crossposted at My Left Wing
I was never any good at titles. And, anyway, is a title really necessary? Probably not. But then again, I'm not sure. How sure of anything have any of us been in the past five years, except that the Bush Administration are a bunch of sick, evil fucks?
I stayed up late that night, finishing my first big assignment of that college year. I'd procrastinated as usual. I finished about 2:30 in the a.m. I brushed my teeth, put on my bedtime playlist (Celtic music and Bela Fleck), rolled myself in my blankets and fell asleep.
I was 19 years old.
I had an 8 a.m. that semester. The alarm started buzzing at 7. I groaned, turned it off and fell back asleep.
Looking back now, I probably awoke just as Flight 11 struck the first tower. The world shook with reverberations, sounding from the past and echoing into the future and there I sat, surfing the internet, awash in my blissful ignorance.
Ignorance. Bliss. Ah, America.
I went to the shower as Flight 175 hit the second tower. Cleaning myself as the world fell to pieces.
Remember when we were clean? Or were we never clean and just thought we were?
My mom called after I got back to my room, wrapped in my damp towel. She said some of her bosses had come in, talking about a fire at the World Trade Center. Maybe a plane was involved. Could I turn on the TV and check?
I'll never forget the sight of the burning skyscrapers slowly fading in.
"Holy fuck, this is bad," I remember saying. I never swear when talking to mom.
You all have a similar story, I'm sure. You all remember watching the TV, trying to make sense of it. Hearing the false reports, the news casters trying to maintain some sense of professional detachment.
I tried to get on with my day. I was walking out the door to my next class (nope, didn't cancel classes that day) when I looked at the TV in my R.A.'s room. The towers were collapsing.
I went back, threw my backpack on my bed, and wept. Then I remembered my uncle. He's in the army. He'd been working at the Pentagon. Christ. I went through an agony of worry until I found out later that evening he hadn't been there that morning.
I wanted my mother that afternoon. I drove home. I talked to my grandparents. Pearl Harbor. Again.
"We have awakened a sleeping giant."--Yamamoto
When I drove home, a local radio station had started playing music again, probably in a zombified attempt to get back to normal rhythms. "Dust in the Wind" and "Don't Fear the Reapers" stick in my mind.
Remember the banned radio songs list? I just recalled it. What a whirlwind.
That night I gathered with other students to watch Bush address the nation. I saw in his eyes the bewilderment, the fear. But it was okay. I could forgive him. I felt the same way. Maybe he just needs time to regroup. Then he can rise to the occasion.
That never happened. We were on a crusade, suddenly. The man was pushing a 90 percent approval rating. I had become the mad man in the sane universe. Or the sane man in the mad one.
I remember that day in early October when the bombs started falling on Afghanistan. John Fogerty spoke to me. "Hope you are quite prepared to die/Looks like we're in for nasty weather/One eye is taken for an eye"
A French class around that time(wonderful teacher, but I found that the French language and I are mortal enemies) sticks in my mind. The professor had received a letter from a French friend which she translated and read to us. This rural French woman wrote with a grace I only hope I can match someday. She spoke of the mute horror and grief of the French as they watched their TV sets. She wrote of the many French who yet had living memories of American soldiers freeing them from tyranny and how they were with us. She wanted us to know they loved us and remembered the long history France and the United States shared.
The professor openly wept as she read.
The world was going to pull together. Perhaps a new day was dawning. From the ashes, would the phoenix rise?
We all know where it went from there.
Suddenly, we were going to war with Iraq. I was un-American. I downright hated America. I wasn't a "real" American. Nevermind that my family has been here for nearly three centuries. Nevermind that my family has spilled blood for this country. No, I wasn't a real American. Real Americans are idolators, suddenly. Real Americans bow to the hat on the pole. William Tell is not a hero, he is a dissenter. A villain. A traitor.
And the French? Let's not even talk about them.
It's been 1,826 days since September 11th, 2001. Now I'm 24. The most happy, carefree days of my life have elapsed. Or so I'm told.
I've had fun. Lots of fun. And yet, all that fun was had against a kind of metaphysical, intangible Guernica. Because I am cursed with empathy, I agonize over the dead of Iraq--American and Iraqi. I feel deeply the shame of Americans abroad. I see our country's legacy pissed away for shallow and selfish purposes. I cannot talk politics in public above a whisper, for fear of physical reprisal. I see the entire future of the world thrown away by greedy and short-sighted men.
What of the people whose retirement savings are gone? What of the people without healthcare? What of those folks forced into bankruptcy, unable now to get from under? What of the children unable to learn in rotting, inadequate schools?
All of this hangs like a pall over me.
When I think of the lost opportunities at home and abroad, I want to weep. When I crank the microscope down and look at the shadow it has cast over the happiest days of my life, I do. I feel ill. Those are gone and can never be gotten back. The sunshine of carefree youth was always cloudy and rainy. I'm still young, I know. But now I have real responsibilities. The days of self-indulgent bliss are gone. And they were tainted.
Goddamn you Osama bin Laden. Goddamn you George Walker Bush.
It could be worse I suppose. The dead of 9/11 have had their horrific, untimely end hijacked and become unwilling martyrs to a despicable cause.
And yet, this life is all I have, so I cannot apologize for bitterness.
1,826.
And counting.