esrosedotblog

911

Well, I can't not write something about it.

I seem to be out of step with a lot of my reactions though.

I was at the gym. Doesn't everyone remember where they were?

My workout was done, I was getting up from situps and looked up to the teevee screens in the big balcony on the second floor. Smoke from one of the towers.

Someone said a small plane hit.

I immediately thought of the plane that flew into the Empire State Building when I was a kid.

I went out to the car and turned on NPR. Confusion. Looking back, I realize that no one knew anything.

We didn't have television and there wasn't much access to streaming video on the internet.

Slowly, the images came in. A very long day.

Of course, we personalize all of this.

For years I trained near Wall Street and stayed in the hotel right next to the Towers. What became a Marriott.

It had been rebuilt after the car bomb in the parking lot below. The blown part was right in "my" restaurant.

For awhile then I stayed at the Millenium Hotel across the Street from the WTC.

I walked this mall every day I was in New York for several years.

All of that. Gone with the Towers.

Later, I became obsessed with the pictures of the people who jumped. Why? Don't know.

I have never faced the attacks as anything but an extension of the war already being waged.

Osama Bin Laden and his serious intentions had been grist for the fear mill in the Clinton administration. Now he was here.

Before that, I traveled the world a lot and remember the fear in London Heathrow. I used to check the field of fire around the cafe where I had my last scone and clotted cream before getting on the plane.

I remember canceling a trip to Austria on points because there had been a gun down in their baggage claim area.

I think somewhere in there, I checked fear at the door. It was, to me, a sign that they were winning.

I read the other day of the phenomenal amount of money, trillions, that attack has cost us. The useless war in Iraq. The surrender of personal freedoms. The barricades in front of public buildings. The ruin of the joys of air travel. All the rest. What a cost. Fear.

Mourning. I didn't know anyone lost in the attacks. I mourned the loss of these innocents. The people who jumped. The people who stayed.

I don't minimize any of it but I do recognize that each day for decades people in the world had been dying as a result of the same terrorism. We didn't care much about them. In fact, at times, it seemed that our stance was that it was deserved. Suddenly it was on our front porch. Our people. Our families. Our government.

It is still "dangerous" to say that we have been wallowing in emotionalism about all this. Fear and rampant emotions of this kind are a powerful mix. We hunkered down.

I won't go on about this.

That means that for today, my mood is defiant and humble. Defiant because I do not want to participate in anything that is fear based. Humble in the realization that we have had it good here and to that extent we have been given a warning. We should pay attention.

I am proud to say that my President has liquidated more terrorists in two years than other administrations did altogether. I am glad that the Obamas reignited the hunt for Bin Laden. And killed him.

I am glad that we commemorate this day with not a "war on terrorism" but a determination that we will track down the terrorists. A different way to see it.

I am happy to see that fear is not manipulated and stage managed with the colored alerts, the phony rhetoric, torture. The rest. That we are micro processing the former war on terror pragmatically and situationally. Rationally. Not as global triumphalism.

I probably do not mourn the deaths as much as others. I am always suspect of long term mourning. But I know that our lives and way of living changed that day ten years ago. Bless those who gave their lives. Bless our country and its people. Bless the anger and pain that drives men insane enough to do such things wherever they happen.

Labels: terrorism