"This is the day that the Lord has made.
Rejoice, and be glad in it."
There are a lot of good journal entries out there today. This is not one of them.
People all across the web all remembering where they were, evaluating how their lives have changed. They are sharing their recollections, reliving their thoughts.
Like the Kennedy assassination, the death of Princess Di, this event is burned into our global memory cells (to sort of steal from Peter Gabriel).
Some bloggers and journalists perceive that nothing has changed in this world, that Americans were shocked into action and thoughtfulness for a few weeks and rebounded back to where they were on 9/10/2001.
Others perceive a complete change but for the worse... that our freedoms are all being slowly eroded and we are soon to become a police state rife with censorship and riddled with brutality in the name of national security. Others had nothing to say -- the placing of a photograph on their page was statement enough for them.
Still others feel we have done nothing to get the people/machine behind what happened then and they still call for blood to be spilled in the streets.
And others are like me -- they don't know what to do next, they aren't sure what to think or say.
How do I feel a year later? What has changed for me? Where am I now?
Well, I can't really say. Well, not that I can't say, I just don't know.
I'm still saddened by the event itself, that it happened at all. I'm saddened that political and religious zealots blame us for everything wrong in their lives. Boycotts of American and Israeli products by Arabs to prove a point is one thing -- but flying jet-fueled, human-laden bombs into a building and killing multinational masses, that's just not going to get any sympathy from me...
I'm still angry at the circumstances, the events. I don't feel we "asked for it," like so many believe. I'm sick to my stomach. I'm sad. I'm depressed. I just want it all to stop and I'm not sure if it ever will. I believe something else will happen, whether here or abroad. People still talk about how they want to feel safe. There is such a difference between feeling and being. You can feel all you want, but the reality of being is more important. And I doubt even if I feel safe that we are safe.
I'm unemployed as a direct result of the events, although to be honest I bet it would have happened eventually. I miss my coworkers. I miss the family of people that I stood with that day watching the events unfold on the TV in the workout room at our complex. I miss them all. And this is a position I'm in precisely because of what happened that day. While I'm happy to be me, be in this position, happy to have a country behind me that pays me unemployment (thank you, thank you very much !!!) I'm sad that a big part of my life was taken away.
I didn't loose any close friends -- one person I was friends with from back in the day was in the next building. One person from my graduating class worked for Cantor Fitzgerald and died that day. But we weren't close. So my personal cache of friends are all still intact after the event, all except for Clay who died months later and for entirely different reasons. And whose death means more to me than the thousands who were lost, whose names were read aloud today.
I'm not watching any TV tonight. Some of the "tributes" I've seen have been downright laughable. Last night in Boston there was a concert presentation which had the WORST music I'd ever heard in my life. Apologies to anyone who wrote the thing if they are reading or if a friend of theirs points this out to them -- but it really was an atrocity. The schmaltz, the lousy lyrics, the sentimentality, to me and to my husband it sounded like a parody of a memorial concert. It was that bad.
Bad art in the name of a cherished memory is still bad art, no matter what the intent of the creator.
So much of what is being peddled out there in the media is either bad art, pointless commentary, and/or utter crap. Print and media ads from major American corporations pointing out that they also feel the pain are making my skin crawl. Slow motion replays of rescuers superimposed on some Bruce Springsteen song cause me to actually shake with rage and sadness. I want no part of it. No damn part of it.
Today at noon I went to the church, rang the bell in the steeple with another parishioner for about 10 minutes. He pulled the bell extra hard, said for him it was therapeutic.
It was really -- the bell weighs a ton, His wife lost her boss in one of the planes, and they've been very shaken ever since. He cried when we prayed together. A man that I've always looked at as a strong fully-rooted man of God had nothing to say in prayer. I could feel his sadness, his anger as he and I held our hands together, clenched tightly. To feel someone's anger through their hands -- and then have to pray something that will hopefully make them feel better, that is no small task.
I prayed for both of us. I prayed for his wife, the family of her boss, the families of all impacted by these events. I prayed for our enemies. I prayed for right actions. I prayed for insight...
guidance...
clarity...
peace...
Don't know if I'll ever see my prayers answered. But I keep praying. He appreciated it and gave me a hug, and we ended up having a good laugh when we realized that both of us were from just about the same place. He grew up not too far from me and married his wife in a town closer to the city, then they moved up here. I asked him the obvious question I ask all displaced New Yorkers: "Before 9/11/2001, did you tell people you were a New Yorker or were you too embarrassed?"
He laughed that knowing laugh. He told me that he always tells people he's from Massachusetts.
"Funny," they sometimes reply, "you sound like you're from Jersey."
There you have it. My entry for 9/11. Just another crappy entry on a crappy day. I am a little ray of sunshine, aren't I? Sorry to be such a fat downer. But heck, in the last 15 months or so that I've kept this journal, how many entries have been bemoany whiny pieces? Not too many when I look back. We all have our time and season to be down. This too shall pass for me. And I'll be once again your (a)musing host.
I'm sure there are a lot more poignant, more positive messages out there. But for me -- I'm tired. So very tired. And that's all I've got for today.
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