In Remembrance - 9/11: Where Were You?
 

In Remembrance of those who perished on September 11, 2001. Seven years ago today, the United States of America was attacked by terrorists in the City of New York, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. Three thousand people lost their lives that day and thousands more were injured.

May God rest their innocent souls.

What about you tfp? Did you lose anyone? I lost an aunt. She left behind four sons and a loving husband as well as a brother, mother and nephews. My cousins have not been the same since and my uncle remains a broken man.

Where were you when it happened? What were you doing?

I was living in LA at the time. My roommates came home early around 11am our time. Some classes were canceled at UCLA. My girlfriend and I were at home. The roommies announced there was some sort of bombing of the World Trade Center. I didn't believe them. We turned on the tv and watched in horror as the second tower fell. It was shocking to say the least. Surreal. Live on tv. Unreal, yet real.

My girlfriend and I had other very serious things going on at the time and we made a trip into Santa Monica to a certain place where our lives would change forever. Things were already tense in our lives and filled with anxiety. The streets were eerily empty. Most shops were closed on the Promenade. One store had a sign in the window:

"Closed due to terror attacks in NYC. Go home to be with your families. What are you doing shopping at a time like this"

The clinic was open and we proceeded with our business. I had class that afternoon at the community college. It was not canceled. We went on as usual, as if nothing had happened.

That night, along with the rest of the country and much of the world, we tuned in to the television as the events were rewound and played over and over again. In the coming days and weeks, as more information came to light, the pathos and ethos of our country were irreversibly changed and set upon a path of no return. People agonized. Questions were asked. Why us - a nation bemoaned. We rallied around the flag and our country did some soul searching.

That day, seven years ago, two events would change my life forever. The terrorist attacks on our country and subsequent loss of my aunt, and the most deeply personal and intense decision my girlfriend and I would ever have to make.

The wounds have mostly healed since, but I know that a part of me literally died that day.

What about you tfp?

Thanks for listening.

Feels like yesterday. Someone had a desktop TV at work and had one of the morning shows on. I heard her, "Oh my God, is that real?" and went over to look. I saw the replay of the first tower being hit and none of us believed it was real at first. We thought it was some movie publicity stunt. Within a few minutes, the second was hit, and we closed the office.

I remember picking my kids up from school early that morning, trying not to frighten them. I remember not being able to make calls and trying to contact my cousin that lives and works in the City.

Although I never lived in Manhattan, my Aunt and Uncle had lived there, I've spent many hours there including the two summers I worked there, and my grandmother had died there. It felt like home to me and it tore me up inside. Although I didn't lose anyone related to me, it felt as though I lost many.

I remember immediately trying to join one of the armed services to protect my childrens' futures but finding out that I'm considered too old. I remember hours, days and weeks in front of the television, mourning and grieving in disbelief and shock.

I have not forgotten, nor will I ever.

Well, i was laying in bed watching TV after staying up all night (which at the time didn't happen often) I'd usually crash out at about 12-2am. Anyway, while i was laying there watching TV the channel suddenly cut out (i didn't have cable/satelite TV at the time and still don't) so i flipped through the channels and noticed a few of them were out. After a little while they had what happened up on one of the few remaining channels and i stayed up the rest of the day and watched it all unfold, hoping that my uncle got out ok (he did.)

To quote my blog entry:
I find it odd that I have never cried over the event. I remember that morning vividly, waking up, being outside, hearing a commotion it was right after the first plane hit, and going to the corner of Grand St. & Madison St. Watching and seeing what became common knowledge as the second plane hitting, seeing the towers go down, seeing the smoke, watching the pain of everyone standing by me. Seeing the tens of thousands of people heading from downtown past, the sadness, the panic, the pain, people begging to borrow a phone to call someone, anyone. All circuits being busy no one despite being able to try being able to reach their loved ones.

The following weeks was chaos, the area we lived in was closed off by the military. Food deliveries was on a minimum, you needed an ID to go anywhere, and everyone was still just numb.

The 2 beams are where the towers would have stood.

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...n/DSC02959.jpg

I forogot to add yes I saw the towers go down, and it was just mind numbing standing there watching was kind of like the mind did not comprehend it at first.

Strangely enough, I had just arrived in Iceland as an exchange student for a year, a week before 9/11. I had barely started getting to know Reykjavik, and had to walk downtown from the university to the Fulbright office (which is staffed by mostly Americans) that afternoon. We are 4 hours ahead of NY time... and the events had happened just an hour or so before I showed up at the office, so I hadn't heard anything yet.

I walked into the Fulbright office with some questions about my application, and the woman stopped me almost immediately and asked me if I had heard about the planes being flown into the World Trade Center. I thought I hadn't heard her right--it struck me as very odd news--and it didn't really sink in until I left the office (no one was working) and walked back down the street, that it was really huge news. I turned on the BBC on my walkman and started listening... and still didn't really believe it, until I got home and saw it on TV, and then saw things in the newspapers the next day.

I went to the US embassy the next day to sign the book of condolences, and saw that the line of Icelanders waiting to sign the book stretched down several blocks. There was a great deal of sympathy for the US at that time--they all felt horrible about it. People were donating blood and money and all the rest. I really can't imagine anyone feeling that way about the US right now, 7 years later. Such a phenomenal shift has happened during the Bush administration...

Anyway, I met up with some American acquaintances that night, but we didn't have much to say. It wasn't until a month or two later, when I bought an issue of TIME or Newsweek, can't remember... and went home to absorb the photo essay they had published about the event. There was a full-page photo of a close-up of people jumping out of windows, in mid-air, going to their deaths. It hit me suddenly then, and I burst into tears. I felt so safe, here in Iceland back then... I knew nothing could possibly happen to me here, the way it had to them--or to many other people around the world who never imagined experiencing such a horrible death. That was a strange year to be away from America.

