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Sep. 11th, 2010 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatThe down-side of posting from DW is I haven't loaded any user pics outside of the default yet. The up-side - none of those annoying Facebook/Twitter ticky boxes I can't seem to figure out how to get rid of (every time I answer a post at - I'm always worried I'll accidentally click on the wrong box). And none of those annoying adds. LJ has one too many pointless add-ons that I don't want.
It's 9/11 weather. Beautiful. Crisp. Clear cloudless blue sky out my windows. That is the only thing that remains the same regarding this particular date on the Calendar. Well that and the fact that I still live in the same flat (different landlords and tenants below) and in the same city. Even the day of the week is different this year. Two people this year asked me where I was during 9-11, what I was doing, and we exchanged stories. I realized while we were discussing it that I don't like to talk about it. Not really. And when you do, you feel like you are at a scene of an accident and everyone is yelling their own perception.
New Yorkers, or rather those of us who witnessed what happened live and in living color and not through sound-bites, news reels, radio, or tv, have never quite known what to do with it. For six months we were all without exception traumatized. A plane flew by, and we collectively would jump. A fire alarm would go off, and we'd jump. A siren? We'd jump. Subways felt like tombs. To understand, I guess you'd have to live in NYC before and after it happened. Know for example that it was no big deal for planes to buzz by the towers or go a bit low. That more than one private plane had almost crashed into them. Or that we took certain things for granted. Unlike London or Berlin - where bombings happened quite a bit, we never really experienced this. We were like children, innocent. The people who were able to get far away immediately after it happened may have been better off. My brother took off with his girlfriend to PA. I stayed. Went to work the next few days on a subway that was becoming increasingly unreliable and not aided by rumors of threats. Living in a neighborhood still coated with at least five inches worth of The Tower's ash. The wind brought all the debris over to my neighborhood. When I came home that day, the sky was brown, and papers were floating down to the street and everything in sight was coated with brown and black ash. (Apparently it had been much worse earlier). I walked ten blocks. I walked because the subway was packed to the gills and going at a crawl, people crying and moaning. It had been stuck in the tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn for an hour. And we didn't know at that point what was going on. I remember to this day, people exchanging stories about how they thought a plane had destroyed the Supreme Courthouse or the Pentagon or the White House. And I remember the loneliness and fear and anger raging through me, when I looked out my bedroom window and saw only smoke where the towers once stood - I could see them through my bedroom window.
We all have our stories. And it all feels like people reporting what they saw at the scene of a horrific accident. I remember the guilt of having these feelings, because I wasn't in the buildings. And the jokes - that everyone had a friend of cousin or a friend of a friend of a cousin who had been killed, the morbid version of six degrees of separation.
At work, a colleague told me that the world had changed on that day, it would be line in history. This is true. Underlining the horrible ways we could hurt one another and affect one anothers lives.
On that day, I'd planned on treating myself after a nasty two weeks at work, by going either in the morning (before work) or afternoon (on way home from work) to buy Peter Gabriel Tickets at the World Trade Center - where he was scheduled to perform in an Arts Festival. My friend at the time - knew I was considering doing it in the morning and was scared that I might have been at the Towers at the time it hit (I would have been there if I'd gone but I'd chosen to go after work instead). She told me that the tower had fallen. So I went to our deck outside and saw the smoke. I could see it all the way in the Bronx - 1 hour and 15 minute subway ride away.
In my nice pants, nice silk jacket, sleeveless knit top, and blue leather flats - none of which were clothes I could walk in for a long ways or sleep in. After 9/11 - I wore sneakers and changed shoes at work. I rarely wore skirts and did not bother with fancy clothes. My view - whatever I wear, I want to be able to walk 40 blocks in. Everybody else was more or less the same for quite some time.
9/11 (amongst other things that happened closely around it) - is the reason I became obsessed with Buffy in 2001. It is why I ended up on posting boards. I used posting as a way to cope with what had happened. I don't expect that to make sense to anyone. But there it is.
9/11 also gave me insight to how people around the world must feel when someone bombs them or they are made to feel unsafe. For a day, I was in their shoes. Just one day. And it was enough to change me and my entire life. I am not the same person I was before 9/11. I'm less trusting,
I'm more cautious. Before 9/11 - I'd think nothing of going on a trip by myself overseas, not knowing a soul. Now, I'm wary. It shifted things inside, brought out my ingrained need for safety and caution, and a lot of my trust issues. But it wasn't just 9/11 that brought those things out - it was also what was happening at work at the time and all around me. We don't live in a vaccume, the choices others make affect and influence our own - whether it's our decision to continue reading or not reading a comic book or the decision to change careers.
