government. Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden had nothing to do with it. It was a domestic attack, if anything. Al Gore perhaps orchestrated the attack to make himself look better. And the French ate this shit up. They made the book a bestseller. The book is being printed in 17 other countries in as many languages. This ludicrousness, this inanity, this rudeness and beyond insulting and hurtful contention infuriates me. Thierry: go to Ground Zero and see for yourself... IT HAPPENED. And we would not do this to ourselves. There is myriad evidence that it was a terrorist activity... LOOK AT THE HIJACKERS! Unless you believe they were a lie too. I don't even know why I am giving credence to this hack.
I also was thinking today of the emotions I have felt in my lifetime. What can I pass along to my kids in terms of humanity and feelings? Have I ever felt brave? No, not especially. And that scares me.
Do you remember a pre-9/11 world? I do. I remember what it was like to fly before the long waits; what it was like to take for granted your loved ones always being there when you got home; what it was like to not think of government agencies and feel safe at the same time. My kids will never know what that is like. I don't envision a return to that way of life anytime soon, if ever. To borrow from a book I want to read, "Regrettably, ladies and gentlemen, my girls and yours will not grow up in the same world that we did. History just took a right turn into a blind alley and something very dear has just been taken away from us." The book is Longitudes and Attitudes, by Thomas L. Friedman, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist.
To end a day upon which expansive thought, sadness and resolve reigned, and will always reign, if not every day for the rest of our lives, then certainly every anniversary, I will say that today, again, I felt so incredibly proud to be an American. No country is greater, no cause is more honorable and no grief is better felt; we are the United States of America and we will avenge our fallen.
Goodnight,
JJ