And here I am again, back in the same place, just walked down the same street this morning after meeting ktsp (my Arab husband, incidentally! Who would have imagined, back then?) for coffee. It feels so familiar, but quite surreal, too. A strange circularity, looping... and it is unbelievable that in these circumstances, a Democrat might lose another election.

how tiresome this compulsion to fetishize is.
how i give into it myself.

i was teaching at the university of pennsylvania. i heard it in the book center, on the radio. a few hours later is what i remember, walking through houston hall past multiple video monitors seeing groups of students staring, saucer-eyed, at the repetitions of the loop of collapse. over and over repetitions of the loop of the collapse, the same amateur footage over and over.

the university has assembled strange teams of people wearing baseball hats to wander the spaces between these ad hoc networks in order to provide some sort of service, it was not clear what, perhaps there was something understood to be reassuring about baseball hats, perhaps something else.

many many penn students come from around nyc, but i think the ad hoc networks were just that, people who were in houston hall for some reason or who had seen on their dormitory monitors and wanted to watch the repetition of the same tape loop again and again with others who also did not understand.

and i remember thinking that the chickens had come home to roost and wondered who said that later i remembered it was malcolm x.



it was a period that demonstrated the power of television even as it demonstrated its limits---the repetition of the amateur video loop seemed to me compulsive, like the folk who were working in the networks were traumatized as well and everywhere compulsive repetition reigned, draining away the content, reducing the image to image, and as that progressed and the vile opportunistic narrative of the "war on terror" took shape, reaction formation began.

soon the loop of amateur video was a kind of brand, like that little alligator on izod-lacoste sweaters that for some inexplicable reason people wear in some sectors. soon the loop was the little logo on a new style of war.
soon that brand was being imposed on all markets, and people were buying, and a kind of fascism-lite descended upon the land.

i remember.

everything about that day and the 2 that followed was disturbing: as a function of the repetition of that loop of video footage, a collective sense of being-victimized arose: the television-specific official "Explanation" happened---and it was all so transparent, so stupid, so ugly and alarming. i remember white boys driving around west philadelphia hanging out of jeeps waving american flags.

i remember thinking that everyone, all around, had gone insane.



by now, by 9/11/2008, this has been pulverized: used and abused, drained of meaning and filled again, spit back at us over and over and over.
remembrance becomes a game.
let us stop as we are required by all public machinery to remember why everything that's happened since 9/11/2001 has happened.
let us remember how the dead have been used, again and again.
let us remember how grief became cheap became a commodity became a justification.
let us remember what made this grief seem cheap, a commodity, a justification.

and from underneath all that, remember the genuine grief of those who lost people in the trade center and try to separate that from how that's been used.

it isn't easy.

Yes, this was a sentiment that came up among the American students I met with that night, in a Reykjavik bar... we all agreed that while it was horribly shocking, none of us took on the "victim" stance that seemed to envelop those still in the US. Living abroad, with exchange students from many other nations in the conversation with us, there was little else to say... we didn't want to say it, but we felt that this was somehow inevitable (keep in mind that usually, students who go abroad to study are already liberal in attitude--so don't expect us to conform to the usual patriotic ideals). This doesn't diminish the sorrow of the event, but we were university students, and wanted to discuss the causes and what might happen next, internationally.We Americans in Iceland had much the same feeling, seeing coverage on CNN and reading newspapers online... we missed all of that flag-waving madness, and somehow I am not sad about that. I remember coming back in May 2002 and taking a while to recognize my country again. Thanks for the reminder, rb. Agreed.

I worked as a teacher's aide and was in one of the 'lounges' and the tv was on. The news of what was happened flowed thru the building like a raging river and we all watched it all happen as it happened....
Suddenly, there was a scream in the hallway. A teacher ran, crying out her son's name. Someone took her to a room and I went to find the school delegate who went to try and comfort her, to calm her down. She calmed long enough to attempt to call her son and he answered his phone-by happensance, he'd overslept and missed his train into Manhattan.
Another teacher became visibly upset, but was relieved that her husband decided to take the day off. But he lost most of his friends.
Parents filled the office to gather their kids-to this day I don't understand why as they'd have been fine where they were. Only one child lost a relative-an aunt on the plane that went down in PA.
Three days afterward, winds shifted and the overpowering odor resembling burning tar wafted over us and lingered....
Before 9/11/01, my husband would look out over a hill on his way to work and see the sun hitting the WTC. After 9/11/01, for days he'd see only smoke. Sometimes he still remarks how sad it is to see....nothing.

I was sitting at my desk. Running a public radio station in the rural south had become an effort of nothing. I was chatting with a friend in NYC when all of a sudden her message was, "THEY FLEW A FREAKING PLANE INTO WTC!"

So, into the control room goes I. No news outlet had it yet, but I told our morning guy to get ready for some updates. Within seconds, the attack was on our monitor. My lone regret that morning was that I did not tell our announcer to talk a hike and let me update the info. We were getting it much faster than NPR. Later on that day, folks on the NPR listserv were criticising the network for not getting the info on air earlier (they let about 40 minutes lapse between the first plane and going with the story).

My reply was, "do you have your own microphones?"

Personally, I was to be married in four days. Our photographer cancelled because he was sure an invasion was imminent. My now MIL wanted us to postpone. Our honeymoon airline tix were obviously useless. My boss asked me if I really planned to go to Nantucket.

