Five Years
In August of 2002, I covered the Lea County Rodeo in New Mexico. Before each night of competition (following the prayer) the organizers played a tribute to 9/11 where a young girl rode her pony around the ring carrying an American flag to a song whose chorus began, "Where were you when the world stopped turning?"
The first night, I nearly teared up. Progressively, (and I saw this all four nights of it), however, I grew to despise it. I mean, I seriously hated it. I never understood why you would ever use hyperbole to talk about 9/11? Terrorists hijacked planes, flew them into the largest buildings in the New York skyline and murdered 3,000 people in front of everyone's eyes. Is that not intense enough? But the thing that annoyed me most was that the metaphor was all wrong. The most striking thing to me about 9/11 is that we all did keep living. I remember walking into the West End looking for people I knew, and being shocked that it was still serving food. I remember watching people play soccer silently on South Field. Spectator put out a newspaper that night.
The point is that we kept on living in the shadow of mass murder. I think that's hard to actually internalize if you were just watching it on television. Not impossible, but difficult. And if you don't understand that, I think you really miss the point of what it was like; 9/11 was immediately a symbol that meant different things to different people. And I've grown completely intolerant of that. I used to worry that I had adopted the locker room mentality about 9/11, that if you weren't in New York or Washington on Sept. 11 that your opinions were somehow less valid.
I no longer worry about that.
It shocked me how the five-year anniversary just snuck up. The first year seemed as though it dragged on, to the point where Sept. 11, 2002 was almost a relief.
Anna looked at her planner today and saw that Sept. 11 is now listed as "Patriot Day." Neither of us were very impressed by that. I don't like the need to infuse the day with a veneer a patriotism. Isn't it enough to mourn? The problem is once you get here, you're already into the political argument. I object to any nationalistic overlay on 9/11 because I never really saw it as an act of war. And to call the attack an act of war is to offer an underlying approval to those who have directed our policies in Iraq. But once you've reach this point you're already so wrapped up semantics of what you'll agree to that it has nothing to do with the actual events. I have so many memories of that day. My wake-up call from Ian, Anna's and my agreement to get married if we were actually going to war, the woman on Broadway crying as she held her cell phone to her ear, the strength of my Spectator co-workers that day. But I also remember a combination of total fear and absolute calm walking from Watt Hall to Anna's parents' apartment. I was scared out of my mind. But I felt completely resigned to fact that I could die at any moment while walking along Broadway. That feeling has never really gone away.
That was how 9/11 felt to me, who was in a terrorized city and knew no one on the planes or in the towers. I went back today and found Spectator's coverage of Sept. 11. Here is what Columbia was like that day. And here is my sports column published about a week later. I don't really think I've ever responded to the attacks any better than this.
The first night, I nearly teared up. Progressively, (and I saw this all four nights of it), however, I grew to despise it. I mean, I seriously hated it. I never understood why you would ever use hyperbole to talk about 9/11? Terrorists hijacked planes, flew them into the largest buildings in the New York skyline and murdered 3,000 people in front of everyone's eyes. Is that not intense enough? But the thing that annoyed me most was that the metaphor was all wrong. The most striking thing to me about 9/11 is that we all did keep living. I remember walking into the West End looking for people I knew, and being shocked that it was still serving food. I remember watching people play soccer silently on South Field. Spectator put out a newspaper that night.
The point is that we kept on living in the shadow of mass murder. I think that's hard to actually internalize if you were just watching it on television. Not impossible, but difficult. And if you don't understand that, I think you really miss the point of what it was like; 9/11 was immediately a symbol that meant different things to different people. And I've grown completely intolerant of that. I used to worry that I had adopted the locker room mentality about 9/11, that if you weren't in New York or Washington on Sept. 11 that your opinions were somehow less valid.
I no longer worry about that.
It shocked me how the five-year anniversary just snuck up. The first year seemed as though it dragged on, to the point where Sept. 11, 2002 was almost a relief.
Anna looked at her planner today and saw that Sept. 11 is now listed as "Patriot Day." Neither of us were very impressed by that. I don't like the need to infuse the day with a veneer a patriotism. Isn't it enough to mourn? The problem is once you get here, you're already into the political argument. I object to any nationalistic overlay on 9/11 because I never really saw it as an act of war. And to call the attack an act of war is to offer an underlying approval to those who have directed our policies in Iraq. But once you've reach this point you're already so wrapped up semantics of what you'll agree to that it has nothing to do with the actual events. I have so many memories of that day. My wake-up call from Ian, Anna's and my agreement to get married if we were actually going to war, the woman on Broadway crying as she held her cell phone to her ear, the strength of my Spectator co-workers that day. But I also remember a combination of total fear and absolute calm walking from Watt Hall to Anna's parents' apartment. I was scared out of my mind. But I felt completely resigned to fact that I could die at any moment while walking along Broadway. That feeling has never really gone away.
That was how 9/11 felt to me, who was in a terrorized city and knew no one on the planes or in the towers. I went back today and found Spectator's coverage of Sept. 11. Here is what Columbia was like that day. And here is my sports column published about a week later. I don't really think I've ever responded to the attacks any better than this.
0 Comment(s):
