A year has passed since the buildings folded in upon themselves. There have been many speeches and many bombs and many deaths, and I’m not sure anyone feels better. The villains remain at large. The phrase that best encapsulates 2002 for me is „undisclosed location.“
My location is disclosed. I do not even have three days‘ water supply, and I do not know how to bandage a gunshot wound. Like the many New Yorkers who chose to leave their hometown today, I have been trying to avoid this anniversary. I don’t need a day of remembrance. I remember already. That’s what brings us together as a nation: a memory we really don’t want.
The anniversary arrives, and perhaps there is comfort in ritual. I suggest a day of prayer for all those who will die before Sept. 11, 2003. The innocent, unknowing future dead — I ask that their numbers be few and their deaths be swift.
Read Jon Carroll’s column 9/11/2002.
Read Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers.
Read 110 Stories.
I neither watch TV nor listen to the radio on September 11 – I can’t stand it. And what about September 1? How about an annual world-wide day of mourning for the 365+ Russian schoolkids killed by Chechen terrorists on that day in 2004? One has to ask oneself: who is worth more? A dead Russian schoolgirl or a dead city wage slave of America Plc?
It’s sickening.
I know exactly what you mean. But I also see these two attacks in context. And I see 9/11 as a marker in our history like Mauerfall and Kennedy-Mord. But as a teacher I am also marked by Beslan.
Yes, you are absolutely right: We’ll never forget what we were doing/where we were shortly after 3pm on 11.9.01.