I lived in an area surrounded by marine air bases and an airport. I remember going out, looking up at the cloudless sky, and feeling an emptiness of air traffic. A couple of days later, a DC9 landed at our airport - where usually the planes were prop. It was unmarked, and this happened during the air restrictions.

We got married. 90 people attended instead of 110. Despite the events, we were happy. Deena declared a media blackout for me and we listened to "The Shadow" tapes while driving our stiff, uncomfortable Saturn SL1 up to Mass. Several bridges had people holding signs. One night we stayed in Mystic and watched Bruce Springsteen sing Rise Up.

I understand that people have used this date to push agendas. "Let's Roll" is not a credo. But this attack was also not a well meaning effort for diversity. It was done by people who want to kill christians and jews. They also dress women in burkas and disallow them to vote. If a woman is raped, then she may well face the death penalty for being sullied.

I don't agree with the wars currenlty happening, but to dismiss this date because of the schemes of a few is repugnant.

I was at work when it happened. My office is connected to a 24 hour control room where they have a tv. Someone came in and asked if they had seen the news, so they turned it on. The first thing that I can recall is the news announcers trying to figure out what happened at the Pentagon. No one got much work done that day. I remember calling my family to see if they had heard. I cried on the way home that day and many after.

It is wrong how it's been used since; I try to separate it from that day. I'll never forget the faces of the terrified people in New York or how heroic the people on flight 93 were. Sometimes it seems like it was so many more years ago than seven, other times it seems like just yesterday.

Is someone doing that?

I was at the University of North Dakota majoring in Commercial Aviation. I saw some of the early stuff on TV before I left for school and knew some of what had happened. The lobby of the aviation building had the events live on tv. We all knew what had happened. I remember just being pissed at the time and debating all day, months after, debating leaving school and joining the air force so I could bomb the shit out of the Middle East.

The thing to this day that bothers me most is that I had three classes that day and not one even acknowledged what had happened.

I hope your perspective has changed since then?

I was supposed to work from home, that day. I got up, that morning, and brewed myself a pot of coffee. (BTW: I live in Mountain Time, which is two hours before the time zone New York is in.) The house was quiet and tranquil, with my wife away at work and my daughter away at daycare. The morning outside my kitchen window was beautiful. I took a cup of coffee downstairs, to the PC in my basement. I booted up my PC, then sat down and opened up my browser to read the latest news, on my home page...

Ever since then, even 10 years later, I sometimes have a feeling of trepidation, in the mornings when I open up my browser.

Well, yes and no. I thought Roachboy's comments were very correct. Less intelligent people have acted less intelligently on both sides. The W crew have tried to turn the day into a nationalistic disply of high fervor. Others have abandoned the day to them.

And then there are those who say that this was the affect of years of American belligerency. It was, but that doesn't change the fact that the attacker's cultural milleu is one of ignorance and violence.

But it's only been 7 years...

Poppinjay... ignorance and violence, hm. As usual, the argument could be made (in very different contexts/interpretations, I know) on both sides... though you can count poverty and oppression on their side, as well. Do you know anyone from "that culture?"

But I don't want to get into it, really. Have work do to today, must avoid TFP Politics... (even if this is GD).

Doh!

I guess my coffee, this morning, hasn't kicked in yet. (But I didn't need it to, that morning seven years ago.)

I was visiting my parents at their home about 20 minutes outside Manhattan. Just the day before I'd been walking around downtown in the city with friends and ended up getting my ears pierced.

That morning my mom had left to run some errands and I'd gone downstairs to our family room to switch on the TV. The channel had been left on BBC the night before, and the burning, smoking towers popped up onto the screen. For some reason I switched the channel to NBC; I don't know why. I stood there and watched in disbelief, but at some point I think I went upstairs to make a phone call. I came back downstairs to meet my mom at the back door after she'd turned around to come home. I know we saw both towers go down; I can't remember whether I saw the second plane hit or not in real time. Mom was near hysterical—three of her sisters worked in the financial district, and we later found out that they were among the hundreds (thousands?) who walked home across the Brooklyn Bridge in the aftermath. One of my aunts was almost trampled in the crowd making its way from Ground Zero.

I was supposed to fly back down to Florida the next day or two days after but ended up staying at my parents' house for the next week. Coming back to the city with them afterward was shocking, from the smoke on the horizon and the hole in the skyline to the military vehicles all over the streets. That night I wrote something in my journal about being scared of what the US would do in retaliation. For the rest of my time there I obsessively listened to the local 24hr news station and checked CNN constantly, fearful of hearing what might happen next.

With so many people from my hometown working in finance and the variety of patients in both my parents' medical practices, I remain surprised that I don't know anyone personally who was lost in the towers. There were plenty of kids at my school who had lost parents, but they were too young for me to have known them.

I was in high school in Ohio. My english teacher burst into my history class, crying, and turned the television on. Most of the class was paralyzed with shock (I was among them), some students crying. At that time, only one tower had been hit - I saw the second plane hit and both towers fall in real-time. There was an eerie buzz in the air everywhere I went. None of the teachers continued their classes - most people stayed in the same classrooms for the rest of the day, some parents picked their children up, the administration pondered sending students home early on the buses.

A lot of people started talking about the possible targets for future attacks close to home: Wright Patterson Air Force Base, General Electric in Cincinnati/Evendale (my dad works there!), etc. There was a palpable sense of fear and disbelief for a long time.

From Al Queda? No. I did make it a point to talk to the sponsor of the Muslim Student Association at East Carolina afterwards, and produced a feature about them and the interactions they were having with Christians. Turns out, one of the Presbyterian churches invited them to hold services there shortly after 9-11. That is why I am Presbyterian now.

