Remembering 9/11
There are only 30 minutes left of this day. I haven't been able to come up with a post that adequately addresses what this day means to my American friends, and to the rest of us. When I heard the news, at around 9:00 am, I'd only been awake about 30 minutes. I was at my computer, I think doing homework and reading fanfic. My roommate J and her then-boyfriend had already left for school, but they came back into the apartment and told me something had happened, and that we needed to turn on CNN. We watched the news unfold, and though we weren't exactly glued to the television set the entire day, it didn't take long for the video footage of the planes crashing into the towers to become burned into our minds. I think there were special editions of newspapers floating around by the evening. It'd been the first week back to university, and I had an evening class. Our prof cancelled, said we'd start next week instead. (This was the prof who is a Buffy fan.)
Back then I was mostly lurking on the ATPo Board, I hadn't yet begun posting regularly. Scroll did not exist. Certainly I was not on LiveJournal. But I got online not long after we turned on the TV to CNN, and I visited the Board. It was confusing, frightening, to realise that there were so many people on the Board personally affected. We have a lot of New Yorkers on the Board, and quite a few more in the Washington DC area. Heck, even if they weren't in the immediate vicinity, every major city in the United States, and probably in every other country too, was on high alert. Thankfully all of you guys from the Board seemed to be okay. People signed in throughout the day to let everybody else know they were okay.
In my creative writing class that term, I chose to write poetry instead of prose for my major project. Now, my humble opinion is that I suck at poetry, but poems are shorter than stories and so that's what I did that year. My first poem ended up being a reaction to September 11, written a week and a day later. It's drivel, but I keep my peer-reviewed copy taped up on the back of my bedroom door. It's been up there since I moved into my grandmother's room three years ago and made it my own. Nobody sees it except me, and I've seen that half sheet of paper in passing so often that it barely registers. But now and then, when I'm fiddling around in my room with the door closed, I see it and I read it again (and wince at the terrible language). And I remember. Remember how I felt, how we all reacted, where I was and what I was doing when it all happened. Not just that one day, but the days after. How people were affected -- not just the people I'd only begun to know on the Board, whom I've grown to know in the years since, but the survivors talked about in the newspapers and on TV.
It's now 12:01 am, September 12. I don't think I have anything more to say right now except I love you guys, and I love America, and my own country, and this scary, clashing world, and I hope we can somehow find a way to peace.
Back then I was mostly lurking on the ATPo Board, I hadn't yet begun posting regularly. Scroll did not exist. Certainly I was not on LiveJournal. But I got online not long after we turned on the TV to CNN, and I visited the Board. It was confusing, frightening, to realise that there were so many people on the Board personally affected. We have a lot of New Yorkers on the Board, and quite a few more in the Washington DC area. Heck, even if they weren't in the immediate vicinity, every major city in the United States, and probably in every other country too, was on high alert. Thankfully all of you guys from the Board seemed to be okay. People signed in throughout the day to let everybody else know they were okay.
In my creative writing class that term, I chose to write poetry instead of prose for my major project. Now, my humble opinion is that I suck at poetry, but poems are shorter than stories and so that's what I did that year. My first poem ended up being a reaction to September 11, written a week and a day later. It's drivel, but I keep my peer-reviewed copy taped up on the back of my bedroom door. It's been up there since I moved into my grandmother's room three years ago and made it my own. Nobody sees it except me, and I've seen that half sheet of paper in passing so often that it barely registers. But now and then, when I'm fiddling around in my room with the door closed, I see it and I read it again (and wince at the terrible language). And I remember. Remember how I felt, how we all reacted, where I was and what I was doing when it all happened. Not just that one day, but the days after. How people were affected -- not just the people I'd only begun to know on the Board, whom I've grown to know in the years since, but the survivors talked about in the newspapers and on TV.
It's now 12:01 am, September 12. I don't think I have anything more to say right now except I love you guys, and I love America, and my own country, and this scary, clashing world, and I hope we can somehow find a way to peace.