A unexpected awakening...
So lately I've been leaving my bedroom TV on MSNBC so I can watch more of their programming and get an idea of the look of the network for work...so when my alarm kicked off at 9:30 this morning I woke up to the re-broadcast of the NBC Today Show coverage from 9-11... This was incredibly surreal since it was not only unexpected...but was just about the exact same time my TV had kicked on to the Today show 6 years ago... Until I really was able to get my eyes open I seriously thought it was 2001, I was in my dorm room, and Elisabeth was about to come in from the shower and ask me why I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my mouth agape... After I was fully awake I found that I simply couldn't bring myself to change the channel or look away. I just sat and watched it all over again. I winced at the things they had wrong at the time...like when Matt Lauer thought that only a large piece of the first tower had fallen off, and it wasn't till about 10 minutes later when the smoke had cleared a bit that they realized it was gone. I was amazed to hear and see things I hadn't noticed before...like the fact that they were speaking to a correspondent in the pentagon after the first two planes had hit...and hearing him describe what he thought was a minor tremor in the building...
All told the whole thing brought me back to that sense of emotion I had initially had when it happened. I was able to briefly look at it all as the simple terrible tragedy that it was, without all the politics and bullshit that surround it today. In previous 9-11 anniversary's I've found myself feeling bitter and wanting to almost ignore it altogether because I couldn't mentally separate the actual events and everything that's been lumped on top of it in the following years... Today I am finding myself able to just sit and think about it again. I don't know if I've come to any real profound realizations about it...I don't know if there really are any to have...but I'm glad to be able to get away from all the bull-crap...at least for a bit.