He explained the meaning of the veil. His two daughters wear the veil and are both excellent students bound for great success. He also told me about the Muslim view of Jesus and other prophets. He is also why I made the comment about the clock in the mosque on Dlish's thread. His computer prompts him to pray at the appropriate times.

But to say I learned something about Muslims is not to say I understand anything about the criminals in Al Queda. It also doesn't mean I know much about mid-eastern culture. I read Persepolis and that's about it.

I don't understand burkas or the denial of basic human rights due females in some hajib interpretations. I really get the chills when I see somebody in a chadri. It's like they're wearing a portable prison.

Like you said, Abaya (and I did too), there's bad guys on both sides. And I hate calling today Patriot Day.

11th grade. I walked in to my US History class as my teacher was watching the tv with his mouth gaping open. I joined him and several other classmates. All of us watching, not a sound was made. The first building was burning. Then BAM a jet plan flew into the 2nd building and it, too, caught on fire. We continued to watch as we gasped but still not a word spoken. Then the first building fell, followed by the second. We watched as people at ground zero ran for their lives, screaming, crying. The gigantic dust cloud covering everything in its path. Then my teacher turned off the tv and told us to go buy the newspaper when we get home, it's going to be "historic."

School was relatively normal for me that day. I was at a new school and didn't know anybody so I didn't talk to anyone about it. All after school events are canceled. I was hoping they'd cancel next school day, too. I was fortunate enough to not be effected by this event. I didn't know anyone who perished in the towers, nor know anyone who knows any victim or relatives of the victims even. So to this day I remain as I was that day...uneffected.

It was my first day of university. They had a big-screen television set up at the central area in the main campus building. The news was showing whatever footage it could find and was putting it on loop. What grabbed my attention the most was the static headline on the bottom right of the screen: "America Under Attack." It took me a few minutes of watching shaky street-level footage of fluttering debris and panicked people to find out just what "under attack" meant. Would you believe I was a bit relieved to learn of the nature of the attack? (i.e. My imagination thought of much worse possibilities.)

I watched for several minutes before realizing that all there was to see was a loop of the catastrophe and the immediate fallout, so I went to class.

My first class was a lecture for an introductory course on literary theory and criticism. The first thing the professor did was declare that day the end of the post-modern era.

She then went on to talk about Bush and rhetoric and the nature of meaning in language. She then warned us that, throughout the course of the year, her lectures, the readings, and the tutorials would have a profound effect on us if we would only engage our minds. She warned us that we would discover that perhaps just about everything we think is true probably isn't. What we've come to believe as young adults—how we see the world, what we see as "truth"—was about to be challenged and turned on its head.

9/11 marked a turning point in my life. It was the day when I stopped believing as though truth in language and images were self-evident. It was the day I started the process of deprogramming my mind in the same mode as the post-modernists. It was the day I realized that the world isn't what it seems. It was the day I tore up my scripts.

The victims of 9/11 need not have died for naught. Their memory serves as a reminder that we are all victims in some capacity. Some of us are victims in body; others are victims in mind. To lose sight of this will only lead us to slip back into our slumber, where we dream and long for what really are fatal distractions.

Do not be distracted. For the sake of humanity, be awake.

Okay, good to know. It just wasn't clear who you meant by "the attackers" in your post, and some might take it to mean "the Middle East" in general (which would be incorrect), and others might see it as Al Qaeda criminals specifically. Just wanted to clarify.

I would say that you know a little more about "Middle-Eastern culture" (if such a thing can be labeled under one term) than most, and that's a good thing. I knew very little back then myself, and am still learning a ton from being married to ktsp. Of course, he's not really Muslim, so I understand more about Lebanese culture/politics in general than Islam in particular... but that's another story. :)

September of '01? I was in school. Some people freaked out in overly dramatic fashion, most just used it as an excuse to skip class. It was a big deal then, it's not anymore.

That was a very strange day.

I woke up early for me. University wasn't yet back in session, and I had worked late the night before to close out where I worked. I was working in a deli at a grocery store at the time, and had sliced open my hand while cleaning one of the meat slicers the night before. My mom had made me get up so I could show my dad before he left for work, so he could decide whether it was bad enough to warrant going to the doctor and getting a tetanus shot. So I trundled downstairs, showed Dad, and then curled up with Mom to watch the local news, so despite being three hours behind, I was awake when they broke into the local news.

Mom and I watched it all unfold on television while Dad left for work.

I didn't have work that day, and so I stayed home and watched television while my mom left for work. My boyfriend at the time came over for lunch because there was this overwhelming sense that no one wanted to be alone. That evening I went and hung out with some girlfriends from high school I hadn't seen in a long time, because we all wanted to be with other people, to be comforted.

It saddens me now to look at the past seven years and see how the events of that day have been abused by those in power to get what they want.

Btw, Jorge--reading your post more carefully--I'm very sorry to hear about the loss of your aunt that day. My aunt was also flying out from New York around that time, and it was several days before I found out that she had left on Sep 10 and was fine. I can't imagine how my life would have changed if she had been one of the people who died there.

I am also sorry to hear that the decision you had to make with your girlfriend was so difficult--from your hints, I can guess what it was. And if I'm right, then I'm also glad that you (and she) had that choice as an option... that was the silver lining on the cloud, I hope. Otherwise your life today would have been even more different, no?

To be honest, not really. Don't want to get off the topic of this thread, but does anything (other than oil) come out of that area that benefits the world?

People? I don't know about you, but I've met a lot of really nice people from the Middle East.

I slept through 9/11. I was working nights, and I remember before going to sleep reading that a plane had hit the WTC but didn't really think that much of it. I got to play catch-up with the rest of the world when I woke up.

