As the tenth anniversary of September 11th draws near, the memories of that terriible day creep more and more into my thoughts, pulling on my already - world - weary heartstrings, and that place inside of me where all of my anger, regret and deeply rooted pain for all victims of violence resides.
As signs of the cyclic and by now predictable, September 11th memorial preparations begin to I can't help but marvel over the seeming majority of Americans that seem to have rather adeptly compartmentalized their feelings memories etc regarding this tragedy, as if in a a box, to be opened annually upon request of the media.
An obligation almost, very nearly foisted upon them eager to be forgotten, once the fanfare, the specials, fade..And yes while time is a healer of sorts, and as human beings we take advanatge of iyd sllsying sndf buttressing affects it almost seems blasphemous here because, well.... 9/11 was different.
First of all, although tragic, 911 wasn't "a tragedy".
It was an en - masse set of violent crimes.Thousands of senseless and cruel violent crimes committed against thousands of innocents. Through these crimes, thousands of hero's, martyrs and heartaches emerged
When I think of 9/11, I think of all of the individual stories, stories of courage, pain, fear and loss - and it feels to me as if it happened yesterday, no matter how much time passes. IAnd this is why I cannot fathom ever reaching the emotional equilibrium whereby my grieving for this event becomes relegated to one,or two days a year.
And of course there were also the changes the crimes left.
I can recall immediately seeing and feeling a dramatic shift in the way that people behaved towards one another in the months that followed 911. There was a new sense of commonality that had never been there before., a connectedness among just about everyone, this decidedly did not exist prior to the attacks.
Also there was the en - masse rejection of all things vapid tasteless violent and unimportant.
Nowhere was this more obvious than the entertainment industry; All films depicting gratuitous violence, (especially terrorism of any kind) were quietly but determinedly censored, or rejected out of hand by Film and Studio heads. This was the first time in my life that I had ever witnessed any kind of Censorship, for any reason, in this Country. And for the first time ever, it didn't seem like such a bad thing.
People were kinder towards one another, there seemed an elemental change in what we all viewed as being important. A pushing away of monetary pursuits and obsessions, a return towards family friends and community.I remember thinking ' how ironic - these evil acts, had, in the end, unwittingly served to do good, defeating the very evil that brought them all to bear; They bought us back full circle to the things that truly mattered.. It seemed for a time that the entire country's value system had made a dramatic shift for the better.
To be continued
