The Best I Can Do
Someone, not long ago, asked me when I was going to write about 9-11. I had no response, and I expertly avoided the question. Why? Well . . . here's the best I can do.
That day, a decade ago, still seems too close for comfort, too surreal to be true, and like a dream. I didn't loose people that day, but friends of mine lost cohorts, lovers, and confidants. To be cliche, we all lost a sense of stability, bliss, and cohesion. Yet, for scores of people not located within this mecca then, or now, the 9-11 day doesn't ring with the same level of sobriety, somber, and dismay as it does for those within a stone's throw of its ashes.
I remember what I was wearing, I remember what I was teaching when the first planes hit, I remember . . . hours waiting in a computer lab constantly hitting refresh to find a message from a friend. I remember sitting in shock, lying in my bathtub long after the bubbles had died, the water had gone cold, and the bottle of wine had been emptied. The following week I hugged my friend Jeremiah so tight in Penn Station that it knocked that wind out of both of us, and for a moment the world went into slow motion as a troop of soot covered fire fighters headed through the corridors. I starred in disbelief. The smell of the city has not left my memory, nor has the memory of many other things.
Somewhere, in a box, are photos of the city from the following days. Memorials, police cruisers with the "Wanted Dead or Alive" poster tapped to them, and herds of NYers meandering about in nothing short of shell-shock. I never did go to Ground Zero. Still haven't. In many ways, I have tucked the towers into a fold of memory from my early twenties when I stood in them feeling the gentle sway they had that you needed to close your eyes and almost dream for it to come true.
Much of my life's work concerns commemoration, its intent, its impact, and its visual imagery. National commemoration binds, unites, and even divides us. It defines a generation--or attempts to--and it spawns political and popular culture. These organized acts, or acts of personal levels that happen in mass form to merge into a larger whole and movement of unity, serve a social purpose to guide and explain human behavior. They also force us to look within and decide which side we are on: theirs or ours. Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities is one of the most famous, and stand by, scholarly accounts of how acts of commemoration layer within a community. More so, acts of a community develop a community within it. Hence, I intrinsically know the intellectual route for commemoration, but in this case--even with all I write and read about nationalism and 9-11--this anniversary is dividing me within and stopping me in my tracks. I will save the academic diatribe for another day, but it feels . . . it feels more commercial than anything else.
Towards the end of the week of 9-11 news footage began to show close ups of baby clothes awash in the rubble, as if to drive home a lasting connection for the All-American nameless face lost in the plains, Midwest, or south. For those in this vicinity, images of that nature certainly weren't needed. We had memories burned into our retinas and smell memories to last a lifetime. Like seeing a dead body for the first time, the haunting reality can't be washed away.
Scores of press coverage has told everyone not living under a rock that Sunday is the ten year anniversary, that events will be held, and that for many life will once again pause for a few moments. The level of awareness has almost crossed over to obsessive. Of course, the level of emotion is not far behind. While driving past La Guardia airport today a plane, on a standard land (I presume), passed freakishly close to traffic. This happens. Today . . . one near heart attack and I fought back tears. No less than two people around me reacted with outright tears. While waiting for a the subway today, three people broke down and cried from loud noises and running police. There are always loud noises, but the blue presence is higher right now . . . only bringing back memories. Bin Laden's death brought those back, but this . . . this is a different level, menace, and Pandora's Box.
Hence, I'm ready for Sunday to be over and done, the sale of Ten Year Anniversary merchandise to subside, to see a plane approaching for landing and notscream react in fear, to not have a nose so sensitive from memory that I can smell the Burger King more than a mile away, and to not have someone ask "Do you remember?". Perhaps I am insensitive. Perhaps I am jaded by my own work. Perhaps . . . perhaps I see strains of a culture selling national memory via plastic trinkets, t-shirts, and concert tickets.
That day, a decade ago, still seems too close for comfort, too surreal to be true, and like a dream. I didn't loose people that day, but friends of mine lost cohorts, lovers, and confidants. To be cliche, we all lost a sense of stability, bliss, and cohesion. Yet, for scores of people not located within this mecca then, or now, the 9-11 day doesn't ring with the same level of sobriety, somber, and dismay as it does for those within a stone's throw of its ashes.
I remember what I was wearing, I remember what I was teaching when the first planes hit, I remember . . . hours waiting in a computer lab constantly hitting refresh to find a message from a friend. I remember sitting in shock, lying in my bathtub long after the bubbles had died, the water had gone cold, and the bottle of wine had been emptied. The following week I hugged my friend Jeremiah so tight in Penn Station that it knocked that wind out of both of us, and for a moment the world went into slow motion as a troop of soot covered fire fighters headed through the corridors. I starred in disbelief. The smell of the city has not left my memory, nor has the memory of many other things.
Somewhere, in a box, are photos of the city from the following days. Memorials, police cruisers with the "Wanted Dead or Alive" poster tapped to them, and herds of NYers meandering about in nothing short of shell-shock. I never did go to Ground Zero. Still haven't. In many ways, I have tucked the towers into a fold of memory from my early twenties when I stood in them feeling the gentle sway they had that you needed to close your eyes and almost dream for it to come true.
Much of my life's work concerns commemoration, its intent, its impact, and its visual imagery. National commemoration binds, unites, and even divides us. It defines a generation--or attempts to--and it spawns political and popular culture. These organized acts, or acts of personal levels that happen in mass form to merge into a larger whole and movement of unity, serve a social purpose to guide and explain human behavior. They also force us to look within and decide which side we are on: theirs or ours. Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities is one of the most famous, and stand by, scholarly accounts of how acts of commemoration layer within a community. More so, acts of a community develop a community within it. Hence, I intrinsically know the intellectual route for commemoration, but in this case--even with all I write and read about nationalism and 9-11--this anniversary is dividing me within and stopping me in my tracks. I will save the academic diatribe for another day, but it feels . . . it feels more commercial than anything else.
Towards the end of the week of 9-11 news footage began to show close ups of baby clothes awash in the rubble, as if to drive home a lasting connection for the All-American nameless face lost in the plains, Midwest, or south. For those in this vicinity, images of that nature certainly weren't needed. We had memories burned into our retinas and smell memories to last a lifetime. Like seeing a dead body for the first time, the haunting reality can't be washed away.
Scores of press coverage has told everyone not living under a rock that Sunday is the ten year anniversary, that events will be held, and that for many life will once again pause for a few moments. The level of awareness has almost crossed over to obsessive. Of course, the level of emotion is not far behind. While driving past La Guardia airport today a plane, on a standard land (I presume), passed freakishly close to traffic. This happens. Today . . . one near heart attack and I fought back tears. No less than two people around me reacted with outright tears. While waiting for a the subway today, three people broke down and cried from loud noises and running police. There are always loud noises, but the blue presence is higher right now . . . only bringing back memories. Bin Laden's death brought those back, but this . . . this is a different level, menace, and Pandora's Box.
Hence, I'm ready for Sunday to be over and done, the sale of Ten Year Anniversary merchandise to subside, to see a plane approaching for landing and not
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