Same here. It's too bad the post-9/11 world hasn't been kind to them. At least the ones I've met have avoided most of it.

I'm not going to bore everyone with the whole story, but what I remember most are some of the surrounding things.

How beautiful the day was on the East Coast. My first thought on turning on the television while getting ready for class being classic gallows humor involving the whereabouts of Bruce Willis. The shock of everyone while walking across campus while everything was still happening. The way everyone gasped at once in the lecture hall when we saw the first tower fall (I finally learned what it meant to have the air sucked out of the room) and the cell phones that started ringing and didn't stop through the end of class.

I was sitting in genetics 301 at Texas A&M. Actually I was leaving the class and getting in my wife's car. She had the radio on and I was like WTF? We listened as we drove home, and I was talking about what to do in case it was happening to more than NY. We hit the TV and saw the towers burning, and then fall. I took stock of our ammo, maybe food, and kept the news on.

:uhh: Well, my husband, for starters...

Have you been there yourself? Do you know anyone from there?

In true World's King fashion...


I was having sex.

It was and still is a very "big deal".

For some people, yes.

I had finished my summer intership in Paris and flown back to Beirut on September 9th. On the eleventh, I was driving with my mom to my grandma's place, an hour north of Beirut. A friend called me during our drive, and said that "2 planes have hit the WTC, one hit the pentagon, and one hit the White House!". He could be a bullshitter at times so I told him I did not believe that, and he said "Ok..".

Soon afterwards we got to our destination, and an aquaintance on the street asked us if we had heard the news... We went to my grandma's house and turned on the TV. We then saw the footage of the towers falling, playing in a loop. It was surreal. I remember thinking that the world has just entered a new, dangerous phase. I remember being horrified by the size of the killing. I remember thinking "Please, let it not be that Bin Laden dude, that will mess things up between America and the Arab/Muslim world for a long long time". Sadly that was to happen.

I was also planning on applying to US universities that year for my Master's degree, and I wondered if those attacks were gonna close those doors to me. Thankfully the doors remained open and I moved to the US in August 2002. And despite being treated differently at US airports, thankfully no American I've met was openly hostile towards me because of those events.

Interestingly enough, I had a similar experience in 2005, after I had started working in the US. The former Lebanese prime minister was assassinated in a car bomb attack, and I found out in the morning as I turned on my laptop before going to work. I knew right then that things had taken a serious and long-term turn for the worse, in Lebanon.. And in fact the country entered an era of instability from which it has not recovered yet. All the windows in my dad's office (near the bombing) were shattered, but thankfully he had been at home for lunch. I still remember seeing that link in the Yahoo page and thinking "WTF"...

Of course, you did have to endure your future mother-in-law asking you point blank, over a nice steak dinner on your first visit to Seattle, "So do you know where Bin Laden is hiding?" after you sketched a map of your country for her on a napkin just to explain where you came from... :rolleyes:

I skipped school that day and slept in a little late. Turned on the tube just before the second plane hit and wondered exactly what the fuck I was seeing. They were calling it a freak accident until the second plane hit.

...

I remember sitting on my couch for hours and eventually days - waiting for something conclusive but nothing ever came. Just the same loop of people leaping from buildings and the burning buildings.

Whatever they build there, I'll never see it in person.

What do you know, I actually just found myself agreeing with Willravel.

I was in school. Gym class. Somebody told me that the NYC was under attack. We went to the library to swarm around the TV sets. Two days spent discussing. Can we move on?

I was in my baracks room in Japan play Wild Arms on the play station when one of the guys i work with ran into my room yelling at me to put the TV on. I turned to the news just in time to watch the second plane hit. Rest of the night was glued to the news with some of my buddies and 4 coffee pots going. Never forget the sense of rage I felt. Very few times in my life have I been that angery.

sadly i cant say that even though australia is in the very corner of one side of the world, that ive been immune to what you speak of.

she-lish has been abused in the street and on public transport for being an arab, for being muslim. she was forced off the train because of some guys threats. she fled the train in tears. a man threatening a helpless female university student who had no connection to the events that day, except that she shared the same religion as a few nutters.

That day, people forgot that innocents weren't legal fodder. That day, all sides forgot what was right and what was just. From that day onwards people lost their innocence and treated everyone with suspicion and caution. i remember walking through sydney and it was a ghost town. people would look at me like an alien. i wasnt anglosaxon, therefore i was a possible enemy.

i would never forget that day. i remember going into work and listening to talk back radio. the pure hate and vengeance that would come from peoples mouths was pure fanaticism. i remember listening and disbelieving that some of these things were not only being said, but being allowed on the airwaves. That day incitement became order of the day, and anything foreign became fairgame.

i am sad for those innocent lives lost. i am sad for those sad mothers and fathers, those brothers and sisters, uncles, neices, nephews, friends and for strangers who perished as a result of 9/11. I am sad for the innocent lives lost in the 9/11 attacks. all 3000 of them.

But, i am saddened at the innocents lost in afghanistan and iraq. The infamous wedding celebration that was bombed, the infrastructure that was destroyed, the daisycutters used that would kill and maime all in its path, the brute force used was unparallel against one of the poorest nations in the world. My heart yearns not only for the justice for the 3000 on that day, but also for the tens of thousands, if not more, of innocent lives that have gone by the wayside unnoticed. for every death, a whole family would vow to avenge that death. Nobody has a right to take innocent lives. NOBODY!

its saddens me more that people to this day still have not tried to understood 'the other'. we are not the enemy! we are as much human as you are. we all yearn for peace, happiness, off spring and security. we all have feelings, we all live, breath and eat, we are not robots programmed to detonate on demand. it really does sadden me that some still think that we are fair game and that the lives of arabs or muslims are somewhat less important or less significant that those of american lives. it saddens me that the voice of vengeance is still alive and well today, no matter what side you are on. it saddens me that people like jorgelito lost family, and that innocent children lay limbless in hospitals as a result of a few nutjobs.

