Each 9/11, there is a barrage of documentaries, testimonies, memorials, speeches and so on about the event. It is such an overwhelming flood, that I, like many people, tend to ignore the significance of the date, perhaps out of a need for self protection, to not feed into the hype of it, or just to get on with daily life.
Today though, when my roommate was watching a documentary about the Towers before he went to work, we talked about it in a passing breezy conversation. It had the disconnected tone people usually reserve for historical events. He asked if I was in the city when it happened, and I confirmed it. I was. 2001 was the first year I moved to New York.
He asked, "Did you see it on tv?" His question startled me for a minute. I hadn't heard it in so long. I realized it was a question I worked really had to evade each year on this date.
I had to answer, "No. I saw it in person."
I could tell my response jarred him. We've known each other for a couple of years, yet out of all the fantastic stories I've told, I never mention it. I made the conscious decision to talk about it as little as possible about a month after it happened. I remember I was at a party in Richmond, Virginia. I decided to go there after the city was released from the post 9/11 lockdown to be with my family and friends. After laying in my bed with depression for about a month, my best friend dragged me out of bed for this Halloween Party. To "cheer me up" was the idea.
And at first, the party was cheery. We had beer, we had jokes, we flirted with cute blokes. All the good stuff. Then the party wound down. Just like any other after party, with less people the conversation turned contemplative, intimate. The hot topic of the day was 9/11 and everyone was weighing in. How sad everyone felt for the victim's families. Would the towers be rebuilt? Should they be rebuilt? Should we go to war over it?
I'll never forget- one perfectly coiffed blond haired girl blathered on and on. I just wanted to kick her. She said, "Well, you know, New York and the Pentagon weren't the only targets! Richmond was in their sights too because the federal reserve is here. We need to get these terrorist now, before they do something worse."
I corrected her. "That's a bunch of gas. There is no proof Richmond was in their sights. And the last thing we should do is go fight these people. That will just make it worse. The people of New York don't want a war."
She rolled her eyes at me. "How do you know that?"
"She just came from New York," My best friend put in. Right then I decided I wasn't really interested in talking to people about 9/11. In my personal experience, I noticed people had seen it on television, so they treated it like anything else they had seen on TV, as something sensational, exciting, violent, appalling. Something that had very little to do with their real lives. I could see that whenever I explained the horror of watching flames come out of the twin towers from an acquaintance's apartment, watching the buildings fall and knowing people were jumping out of windows in front of my eyes. The sadness I felt when I thought how this tremendous loss of life propelled even more momentous losses of innocent lives in other countries. Or the panic I felt on the street when people were running away from a bomb threat at the Main Branch library in Manhattan. Watching people scramble in fear all around me felt like someone had placed me in a B level Hollywood flick, yet it was horribly real.
And the most horrible part of it all was when people from outside of New York treated what I told as if I had just stepped out of a movie- quick fascination with the plot, then quickly back to gossiping about the latest scandals. All because 9/11 happened on television and was used as a propaganda tool by the last administration. That media oversaturation sapped at the event's sense of realness for the American population outside of the city.
On a nature walk a couple of weeks ago I was talking to my Partner In Crime about how disconnected Americans are from real life violence. He told me that his professor was appalled at how disinterested students were at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The professor said during Vietnam, the entire war was on television every night, and that mobilized youth into action. My partner and I agreed that currently the public has limited access to viewing all the atrocities in those wars for precisely that reason.
Yet what we do have is the visual footage of 9/11. On this 9/11 I hope that we all remember the horror that happened on that day is happening at least two times a day in other countries on behalf of our country. That means thousands of strikes America has perpetrated in an unjust war has killed over a thousand times more people who died in 9/11. The trauma I went through witnessing that event is just a fraction of the trauma that other people are going through right now as they witness their neighbors die. I pray that in remembering 9/11 people will realize that meeting violence with violence leads to more violence. Violence can only be quelled through respectful diplomacy.
I'd love to hear your comments on 9/11, what it means to you and how you think it has affected the American collective consciousness.
Below is one poem I wrote about recovering from what I saw. I will perform a poem I wrote on 9/19/01 at La Mama's Poetry Electric Festival on 9/19/09, in The East Village.
Placebos for S.A.D (Seasonal Affective Disorder)
Stand in the second southern entrance of Tompkins Square Park.
It’s easy to find—
bums shuffle their shit on the path to the right yuppies watch their kids in the playground on the left
Don’t allow yourself to relate.
Yes, your back is still crooked from the summer you spent on park benches. Yes, you’re spending the last of your
child bearing years chasing other people’s offspring.
Ponder that when you sit in your bedroom window seat that overlooks three brick walls.
Lean on the fence that surrounds the frozen foliage. There, the suns rays will reach out to you
like a mother’s arms to a departing child.
Pretend you’re sunbathing in Tahiti, leaning on a cliff face. Tell yourself the subway echoes in
your head are waterfall churns. Banish thoughts of the impending five floor walk up to your
illegal sublet by imagining you’ll climb a bamboo ladder to reach the entrance of
your waterside vacation hut.
Super impose these images over the one seared in your head
Of what appeared to be flames leaping from babel styled tower windows
Better to imagine water dashed on rocks
Than to answer the six year
echo
those were people people people people people people People will curse you when you leave.
Walk slow anyway. Don’t scream “Asshole!” if a car almost runs you over just to get to the next red light.
Laugh if other pedestrians push and snarl just to get two steps ahead of you.
They’re just island natives speaking a primitive indecipherable patois.
Down in the subway, sit on the seat at the end of the row close to the heaters
Fast blasts ahhh hot air your underground tropical breeze