What did not come out of 9/11 for me - and I'm proud to say this, is I don't blame anyone but the people directly responsible for the event - ie. Al Quaida, Osma Bin Laden, and his followers. Deluded souls though they be. It is their hate that resulted in this, hate fueled in turn by others hate and ignorance. No religion was the cause of this. While I can understand why people may find a Mosque going up two blocks from Ground Zero offensive, the reason they find it so - is based on a flaw in their thinking, a gut response. Irrational. And hard to argue with. Because the problem with disasters like 9/11 - where a suicide bomber flies a plane into a building - and the instigator stays hidden, except for quite a few annoying speeches about how this was all in defense of Islam and the true religion or something to that effect. Is you don't know who or what to be upset with? The religion or cause given - the excuse? Do you attack that? Or the individuals who did it because they believed they were just in their cause? Or the leader? OR all of us, for being human and spiteful? I remember feeling as if the rage would eat me alive back then, until I calmed down eventually. I'm not sure memorials help - or just continue to keep that kind of anger alive. And I can see how people could see a Mosque as being a constant reminder of why it happened and that they won. But the reason it upsets them is well the same reason they used to jump whenever a plane flew by. Yet, if you can get on a plane and fly, if you can realize it won't hurt you and it is just a plane, then you can look at a Muslim Mosque and Community Center as just that. Not a symbol or a justification for an insane terrorist act, which in reality probably had very little to do with the Muslim faith at all.
I have a work colleague who swears she'll never forget. But has that been the best approach? She's not happy. The anger is inside her and she can't get rid of it.
I have let go of the anger. I am not longer filled with rage. I can see what happened clearly, and I do understand why it happened now. There had been bomb threats before - several actually. And the people attacking us, did get what they wanted - War on Iraq and Afghanistan. Plus a lot of fear. Terrorism is about instilling fear in the victim, along with rage. Also the attackers felt they were right, because they were afraid, they felt powerless against the West.
Where are we now, nine years later? Have we learned anything? I wish I knew. I'm not sure I learned the right things. I have a new career now, new friends, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't still miss the old - because I do, quite a bit. It's funny, the newspaper articles and picture some stores posted in their windows have fallen down, wrinkled, faded but the memory hasn't. It's faded in print. But in my head? It is still clear, with just a few blurred edges. I don't feel the same way I did then. I am no longer angry. I'm just..sad. Mourning on some level, I suppose, what might have been.
It's 9/11 weather. Beautiful. Crisp. Clear cloudless blue sky out my windows. That is the only thing that remains the same regarding this particular date on the Calendar. Well that and the fact that I still live in the same flat (different landlords and tenants below) and in the same city. Even the day of the week is different this year. Two people this year asked me where I was during 9-11, what I was doing, and we exchanged stories. I realized while we were discussing it that I don't like to talk about it. Not really. And when you do, you feel like you are at a scene of an accident and everyone is yelling their own perception.
New Yorkers, or rather those of us who witnessed what happened live and in living color and not through sound-bites, news reels, radio, or tv, have never quite known what to do with it. For six months we were all without exception traumatized. A plane flew by, and we collectively would jump. A fire alarm would go off, and we'd jump. A siren? We'd jump. Subways felt like tombs. To understand, I guess you'd have to live in NYC before and after it happened. Know for example that it was no big deal for planes to buzz by the towers or go a bit low. That more than one private plane had almost crashed into them. Or that we took certain things for granted. Unlike London or Berlin - where bombings happened quite a bit, we never really experienced this. We were like children, innocent. The people who were able to get far away immediately after it happened may have been better off. My brother took off with his girlfriend to PA. I stayed. Went to work the next few days on a subway that was becoming increasingly unreliable and not aided by rumors of threats. Living in a neighborhood still coated with at least five inches worth of The Tower's ash. The wind brought all the debris over to my neighborhood. When I came home that day, the sky was brown, and papers were floating down to the street and everything in sight was coated with brown and black ash. (Apparently it had been much worse earlier). I walked ten blocks. I walked because the subway was packed to the gills and going at a crawl, people crying and moaning. It had been stuck in the tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn for an hour. And we didn't know at that point what was going on. I remember to this day, people exchanging stories about how they thought a plane had destroyed the Supreme Courthouse or the Pentagon or the White House. And I remember the loneliness and fear and anger raging through me, when I looked out my bedroom window and saw only smoke where the towers once stood - I could see them through my bedroom window.