That day set a chain of events that will never be forgiven. ever.

During my time on TFP (and especially the past year and a half) ive tried to introduce to the wider audience my life in the middle east. There are plenty of good things that come from the middle east. i try and highlight these things. im an optimist and i hope that you have taken some of this away from reading my post and spread it amongst others. the worst voice is the voice of ignorance, and if i have highlighted something that wasnt apparent to the TFP audience then my job has been done.

in saying that, i am also a realist. i do realise that theres a lot of work to be done in the middle east, and i do hope that in time that things will change. it may take a generation. maybe more, maybe less, but the change is imminent.

This day in history changed the course of history and the lives of billions forever.

[edit: was writing this at an ungodly hour and got the number of people killed wrong. it was 3000 not 1400]

I don't get angry at those that dismiss this time in our country's history. I have to accept that for some reason or another some people are unable to comprehend the full impact that this has had on our country and our people. I believe that Willravel and LoganSnake are probably too young to understand. They were teenagers when this happened. My niece is 18, and she dismisses similar events in the same way. Youth is not an excuse, but I can get beyond that. To the rest of you, and those who have lost family and friends, I am with you today.

I was sitting right here, in my office, when someone interupted the interview the radio folks were having with some ladies from the YMCA to say that a plane had hit the WTC. My first thought was of the bobmer that hit the Empire State Building during WWII. I stopped thinking about that when the second plane hit.

My Dad typically asks why I'm calling him (we both hate the phone) but he didn't ask that day. He seemed anxious to talk.

I remember laying in bed that night, hearing a plane flying overhead and realizing that it had to be a military flight. It made me feel very sad and lonely.

Don't forget the impact on the rest of the world--which was perhaps even more significant. Hear, hear. Right in this very thread... so much hatred, anger, desire for retribution...

Where was I?

I was heading to class that day in 7th grade. I woke up and went into the living room to hear about it, my dad was talking about something, but I don't remember what it was. All i remember is seeing one of the towers on fire. I left for school and on the bus to school, a few more students got on and mentioned that the second tower just got it.

Kinda wowed that day, and it takes a lot to do that to me.

I was in college, in class. I remember after class walking outside and seeing EVERYONE on a cell phone (before EVERYONE used them ALL the time) Right then, I knew something was not right.

o i think there's a pretty accurate understanding abroad here of which aspect of this history is being dismissed and which is not.

what's being dismissed is not the events 7 years ago themselves, but the ways in which they came to function as the origin myth for a shabby, racist narrative that was in turn an origin story for the imposition of a kind of neo-fascist period in american public life that i suspect will be a source of bewilderment for those who come to write the history of it later---except perhaps for conservative americanists who seem to be able to rationalize anything.

i don't see *anyone* dismissing the event itself--but i see *alot* of folk across the age range whose ability to make these basic distinctions between what happened and what was manufactured about what happened. that this substitution of reactionary mythology for the events was already happening on the afternoon of 11 september 2001--right before your eyes--is a part of what people remember. i don't forget.

you seem to want to tell folk what they should remember.

but i don't get angry at those who seem unable to make basic separations, who imagine History is a single process, everywhere the same. i have to accept that such mythological understandings of history lead perfectly reasonable folk to make arbitrary assessments of events and of people---hell, we have a 7 year demonstration of the Problems this can generate--or we do if you choose to look. but i understand that's no fun, and so the preference for mythology, which is possible at any age.

I'm not one to get rallied by sympathy when it contradicts reason. The whole "in solemn remembrance" thing was done again and again and again. People died, many of them were brave. That's horrible, but it happens every day. What doesn't happen every day is people losing all perspective and being led around by their sympathy and fear. As soon as 9/11 was used as a rally cry for selfish gain it ceased being some amazing moment in the history of the world and just became another useless and meaningless loss that was capitalized on by very bad people.

I can't tell you how often this 25 year old has to remind people much older than myself that Pearl Harbor caused the US to stop Japanese (and by extension German) imperialism, saving millions or even billions of people from tyranny. 9/11 has been the opposite. It's inspired fear, which has allowed tyranny. I don't dismiss things like Pearl Harbor. I don't dismiss Paul Revere's ride or the battles of Lexington and Concord. I'm aware of moments in US history to be proud of. 9/11 isn't one of them.

Romanticizing an attack into some patriotic rallying point is what has gotten us to where we are today, and I refuse to be a part of that.

Edit: and what RB said above.

I don't think many romanticize it, or that many even see it as a "patriotic rallying point". I do think that most view it as a remembrance of those who lost their lives. Period.

But people die every day. 45 murders a day in the US, which means an average of over 100,000 murders since 9/11. The fact that these people don't get a remembrance and those that died on 9/11 do means that 9/11 was significant. I don't see it as significant. It could have been, but it's not.

I get what you're saying, but many of those others do receive remembrances. We see flowers and vigils everywhere, survivors related to murder victims often work to pass bills or educate others, etc.

The families of those that died on 9/11 can't do that. They're one in a sea of thousands and their families share this common bond. No sympathy, Will, just a little empathy, huh?

As for the date becoming a political bandwagon, hell yeah. I agree, the politicians should stay out of it.

What I'm saying is that they had my empathy and sympathy. I was one of those that sent thoughts and donations and letters. In 2001. Now? It's 2008 and basically anything that their deaths could have stood for has been besmirched. I'm not interested in acting like it's still 2001 and the wounds are still fresh and the opportunity for justice is still there. They're not.

