September 13th, 2001
Another Dim, Quiet Stoop.
I was up until 4 am on Tuesday morning, working on my redesigned web site until I thought it looked okay enough for me to head to bed.I spent a few hours sleeping, and ten hours at work, digesting media coverage all the while.
While sitting alone at 11pm, 18 inches from the television, I saw footage from earlier in the day of a bald man with glasses, covered in dust, talking to a reporter and the camera. Behind him the scenery was white, snow-ashen and other-worldly. The sun diffused through dust and smoke, in a zero-pint field of light. The man himself looked like a cartoon character.
(Just now, a very fast jet flew over my house here in Plymouth, MA. The sound of its pressure wave is slowly fading. Disconcerting at first, but now its a comforting sound.)
Even the man's glasses and tie were ash-glazed. He said, "everything was coming down above me, so I ran. I'm sixty-seven years old, but I can still run." He laughed a little, at his own joke, and the absurdity of it all. He sort of waddled around, a bit dazed and winded.
I wish I head spent Tuesday at home, scouring the internet and reading personal sites, or following and discussing things on Metafilter. Instead, I hopped networks at work, watching the same footage again and again from different angles, listening to various anchor persons say "tragedy" and "Back to you, Joe" over and over. By late-afternoon the Attack On America had theme songs and title-graphics.
Why didn't the screens show reporters or politicians crying with sadness, mourning with silence, tearing with terror or yelling with anger? Jennings gives words, but never changes his expression. Bush's speech was cookie-cutter, delivered with nearly dead pan composure. Everyone wants to be the one to make history's grand statment. Even me. There has been a fight, I guess, to show fearlessness in the face of loss and chaos. Ack. I don't know what action to support, or even what I'm feeling. I almost wish I had been in Manhattan, to feel and see the attack and the aftermath.
I lost it earlier today, when I imagined the mind set of the man who phoned his wife from the fourth plane, told her he loved her, and then fought with others to overpower the hijackers and crash the plane on purpose. Scared, selfless struggle.
The attack put little problems into perspective. Massive loss of life. But I feel like it's also put my personal interests, and values, and hobbies into perspective as well. I'm having a hard time allowing my mind to turn toward daily tasks, a hard time staying proud of small achievements and creative endeavors with so much fire and tears behind us and ahead of us.
