| Tuesday, September 9, 2003 |
18:09 - Nothing to see here
http://www.capitalistlion.com/article.cgi?628
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I'm afraid I won't have anything very meaningful to say on the subject of 9/11, now that the second anniversary is rolling over us like the low, solemn clouds that have been inexplicably hanging on the tops of the Santa Cruz mountains for the past couple of days, only this afternoon to start shedding some moisture on our sidewalks.
I wasn't there, after all.
I was asleep, safe in my bed, on the West Coast, where it was only just becoming light at the time that the first plane hit back at the other end of the country. I woke up, stretched, tried to focus on what I was hearing out of my clock-radio-- not classic rock, but what sounded like an extraordinarily agitated news report. There's usually news on at 9:00, at the top of each hour; but it didn't usually sound like the headline-reader was trying to keep from shouting the lines into the microphone.
So I turned on the TV, which was usually perpetually tuned to Cartoon Network; I didn't even remember the channel number for CNN, so I had to use the on-screen guide to get there. And then I sat there staring at the AMERICA UNDER ATTACK banner, and at the plumes of smoke (the towers had already fallen by this time), wondering what the hell kind of "attack" they could possibly mean-- ICBMs? Street riots? What city was this? --for a few dumb minutes before I even turned around to see what was on my computer monitor.
The first thing was a message from CapLion, sent shortly after the first plane hit. Terrible accident, he said. Boy, would traffic suck in Manhattan this morning.
Then there was one more message. It only had two words in it. And then idle.
So what could I do? I woke up my roommate-- "You should probably be awake for this"-- and sat down dumbly to watch his TV for a little while. I filled him in. There wasn't much to say. There were already rumors of footage of Palestinians dancing in the streets, but I shelved that for later. There were still those images of the crashes themselves to process. Eventually I just went back to my room, called my boss, asked what was going on at work, said I'd be in a little later, and just sort of sat there.
I'd bought a PlayStation 2 the previous night. September 10. There it was, the date and the price, right there on the receipt from Fry's. What a set of circumstances under which to try to learn how to play Gran Turismo 3.
I talked to a couple of friends online. Yes, I'd heard what had happened.
Poor Khlau Kalash vendor.
Humor was all I could fall back on. That and the iron object in the back of my dresser, which I realized I might be called upon to dig out. Some of our neighbors were Muslim, you see.
And who knows what an angry mob might decide to do?
Neighbors are neighbors. And even at that point in the day, we knew that we weren't going to be a part of the real war, the one being fought in the urban canyons back East. Perhaps we had to play up our own role. If we had to die in the streets of San Jose fighting off our own vengeful compatriots in the historic violent riots on the Blackest Day in American History, well, so be it.
But, of course, that didn't happen. (I really should have known better. I didn't know anywhere near as much about America two Septembers ago as I do now.) We went to Cosentino's and did some cursory shopping, picking up essentials on the off chance that the country would be locked down or something. The air was still, traffic was light, but it was no different-- oddly-- from how I remember Christmas being in my youth. Normally we'd stayed home and indoors all day. It was Christmas, for crying-out-loud! You didn't drive on Christmas! And so on those rare times in the early years that we did go somewhere, I always found myself staring in fascination at the rare other cars we passed, wondering who was in them, what they were thinking. What could be so important? Why aren't you inside? The whole year has been leading up to this! Get off the road! And though age brought practicality and cynicism about that kind of thing, the same kind of primal nerve got tripped in my mind on that day. Didn't you hear the news? Go home, dammit! Can't it wait?
Eventually I went in to work, though not many people got much done. Most people went home early. Our friends gathered to watch the news until late into the night, hunched around a party tray of snack food, like some kind of macabre Cinco de Mayo festival. Hell, it was practical.
We told the stories we'd heard throughout the day. We waited for new developments, revised numbers, talking-head analysis, categorical denial and apology from cross-legged Taliban officials. We noticed after a couple of hours that there hadn't been any commercials. We wondered if there would ever be commercials again.
But for me, and for a lot of us three thousand miles away from where it happened, the reality of the events was still dull and distant, and-- somehow-- simultaneously loud and touchy and oversaturated. It wasn't like any of us thought it was all just a dream, or anything maudlin like that; it was more like being suddenly inside a sci-fi movie. Who knew when the clouds over the horizon would suddenly light up red and the sky would boil with spreading fire? Who knew when the Golden Gate Bridge would collapse asunder and crash into the Bay? Who knew when our computer screens would all suddenly flash giant skull-and-crossbones icons and shout Allahu akbar! at us? Who knew if anybody could ever watch a movie, or listen to a song, or buy a loaf of bread without feeling somehow guilty about the mundanity of it all? By gum, everything should have meaning now. They'll be writing history books with chapters that start with today's date. That banana you eat, that e-mail you type, that toe you stub might one day be on some kid's final exam.
So it was with no small amount of guilt that I, and probably others, went to bed that night. Guilt that we hadn't been in a position to take a more active part; guilt that we were worried about deadlines at work while people in New York were concerned primarily with finding out whether their family members were alive; guilt that we out here were never actually in any real danger, and especially guilt that we'd acted as though we might be.
And so, although this account has dragged on far longer and become far more self-aggrandized than I'd intended it to, I'd recommend looking elsewhere for apt first-hand descriptions of what it was like on that day where things actually did happen. Where guilt arose only from having the luck to live out the day when others did not.
I can't imagine how I might have handled being in that position. All I know is that I haven't "gotten over it", even having spent the intervening two years here on the sunny West Coast, far away from the battlegrounds, surrounded by those who are ready to dismiss any lingering emotional attachment to 9/11 as some damn faux Madison Avenue white-male sob-story sold by the cable networks and the politicians as an excuse to enslave the world.
I can only imagine what it would take for a New Yorker to "get over it".
No, actually I can't.
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