Maybe I should clarify something. Those 100,000+ murders I mentioned garner my sadness and sympathy, just like the 3,000 on 9/11. What I'm against is insisting that 9/11 was somehow more sad or more terrible than all of the other murders. It may have been an unconventional and spectacular (in a bad way, of course) method, but it's murder.

In a bad way, of course???

More sad, no. More terrible, I'm not sure.

Maybe it's semantics, but at that time the risks involved in everyday life were clear cut. We knew that we could get hit by a car, or die in a plane crash and yes, raped and even murdered. But at that time, had anyone even considered what happened even in the realm of possibility? That's what makes it so horrendous, at least from where I sit.

Doesn't that make any difference?

Wow, just wow.

Thanks for calling my grief and mourning a "fetish". This has to be the most insensitive post you have ever written.

Thanks for politicizing a thread that was clearly in General Discussion as an outlet for remembrance, sharing, and paying respects.

Thanks for implying my aunt had it coming. Chickens coming home to roost? Who are you? Fred Phelps? You couldn't take your disrespectful comments to another thread? Would you have shown up at my aunts funeral and said these same things?

Thanks for calling us stupid. Those of us who wanted information in the aftermath and turned to tv, newspapers, radio etc.

Thanks for cheapening my grief.

This is a new low for you roachboy.
-----Added 11/9/2008 at 08 : 28 : 23-----
Thanks for your honesty. My brother and mother were caught abroad when it went down. My brother had to scramble and find a way to get back stateside for school.

Just a gentle reminder: students who go abroad are not necessarily liberal. they are a diverse bunch including conservatives, moderates, girls, boys, fat, thin, Jews, Muslims, etc. I'm on my 3rd passport and have been to nearly 35 countries in the past 10 years. I spend on average, 6 months of the year overseas and my experience has been as such.

I don't get the anti-flag waving attitude. I think it was a very natural reaction. Almost all nations flag wave. And that was a good and appropriate time for it too. Other countries even got in on the action and waved our flag in solidarity. It was a very touching time. All that sympathy and support. I for one appreciated it.
-----Added 11/9/2008 at 08 : 29 : 14-----
It is very much a big deal to many of us.
-----Added 11/9/2008 at 08 : 31 : 39-----
Thank you Abaya for your kind words. It was an intense and emotional time. This is the first I have spoken of it since. Still very hard despite the time passed. We could open up another thread to explore the experience/issues. It may be a bit difficult, but in the right forum/venue, I would be willing to give it a shot.
-----Added 11/9/2008 at 08 : 33 : 11-----
I agree. This is a tragedy. The treatment and near-zealous frenzy. To George Bush's credit, he came out on TV and announced that Muslim-Americans were not to blame and for people not to take it out on them. Even UsTwo went out of his way to defend his Arab/Muslim freidns during that time.
-----Added 11/9/2008 at 08 : 34 : 36-----
Thanks for sharing your story ktsp. I'm glad you have been treated reasonably well since then. Hopefully, we can all work together to ensure the proper treatment of all, by all.
-----Added 11/9/2008 at 08 : 36 : 24-----
Why? We have moved on. What's wrong with commemorating a major event? Why does it offend you so? Should we stop commemorating MLK Day? Can we move on? Should we stop commemorating July 4th? Can we move on? Should we stop commemorating Memorial Day? Can we move on?.....
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-----Added 11/9/2008 at 08 : 38 : 45-----
Wow, great post D. Thanks for sharing. I didn't relize that happened in Australia. I am very shocked and surprised as Aussies are usually open minded and laid back. I'm sorry to hear of all the ignorance and violence that happened there. I am an optimist too. We will continue to work together man. Don't stop believing.
-----Added 11/9/2008 at 08 : 40 : 49-----
Yes, the 3,000 people who perished were from 90 different countries. Don't forget that. It wasn't just us expendable Americans. Lost of innocent folks from around the world were murdered that day too. This wasn't just an American event. It was a global event. Abaya, we need to address that anger, hatred, retribution. I'm with you.

you didn't read the post, jorgelito.
i'd apologize, but i am not responsible for your choices in terms of selective reading.

1. i made a clear distinction between the events themselves and the grief of those who lost people, and the way the events--and by extension that grief--has been stepped on in the construction of this miserable, racist narrative at the center of the "war on terror"--and i meant it.

2. the post was about *my* experience that day, and there is nothing you can say, no claim that you can make, and no level of misreading you can manage that makes *my* experience of that day any more or less meaningful than your own.

3. as a human being, i'm sorry about your loss--maybe i should have put that in--but it was early in the morning and i just wrote what i remembered--and i'm sorry for that omission.

4. but the world is like that, jorgelito--not everything, not everyone's memory, is connected to an event like the attacks in nyc in the same way. the fact that there are differences in perspective does not mean that one overrides the other. we are long past that point.

Yes, exactly. Agreed.
-----Added 11/9/2008 at 08 : 45 : 12-----
Don't patronize me pal, I did read your post. Multiple times. Obviously you feel the way you do and yes it is your experience. It doesn't make your response any less abhorrent and despicable. I am simply responding to your post with the way I feel. Maybe you should read my posts again.

I'm a bit disappointed in how this thread turned out. It saddens me how political discussion has tarnished such a noble intent. :-(

As for the original question, I had just gotten to the trailhead for my daily hike when the news had mentioned that "a small plane" had hit. I did my hike, and when I got back, the news was much more dire. I got home in time to see the 2nd plane hit. I did go to work, but I was very late, and not much got done.