We all have our stories. And it all feels like people reporting what they saw at the scene of a horrific accident. I remember the guilt of having these feelings, because I wasn't in the buildings. And the jokes - that everyone had a friend of cousin or a friend of a friend of a cousin who had been killed, the morbid version of six degrees of separation.
At work, a colleague told me that the world had changed on that day, it would be line in history. This is true. Underlining the horrible ways we could hurt one another and affect one anothers lives.
On that day, I'd planned on treating myself after a nasty two weeks at work, by going either in the morning (before work) or afternoon (on way home from work) to buy Peter Gabriel Tickets at the World Trade Center - where he was scheduled to perform in an Arts Festival. My friend at the time - knew I was considering doing it in the morning and was scared that I might have been at the Towers at the time it hit (I would have been there if I'd gone but I'd chosen to go after work instead). She told me that the tower had fallen. So I went to our deck outside and saw the smoke. I could see it all the way in the Bronx - 1 hour and 15 minute subway ride away.
In my nice pants, nice silk jacket, sleeveless knit top, and blue leather flats - none of which were clothes I could walk in for a long ways or sleep in. After 9/11 - I wore sneakers and changed shoes at work. I rarely wore skirts and did not bother with fancy clothes. My view - whatever I wear, I want to be able to walk 40 blocks in. Everybody else was more or less the same for quite some time.
9/11 (amongst other things that happened closely around it) - is the reason I became obsessed with Buffy in 2001. It is why I ended up on posting boards. I used posting as a way to cope with what had happened. I don't expect that to make sense to anyone. But there it is.
9/11 also gave me insight to how people around the world must feel when someone bombs them or they are made to feel unsafe. For a day, I was in their shoes. Just one day. And it was enough to change me and my entire life. I am not the same person I was before 9/11. I'm less trusting,
I'm more cautious. Before 9/11 - I'd think nothing of going on a trip by myself overseas, not knowing a soul. Now, I'm wary. It shifted things inside, brought out my ingrained need for safety and caution, and a lot of my trust issues. But it wasn't just 9/11 that brought those things out - it was also what was happening at work at the time and all around me. We don't live in a vaccume, the choices others make affect and influence our own - whether it's our decision to continue reading or not reading a comic book or the decision to change careers.
What did not come out of 9/11 for me - and I'm proud to say this, is I don't blame anyone but the people directly responsible for the event - ie. Al Quaida, Osma Bin Laden, and his followers. Deluded souls though they be. It is their hate that resulted in this, hate fueled in turn by others hate and ignorance. No religion was the cause of this. While I can understand why people may find a Mosque going up two blocks from Ground Zero offensive, the reason they find it so - is based on a flaw in their thinking, a gut response. Irrational. And hard to argue with. Because the problem with disasters like 9/11 - where a suicide bomber flies a plane into a building - and the instigator stays hidden, except for quite a few annoying speeches about how this was all in defense of Islam and the true religion or something to that effect. Is you don't know who or what to be upset with? The religion or cause given - the excuse? Do you attack that? Or the individuals who did it because they believed they were just in their cause? Or the leader? OR all of us, for being human and spiteful? I remember feeling as if the rage would eat me alive back then, until I calmed down eventually. I'm not sure memorials help - or just continue to keep that kind of anger alive. And I can see how people could see a Mosque as being a constant reminder of why it happened and that they won. But the reason it upsets them is well the same reason they used to jump whenever a plane flew by. Yet, if you can get on a plane and fly, if you can realize it won't hurt you and it is just a plane, then you can look at a Muslim Mosque and Community Center as just that. Not a symbol or a justification for an insane terrorist act, which in reality probably had very little to do with the Muslim faith at all.
I have a work colleague who swears she'll never forget. But has that been the best approach? She's not happy. The anger is inside her and she can't get rid of it.
I have let go of the anger. I am not longer filled with rage. I can see what happened clearly, and I do understand why it happened now. There had been bomb threats before - several actually. And the people attacking us, did get what they wanted - War on Iraq and Afghanistan. Plus a lot of fear. Terrorism is about instilling fear in the victim, along with rage. Also the attackers felt they were right, because they were afraid, they felt powerless against the West.
Where are we now, nine years later? Have we learned anything? I wish I knew. I'm not sure I learned the right things. I have a new career now, new friends, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't still miss the old - because I do, quite a bit. It's funny, the newspaper articles and picture some stores posted in their windows have fallen down, wrinkled, faded but the memory hasn't. It's faded in print. But in my head? It is still clear, with just a few blurred edges. I don't feel the same way I did then. I am no longer angry. I'm just..sad. Mourning on some level, I suppose, what might have been.
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