Wishing for the Dateless Day
Sep. 11th, 2011 02:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatIf I could erase the date from today, it would be an ordinary September day in New York City. Not too hot and not too cold...a soft wet breeze in the air. The sky as has often been the case these past few weeks the color of a hard boiled egg, a water brushed white. Or dull gray. The streets busy with farmer's markets, and church-goers. Kids rocketing down my sidewalk on scooters, bikes and roller-skates, making me wonder about their parents. The last breath of summer...scenting the air, with just the mildest taste of fall. And traces of last night's block party on stoops and windows, a half filled coke can here, a bit of sprayed sticky thread there.
Any other day.
Each year, I pray for gray skies to blow in upon it - as they did today, and for it to fall thankfully on a Sunday, Wedensday, Monday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, any day but Tuesday - please. No crisp sparkling air, or turquoise blue sky without a streak of cloud across it. Save that for tomorrow or the next day. Thank you. Just a gray day, soft and dull, not crisp and sparkling.
All week long all the news media did was talk about this date. As if it were 4th of July, or New Years. Complete with flags weaving. Today at church, there were the speeches, and the benedictions. Just as every news channel since this day ten years before...had the ritual calling of the names at the WTC Memorial aka Ground Zero. It's almost as if this date is stained forever with the blood and tears and rage of the fallen.
And like every other Sunday, I wandered to the promenade...to look at my glorious city...below the view was a crumbling and coffee stained framed black and white photo of the city in the 1970s, with flowers and candles surrounding it like a shrine and for a moment I flashed back to another Sunday, where all I saw where candles and plastic flowers along the promenade, in clusters. Melted wax and trinkets to honor the dead, the missing, and those who grieved their loss.
I also flash back to the deck I stood upon in the Bronx - staring as I did at the smoke marred sky. So crystal blue, you could see billows of smoke from miles away across the city.
Everyone has a story and we've heard them all over and over and over again. Repeated as my grandmother must have repeated the stories of the Attack on Pearl Harbor - during World War II. Or my parents repeated the tales of where they were and what they felt when President Kennedy was shot. Tragic and traumatic moments leave their stain on the human consciousness and we remember them, twist and turn them over and over in our minds - in vain attempts to understand and to learn from something...that may well not be so clear or even understandable. Tripping over ourselves and making mistakes along the way.
To say this date, this day...ten years ago changed my life and the lives of those around me...is true and not true. I'm not quite sure you can isolate all the changes in all our lives to this date, some perhaps, quite a few depending on who you are. In some respects this day ten years ago started out just like any other ordinary day. Then a series of events, dating back a ways, caused that day to spiral and explode outwards. And everyone knew a cousin of a cousin of a cousin whose life was lost on that day.
In the years since, my path has twisted and curved...I've lost contact with all the friends who called me that morning - with horror and strained concern, finding new friends here and there along the way. My job and career have changed, as have my interests. That day in some respects heralded the start of my online presence...whether that would have happened regardless is anyone's guess. It's hard to know looking back how much that day influenced my choices and changed my life and how much is just well random coincidence. I'm not sure I'll ever know and I suppose it doesn't matter.
There are always dates in our lives and history books that we contemplate changing. Watershed days. Trigger events. That we think if I could just go back in a magical phone booth that is larger in the inside than on the outside and change time, tweak it, what would happen? Would things be better or worse? How many times have we wondered if we could just go back in time and kill Hitler before he came to power? Would that solve the problem or would it have happened anyway? Would it have been even worse?
Hard to know. I think it would have happened anyway. The events that came together ...in order for this one moment, this tragic horrible thing to happen - go back a long ways, and are difficult to unravel. So many of them are grounded in jealousy, envy, hate and simple misunderstanding. Assumptions and generalizations made. Unfortunate propaganda. We have so little understanding of how others perceive our own nationalistic marketing campaigns. There's something to be said, I guess for blistering self-confidence, and bravado, but it can also, to a poorer and less fortunate neighbor, come across as boorish and privileged bragging. Like a rich gal putting in an ostentatious pool next door to her out-of-work and broke neighbor. But I think even that explanation is somewhat simplistic.
