It’s Funny How We Never Look Up

[i_17bingo]

I first met him that August. He sat in a park at One Liberty Plaza, New York, New York, tucked in a corner, glancing into his briefcase. He lived in harmony with the workers and tourists meandering through the area; he paid them no mind, nor they him.

Comments

[ohno_jonathan_o]

I leave it to you to surprise me with a unique angle on how it affected everyone and everything. Well written mate.

There will be an undying wealth of pictures and videos that will continue to surprise and haunt people probably well after we are all long gone. I know the reverse is also true, plenty of images and videos I saw in the hours and days afterwards can no longer be found... most is probably for the better as all of those live and replayed feeds or jumper photos are all nothing but snuff memorabilia now except in the most limited and crafted of narratives.

[i_17bingo]

So many ordinary things have been sanctified because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, it's just weird. Like the 9/11 cross or whatever it's called. (Two perpendicular girders fused to each other by welding and/or rivets? In the frame of a building? Impossible!)

[ecosopher]

And then I began running across never-before-seen photos from that day, begging the question: has somebody been sitting on them for ten years so they could release them for a big anniversary?

Yeah, this has crossed my mind too. I'm deliberately avoiding the news, because I can do my own remembering about this, and about all the fall-out from it, without hearing the last words of poor people on their mobiles before they crash into the buildings or the ground. I can't even imagine what it's like to have been there, and/or have lost someone and have all these extra reminders.

The second picture of the briefcase man is so terribly sad.

[i_17bingo]

Everything I see or hear has been really horrible or too jingoistic. There is not any realistic perspective that I can discern.

But voice mails? That's kind of disgusting.

[whits_end]

On the professional side: Well written, and definitely a unique and heart-breaking perspective on a small loss that represents a larger one.

On the personal side: This week, the school in which I teach chose to commemorate 9/11 with some activities. Until this week, I don't think I ever actually cried about the events. But seeing the faces of my students, who will grow up in a world forever altered by fear and paranoia, finally brought them to my eyes. I grieve for the loss of a country that they will never know; I mourn for the innocence and confidence in itself that the U.S. lost that day.

Also, I am glad that you are here, and you survived, and you made it to Bloomington eventually so we could become friends.

[i_17bingo]

Oddly enough, the place that has changed the least (spiritually), is New York.

It reminds me of an oooooold (i.e. early eighties) Bloom County cartoon where a rich college student strikes up a conversation with a wheelchaired Vietnam vet, asking him, "Do you want to scream at the politicians? Do you want to go back and find all the MIAs? Do you want to get a gun and mow down a crowd of people? What do you DO, man?"

The vet replies, "Walk."

[momebie]

I don't quite know what to say. Still, I guess, since I read this last night and didn't know then either. But I do want to say thank you for sharing.

[i_17bingo]

It's enough that you have read it and it touched you. Thanks.