Yesterday was the 10 year anniversary of 9/11. It's been a somewhat nauseating week with all of the 9/11 coverage. There's been so much coverage. Everyone involved in that day has a story. People in the buildings. Tourists. Firefighters. Literally everyone. It's heartbreaking to hear these stories. Being honest, I got semi-tired of it. It's just emotionally exhausting.
It was weird for me this year because I was in New York. I lived in the Financial District for 2+ months. I was 10 minutes away from the WTC. I walked by it on Saturday. The police were everywhere over the weekend. There was a tense-ness in the air regarding the threat of a potential attack. My cab was pulled over before it was allowed to cross the Manhattan Bridge. It was all just very tense.
Last night I went out to dinner with my friends, but came home to my apartment. My roommate is gone, so it was just me. I went up on my roof, and could see the bright lights of the two towers that they turn on. I haven't spent that much time on my roof by myself in a while. It's powerful just to see them. Strong strong lights that illuminate the skyline. A symbol to demonstrate what once was there and how we will never forget what happened that day.
For me/my friends, 9/11 happened when we were 12/13 years old. It was 8th grade. I remember that day more than most from grade school. I remember watching the TV. I remember walking home from school. I remember all of it, but I stil never processed it. It's the true loss of innocence moment that you talk about in your high school English classes after reading To Kill A Mockingbird.
I was watching coverage of it last night, the CBS special by Robert DeNiro, it was powerful. I cried. I'm glad it wasn't overly political. But the footage, the raw footage, was so gripping/emotional. The craziness of that day. The way the firefighters just ran in. The untold stories. There was also coverage on MSNBC of "9/11 as it happened" which was literally them showing their broadcast coverage from that morning. They also had interviewed the broadcasters, talking about the impact of that day, how they saw it, how it changed them, etc. As if it was 9/11, I literally could not turn away. I was up till 3AM watching this stuff.
You think about the chaos of that day. The craziness. Not to trivialize that day, but I've only had that sense of chaos one other time in my life - when I first saw the Dark Knight. That true sense of absolute chaos that the Joker had on Gotham was polarizing. The way Osama Bin Laden controlled the chaos of a nation by hijacking four planes is gripping. It grabs at you. The difference is 9/11 was real. The Dark Knight was not. And that drives it home more. Living in New York, it hits me more now than it did 10 years ago. I never really knew the towers to be anything, but my parents have a picture of them on it. It's in movies I watch. It's another amazing aspect of this great city. And in a matter of hours they were both gone.
I'm far from trying to praise Osama Bin Laden for what he did. But, it was a well strategized attack. All of these things happened within a short amount of time - which felt shorter because of the un-realness of it. And you think about United 93, what that could of been. If it hit the Capitol, or the White House, how awful that would of been. It's truly a blessing that there weren't more planes involved, more targets.
The other aspect of the day - how people try to tie it in to everything. Specifically sports. Everyone is asking players what they remember from that day. To be honest, I don't give a damn what they remember. I lived that day. We all did. These athletes aren't really heroes. We talk about them and treat them like Rock Stars. Yet they didn't run into those buildings. They didn't work 24 hour shifts. Their kids will have a father and have more toys than a firefighter's kid because of the millions they make. It's absolutely bogus that we live like this. It won't change, because we only really reflect this time of the year. Come October, we will be singing the praises of Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee and 9/11 will be far from our minds. State Farm won the day with that ad though. Mad props to them.
One last thought - of course it's a Springsteen thought. I listened to the whole album of The Rising this past Saturday. The album was inspired by 9/11. And if you listen to it thinking about 9/11, the lyrics all make sense. It's another moving piece of it. I think of Bruce as the American storyteller in terms of music, the American Dream, etc. And what did that album tell us? That we have lost some brave and strong men. But we still have our country, our freedom, our friends, our family. Our future. And it's not yours or mine. It's ours. Bruce captured the feeling of a nation, and it makes the album that much more powerful.
We won't forget. We can never forget. We carry on with our lives. Our country is changed. But the emotion that was felt on that day, it'll never go away.
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