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rambling, remembering... ~ September 11, 2002 - 11:25 p.m. this entry is a mess. it's not what I wanted to write at all, and doesn't really say any of the things I wanted to say. I very nearly deleted the whole thing, something I almost never do. except that this is what poured out of my head when I sat down to write, so there must be a reason for it. so be it. you've been forewarned. *** I already wrote about the fact that I can't write about it, right? why do I feel like I should? maybe because it is just so large. we will all remember where we were on september 11th for the rest of our lives. our kids will do school projects where they will be told to ask about our memories of that day. where were you when jfk was shot? where were you when the world exploded? I remember where I was when john lennon died, when reagan was shot, when the gulf war began, when jerry garcia died. I was born the morning after the vietnam war ended. the space shuttle with krista macauliffe in it exploded on my birthday when I was in seventh grade. this is how our culture remembers. the violence, the tragedies, the unexpected shocks. these are the events by which we measure and compare our history. but I like the compulsion to share memories. it connects us as humans and at the same time affirms wildy divergent realities of our common human experience. we connect not only through ways in which our experiences were similar, but the ways in which they differed. it brings us to a deeper understanding and sense of connectedness with our fellow humans. experiences shared. and so. I woke up that morning on that mountaintop in vermont... ozone and I had been sleeping in the back of his truck, all tricked out with futon and campershell. we were pretty comfortable, although he frequently whined about the fact that the truck bed was about 3 inches too short for him. he and I had only been dating for something like two months, but already we were in it too deep, making rash decisions and hasty plans for no good reason. we weren't even in love, so I can't use infatuation as an excuse. I was beginning to be scared by his irrational behavior, and it was making me feel crazy. I yelled at him a lot, and felt like a bad spiritual being. I wanted to be in a more compassionate space with someone who was so obviously profoundly screwed up. let's call this laying the groundwork. because this is what I think of when I think of that time. how his behavior was insensitive at best and mean at its worst. how he was unpleasant and unfriendly around some of the people I love most in the world, leading me to wonder what I was doing bringing him to them. I was embarrassed by him and horrified by his behavior, and yet for some reason compelled to try to make something work. and on the road, it's easier and harder at the same time. more distractions and nowhere to run. there were moments when it was fine. and then, I was in vermont, with some of the people I love best in this world, and even he couldn't wreck that for me. he and I had all kinds of dreams and fantasies, focusing all of our energy into hopeful plans for the future so that we could avoid looking at our present. we began to toy with the idea of living in vermont, one of the few places in this country I'd consider moving to. so his truck was parked next to the rambling mountaintop farmhouse where everyone was living. he was up and out somewhere when I rolled out of bed and climbed out of the truck, stretching and yawning. it was warm, and sunny. a beautiful day. and I wandered into the house to pee and find breakfast, when the woman who owned the house (her name, I've forgotten) told me the news. the world trade center, the pentagon. the pentagon seemed like the big deal to me, but pretty soon that was overshadowed by the immensity of the world trade center as the two towers collapsed and burned. but none of it seemed real. I didn't see the pictures until later. we listened to NPR on the radio all day. heather was at work. andre changed marguerite, who was lying on the floor waving and burbling. what kind of a world have we brought you into? he asked her, softly. we talked about war, about our friends, about canada. I supressed the impulse to call my brother in new york because they were asking people not to, the phone lines were so jammed that emergency workers couldn't get through. but I knew that he and jen were okay. and none of us knew what to say, even then. we just knew that this was bigger than any moment in history we'd known before. and a few days later, ozone and I went to canada. not because of anything except that that had been our original plan. every inch of the truck was searched, and ozone's pipe confiscated because he hadn't had the good sense to give it to mikro when he had the impulse to. our names were entered into the customs computer, him as a pipe-haver, me as a "third party in vehicle" with a pipe-haver. or something to that effect. and for days we wandered around montreal, and we stayed in a nice hotel,and I tried using what ragged shreds of french I remembered, and he took me shopping, told me I should buy things, and then complained about how much money we'd spent afterwards. we spent most of our time there wandering up and down the same main drag for no apparent reason. he was in an evil mood much of the time and I freaked out on him on a regular basis. and the flags were all at half-mast, there too, and the canadians were all talking about supporting their american brothers and sisters, and the news was on everywhere we went. there, too. we talked about, what if we couldn't get back in to the country. it was the kind of thing you talked about then, because no one knew what the new rules were. he wanted to leave the country anyway. we argued about that a lot. I felt a moral imperative to stay and try to make things better. he wanted to run. these are the things I remember when I think of september 11th. how sad and sick and strange my relationship was. how I was growing to dislike him and at the same time finding a weird kind of comfort with him, a kind of "us-against-the-world" feeling, because who knew if this truck wasn't going to become our permanent home. because the whole world exploded while we were on the road, it was easy to believe that there might not be a home to return to. remember when they grounded the planes? the silence in the sky that day. my mom used to wonder on the fact that at any given moment, there's at least 55,000 people flying over the united states. a whole city up there, in motion. motion, stillness. fear. we crossed the border back into the u.s. a few days later. I don't remember the name of that colorless border town where we ate tasteless indian food and had a non-fight that made no sense about the fact that he wouldn't own up to not wanting to see a movie. I remember that we bought crappy snack foods at a convenience store and got into the long lines of cars heading for the border, not knowing how long it would take to get through security and into detroit. they practically waved us through-- checked our IDs, poked into the cab of the truck, and sent us on our way. we could have had bin laden in the back. so this is what my memories come to, and maybe that's why I feel like I can't write about it. who wants to know that I was freaked out about my relationship when the world came crashing down? I can't feel those thousands of people dying. I only vaguely remember the fear for my new york friends, my muslim friends. and I've become numb to the horror I live with to this day as I watch our government use tragedy and fear as an all-purpose tool to serve its own ends and excuse its actions, while mowing down the ragged shreds of our tired american dream. what I can feel is the pressure in my chest when I think of how afraid I was, how sick I felt sharing my space and my life with a man who made less sense to me with every passing day. this is my retrospective. this is what I was living when the world burst into flames. it's not insightful and it's not poetic and there's no universal lessons embedded metaphorically within. it just is. a human experience. messy and self-involved and tripped up by its own limitations. and maybe that's why I haven't been writing about it. there was more, of course, going on in my head than what I've put down here. all kinds of things about our society and our world and change and evolution and war and peace and resistance and refusal... but my bruised and tender heart. that's what I remember.
(((rings))) |