Watching the kids comedy Megamind last night, it struck me how many anti-hero television serials and movies popped up after that year...where we follow a villain, and attempt to understand him or her. Sure we had them before that year, that day, but somehow...there seemed more after. Perhaps that is just my perception?
See that's what changed perception. A tweak. A twist. Little things, it's always the little things, isn't it? The unnoticeable bits and pieces. Such as being thankful for gray skies on a Sunday September morning after having had constant rain for three days straight during the week. Or not wanting to go into Manhattan (not that I would any way on a Sunday). Or being thankful that I don't have to get on a plane today, although my parents are. Or United Airlines Stewardesses protesting when the airline attempted to reuse one of the numbers of the flights that had gone down that day. Perhaps that's not so little a thing. Little things...such as carrying all your medicines and liquid items in small 3 oz containers inside see-through plastic bags on to planes. Or the security checkpoints that have become routine. Or ...when your building shakes and trembles beneath you being relieved when you realize it was just an earthquake and not a bomb or terrorist attack. Or...the odd sense that no where is safe, and in truth never was.
It reminds me of when I was a child and learned that Santa Clause did not exist, there was no Easter Bunny (although I don't think I ever quite bought into the Easter Bunny)...and well, you discover the world is a bit darker and bit more complicated than you wished. Those rose colored glasses get yanked off and there's no going back.
If I have one wish for today, it would be that in ten years hence...it does become just another day.
Those who died on this date yesterday...will always be remembered by those they left behind, as my Granny who died on quite another day and under quite different circumstances will. I think we can remember the dead, and learn from their tragic and unjust loss, without reliving the events that caused it over and over. To let it go, to fade, and crumble into the dust of disjointed memory much like the newspaper article did on the window of the junk store down the street - along with all that the rage and anger, and misunderstood patriotism which seems to sprout up from those memories...to come together as world, not just a group of flag-waving patriotic nations, a world of people united in peace not superiority or rage.
Leave this date in history to the historians, who will re-envision it and re-examine it endlessly, until we no longer know or remember what exactly happened, just the crumbling bits of dust that our memories have held on to.
The children born after this date...will not remember it or know it, they have our stories and how we reacted as their history. Their legacy. Just as we have the histories of those who came before us.
And in time, it will slowly become just another ordinary day.
Any other day.
Each year, I pray for gray skies to blow in upon it - as they did today, and for it to fall thankfully on a Sunday, Wedensday, Monday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, any day but Tuesday - please. No crisp sparkling air, or turquoise blue sky without a streak of cloud across it. Save that for tomorrow or the next day. Thank you. Just a gray day, soft and dull, not crisp and sparkling.
All week long all the news media did was talk about this date. As if it were 4th of July, or New Years. Complete with flags weaving. Today at church, there were the speeches, and the benedictions. Just as every news channel since this day ten years before...had the ritual calling of the names at the WTC Memorial aka Ground Zero. It's almost as if this date is stained forever with the blood and tears and rage of the fallen.
And like every other Sunday, I wandered to the promenade...to look at my glorious city...below the view was a crumbling and coffee stained framed black and white photo of the city in the 1970s, with flowers and candles surrounding it like a shrine and for a moment I flashed back to another Sunday, where all I saw where candles and plastic flowers along the promenade, in clusters. Melted wax and trinkets to honor the dead, the missing, and those who grieved their loss.
I also flash back to the deck I stood upon in the Bronx - staring as I did at the smoke marred sky. So crystal blue, you could see billows of smoke from miles away across the city.
Everyone has a story and we've heard them all over and over and over again. Repeated as my grandmother must have repeated the stories of the Attack on Pearl Harbor - during World War II. Or my parents repeated the tales of where they were and what they felt when President Kennedy was shot. Tragic and traumatic moments leave their stain on the human consciousness and we remember them, twist and turn them over and over in our minds - in vain attempts to understand and to learn from something...that may well not be so clear or even understandable. Tripping over ourselves and making mistakes along the way.