I'm both disappointed and saddened that roachboy's post is being misinterpreted when instead it should perhaps be labelled unsuitably placed. I guess there are certain contexts where emotions and cultural criticisms don't mingle well.

Perhaps this should have been a thread offshoot.

I agree Baraka... I don't see rochboy's post as hateful at all. It is a genuine remembrance of that day from his eyes and how that day has shaped his thoughts today. It is what this thread is about and I don't think it was unsuitably placed.

I think this last line in the thread is the most important one.

That last, "it isn't easy" is underscored by the later response of others to his post.

......................

Charlatan, one reason why it could be deemed unsuitably placed is because of the tone set by the OP.

Personally, I didn't find the post out of place, but I can see how it was misinterpreted.

I was working at a grocery store. I though it was stupid that people continued to shop during the entire affair.

I didn't have any sort of personal connection to anyone in those buildings. I was more concerned with America's reaction than with the towers falling.

That was a good instinct.

I was standing in my living room brushing my teeth. I saw the newsfeed on CNN and called to my wife in the other room. The world was suddenly a very small place. It was upsetting and somehow exhilarating at the same time. The feeling eventually wore off.

I live on the west coast, USA. So it was very early morning here. My husband's mother woke us with a phone call. We flipped on the kitchen tv and made coffee. I thought the first crash was horrible and sad. When we saw the second, I said "OMG that wasn't an accident." We saw the towers fall in real time. I thought the first boom was a bomb. And the second. And the third. Then hubby said they were not bombs; the building was collapsing. I kept thinking, "no more floors, no more floors, stop falling..." But it didn't stop. And I watched many, many people die all at once, in real time. I was sick when the second building started to fall. Because I knew it wouldn't stop. I thought, "not them, too" But it was. It was later we saw what was left of the Pentagon.

I had to work that night, in a grocery store. We live in a very diverse area. I noticed that there were not many of our customers from the middle east. Those who did come in appeared very nervous. They scanned the crowds constantly, walked quickly, bought only a few items. Some of them looked their surroundings so much, like they were expecting something to happen, it put me on edge a bit. But I did try to be extra nice to them, and to call them by name if I knew their name. This went on for weeks, even months (although not as severe).

I didn't lose anyone that day. What I did lose was my ability to watch scary, violent movies. If you knew me at all, you would know that that was a big deal. I watched Halloween and Friday the 13th movies without batting an eye. I had become desensitized, I think, to alot of violence against people. Now, I struggle with the opposite. I cannot stand seeing people do things that hurt other people. Whether it be physical violence or verbal/emotional abuse. I can't keep my eyes open. I just can't hack it. Not since that day I saw so many people die at once in real life.

You can move on.

I have a large degree of empathy for the victims. People killed because they live in a society that gives equal opportunity to all poeple, races, and genders. Killed because their society isn't run by Islamic extremists. Coldly murdered because their schools did not teach them to hate and coldly murder those people overseas first. I empathize with those victims because they went about their business, and were killed because some group thousands of miles away didn't like how their government works. I empathize with them because a small group of cowards decided they had the right to judge thousands, and then run and hide in the mountains when the obvious reaction cam about. I empathize with the people in those towers because I know that the highjackers were almost certainly brainwashed, like most suicide bombers, by the group who wanted them to do it. I empathize with the victims because it was a stupid reason for a stupid loss of life.

I find it a 'big deal' because I choose to remember those crimes.


I find these thoughts phrased more eloquently than I could.

Live life man. Life isn’t what you think it’s supposed to be. You’re supposed to Carpe Diem. How do you know that by the way, even though the Latin language hasn’t been spoken in hundreds of years? You know that you’re not supposed to go gently into that good night when that bell tolls for thee. We know this, yet we allow ourselves not to laugh, to be retentive, to hold everything in even though we have the freedoms that other people don’t have. Our women don’t get shot in the head when they don’t believe anything. Our women wear miniskirts that are literally this short, and when they go to nightclubs they look at guys like me and go “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU LOOKING AT?!” “Your Va-gin-a!”

See, you got to laugh while you can. And see here’s the fun part, people at home, laughing their asses off, loving it - because we want to pretend. See, at home it’s cool, ninety percent of the, wait no, sixty to eighty percent of the people who watch Def Jam were white. But when you go see Def Jam Live or you go see the Kings of Comedy you will see almost no white people there - which truly tells me that you love laughing at the brother jokes, but you don’t love laughing at brother jokes when the brothers can look at you laugh because you feel uncomfortable. So when you’re at home you love it and you’re like – “Haha! Those niggers are funny, ha ha ha!” But when you’re there you’re like “That’s wrong! What he said is wrong!”

And you can’t do that. You got to understand what makes life beautiful is the essence of the fact that it can go away. So you don’t want to live like that. You don’t want to be the person, do you? That had a fight, an inconsequential insignificant stupid fight with your spouse. About who’s supposed to open, or close, or turn off the light at that bedtime. So you did it, but you were pissed. And you stayed pissed with your wife, not ‘cause it was real, but “Hell, we’ll make up later, and nothin’ better than make up sex, is there?” And in the morning you woke up and things were still bad, but you kept at it. ‘Cause “Hey, I’m gonna come back, and we’re gonna do it!” And then what happened? You went to your building and you were… saddened on that ninetieth floor. And that happened. And your ass is never going to go back home again. And the best you can do is call your woman or man and say “I love you” and you miss that last night. Why? Because you thought that it would last forever.

See, every comedy show you’ve ever been to ends with a big joke, because that’s what you need. I end with a big joke, you laugh, I say goodnight, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. But that ain’t life my friends. If you learn anything from me, learn one thing. That sometimes… sometimes.

*Walks off stage*

- Carlos Mencia