New York City, from anchorage 5 mi. off Brooklyn, September 11, 2001, 6pm
Yes, I took this picture.
Four years…and so much has changed at home. Four years of being needlessly terrified by a government that cares only for the rich, the white, the Christian, and the heterosexual. Four years of having our lives constricted bit, by bit, by bit, all in the name of greater security, of giving up the freedoms, the rights, and the responsibilities that are part and parcel of what we’re told we are. Four years, and where has it gotten us? Caught flat-footed by nature in our complacency, victims of our own arrogance and short-sightedness, the lie given to all our attempts to make our world “safe.”
I wish I could say I felt some sense of connection to the events of 2001 but, even having been so close to New York City that day, so close that if we’d left Boston a day early as we’d originally planned we’d have taken on debris from the towers coming down, I do not. I wish I could say that my heart rends, but I can not.
I wish I could say that I’ve embraced the true lessons of September 11th: to live fully, to not be afraid, to love and laugh and appreciate what you have in the people who care for you because it (they or you) could be gone in a flash. But I have not. I have been inundated, just as every other American has been, with the false lessons – that might makes right, that with enough effort we can get everyone in the world to love us, and if they don’t, well, they’re our enemies and the only solution is to kill them all – and have been too busy fending them off to learn anything I really need to know. Nor has my country learned, just as the school yard bully never really learns, that pushing other people around will eventually come back to bite you in the ass.
I wish I could say that I believe that things will get better soon, that people will wake up and realize that now is what matters; that we need to stop letting ourselves believe the lies our government tells us, the ones that allow us to relinquish responsibility not only for our own behavior but also for our country’s actions; that treating others with dignity and respect is the only way to get along; that once we’ve totally destroyed this planet we’ll have nowhere left to stand; that what you do in this life is infinitely more important than any after-life reward some holy man has promised to you. But I do not.
I wish I could say these things, but I dare not.