To say this date, this day...ten years ago changed my life and the lives of those around me...is true and not true. I'm not quite sure you can isolate all the changes in all our lives to this date, some perhaps, quite a few depending on who you are. In some respects this day ten years ago started out just like any other ordinary day. Then a series of events, dating back a ways, caused that day to spiral and explode outwards. And everyone knew a cousin of a cousin of a cousin whose life was lost on that day.
In the years since, my path has twisted and curved...I've lost contact with all the friends who called me that morning - with horror and strained concern, finding new friends here and there along the way. My job and career have changed, as have my interests. That day in some respects heralded the start of my online presence...whether that would have happened regardless is anyone's guess. It's hard to know looking back how much that day influenced my choices and changed my life and how much is just well random coincidence. I'm not sure I'll ever know and I suppose it doesn't matter.
There are always dates in our lives and history books that we contemplate changing. Watershed days. Trigger events. That we think if I could just go back in a magical phone booth that is larger in the inside than on the outside and change time, tweak it, what would happen? Would things be better or worse? How many times have we wondered if we could just go back in time and kill Hitler before he came to power? Would that solve the problem or would it have happened anyway? Would it have been even worse?
Hard to know. I think it would have happened anyway. The events that came together ...in order for this one moment, this tragic horrible thing to happen - go back a long ways, and are difficult to unravel. So many of them are grounded in jealousy, envy, hate and simple misunderstanding. Assumptions and generalizations made. Unfortunate propaganda. We have so little understanding of how others perceive our own nationalistic marketing campaigns. There's something to be said, I guess for blistering self-confidence, and bravado, but it can also, to a poorer and less fortunate neighbor, come across as boorish and privileged bragging. Like a rich gal putting in an ostentatious pool next door to her out-of-work and broke neighbor. But I think even that explanation is somewhat simplistic.
Watching the kids comedy Megamind last night, it struck me how many anti-hero television serials and movies popped up after that year...where we follow a villain, and attempt to understand him or her. Sure we had them before that year, that day, but somehow...there seemed more after. Perhaps that is just my perception?
See that's what changed perception. A tweak. A twist. Little things, it's always the little things, isn't it? The unnoticeable bits and pieces. Such as being thankful for gray skies on a Sunday September morning after having had constant rain for three days straight during the week. Or not wanting to go into Manhattan (not that I would any way on a Sunday). Or being thankful that I don't have to get on a plane today, although my parents are. Or United Airlines Stewardesses protesting when the airline attempted to reuse one of the numbers of the flights that had gone down that day. Perhaps that's not so little a thing. Little things...such as carrying all your medicines and liquid items in small 3 oz containers inside see-through plastic bags on to planes. Or the security checkpoints that have become routine. Or ...when your building shakes and trembles beneath you being relieved when you realize it was just an earthquake and not a bomb or terrorist attack. Or...the odd sense that no where is safe, and in truth never was.
It reminds me of when I was a child and learned that Santa Clause did not exist, there was no Easter Bunny (although I don't think I ever quite bought into the Easter Bunny)...and well, you discover the world is a bit darker and bit more complicated than you wished. Those rose colored glasses get yanked off and there's no going back.
If I have one wish for today, it would be that in ten years hence...it does become just another day.
Those who died on this date yesterday...will always be remembered by those they left behind, as my Granny who died on quite another day and under quite different circumstances will. I think we can remember the dead, and learn from their tragic and unjust loss, without reliving the events that caused it over and over. To let it go, to fade, and crumble into the dust of disjointed memory much like the newspaper article did on the window of the junk store down the street - along with all that the rage and anger, and misunderstood patriotism which seems to sprout up from those memories...to come together as world, not just a group of flag-waving patriotic nations, a world of people united in peace not superiority or rage.
Leave this date in history to the historians, who will re-envision it and re-examine it endlessly, until we no longer know or remember what exactly happened, just the crumbling bits of dust that our memories have held on to.
The children born after this date...will not remember it or know it, they have our stories and how we reacted as their history. Their legacy. Just as we have the histories of those who came before us.
And in time, it will slowly become just another ordinary day.