There are moments in history when the fabric of everyday life unravels, and there is this unstable dynamism that allows for incredible social change in short periods of time. People and the world they're living in can be utterly transformed, either for the good or the bad, or some mixture of the two.--Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, Tony Kushner
There are several images burned into my memory from that day.
My husband's heavy work boots.
My father-in-law in his underwear.
The steel blue of the sky.
The oddness of that plane flying into the building.
People jumping.
Towers falling.
It had started off as such a beautiful morning. Not quite the end of Summer. On the cusp of Fall.
Cusp: a point of transition, as from one historical period to the next. A turning point.
Cusp. Amazing how one word can say so much.
Our family was just the other side of a cusp, having moved to Southern Oregon just the previous month. It had been a complete leap of faith. After selling our home in Washington State three years prior, with the intent to move to Ashland, we'd ended up chickening out and floundering about. However, we eventually realized that even though it made very little sense financially, we really wanted to live in Ashland. Even if it meant living in a hovel. One of my favorite quotes, this one from John Burroughs, became our mantra, "Leap and the net will appear."
So here we were in Ashland, post leap, on a beautiful morning in September. My in-laws, who'd been very concerned (an understatement) regarding our decision to move were in town for a visit.
The first thing I remember about this morning was my husband, clad in his heavy work gear and boots, blasting into our bedroom. I immediately knew something bad had happened. There was his demeanor of course, but there was also our "no shoes in the house" policy that he was breaking.
"There's been an attack on the World Trade Centers. I just heard it on the radio when I left for work," he gasped.
I jumped out of bed. The door across the hall was open and I saw my father-in-law, a big man, sitting bleary eyed on the edge of the bed. He'd heard. I'll never forget the image of him sitting there. I don't ordinarily see him naked to his shorts, not even swimming trunks. But there he was, bare chested, in grey cotton boxers trying to rub the sleep away from his eyes. It's funny the things you remember.
The only tv in the house was in that room, and even though it hadn't been hooked up to cable, I got busy trying to get some sort of reception. We were desperate for news, to know what was happening, for understanding.
"Why would they want to do this to us?" my father in law asked.
The immediate response that came to my mind was: Why wouldn't they? Considering the way we meddle in everyone else's affairs (and this was pre-9/11 meddling), considering the way we consume 40% of the world's resources yet represent only 5% of the population, considering the way we create--because of our rampant consumption--about 1/4 of the world's greenhouse gasses yet refuse to sign the Kyoto protocol, considering there are 2.8 billion people who live on less than $2 a day and struggle desperately to meet their basic needs for water and food and medicine and...Why wouldn't someone want to do this to us? In fact, it's downright amazing that they haven't done it before.
These were the thoughts running through my mind and leaking by little bits out of my mouth.
We decided to move the television to the living room. We found a cable there that ran outside and up the wall to the roof, ending there and unconnected to any service but somehow enabling us to get a bit of scratchy reception . It was hard to determine at first if what we were seeing was live or was a replay. We soon realized though that the footage of flight 175 flying into the south tower was a replay. And that the horrifying footage of people jumping was live. As was the south tower falling. And then the north. As was the bright blue sky suddenly turning grey and black with thick smoke and ash.
How can so much life and meaning and existence and concrete and steel and elevators and commodes and computers and copy machines and file cabinets and desks with pictures on them...just be pulverized and cremated so quickly? In less than 12 seconds? How can this happen? How is it that we can sit here in the comfort of our living rooms, on a beautiful September morning, witnessing it?
Yes, it proved to be a cusp moment. A turning point from one historical period to another. A turning point for each of us as individuals, for our nation, and because we create such a big footprint--for the world.
In one brief moment, so much--more than we can even begin to imagine or detail here--was lost.
My original intention here was to write about the 9/11 truth movement. I've been wondering what the truth was ever since that fateful morning. I have so many questions. Questions that started the moment--was it Ari Fleischer? Condoleezza Rice?--said to us on that ashen day, "We never imagined that anyone could/would use airplanes as missiles. That we could be attacked like this." I couldn't believe, even on that day when I didn't yet know of all the evidence supporting my gut reaction--that they hadn't imagined or planned on how to deal with just such an attack. It just felt odd. Not quite right. Like when you run into your child leaving the kitchen and they've got bits of chocolate on the side of their face and under their finger nails and they say, even before you ask, "I didn't eat anything." It just smelled funny.
And things continued to smell funnier and funnier. Not funny like ha ha. Funny like bad. That-smell-makes-me-ill kind of funny. Smells that really intensified in September 2002 when Neil Mackay, in his article for Scotland's Sunday Herald, directed us to look at the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), and the document they authored in September 2000: Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century which is where we find the now famous line: Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event--like a new Pearl Harbor.
Five years after 9/11, the questions have only multiplied.
I'm just another regular person in a long line of regular people trying to understand. Just another regular person who spends time worrying about her kids, her marriage, what she's supposed to do in life, what happens in her name, what happens in her country, what happens in the world. Just another regular person spending a great deal of the time left over--after doing the laundry, swishing the toilet, trying to stretch a limited amount of income to cover groceries and the rent and classes for the kids and car insurance (not even considering being able to afford health insurance), sharing meals with friends and family, in search of the next great swimming hole...,--just another regular person trying to figure out what really happened on that fateful day in September. Asking questions regarding the day that was such a catalyst for so much.
Questions like these:
Why would our own government not be insistent on getting to the bottom of what really happened?
Why would they resist a formal investigation?
Why would they label anyone daring to question the "official version" as "aiding and abetting the enemy?"
What about those 19 hijackers anyway? Named so conveniently just three days after the attacks.
Why would it take a committee of grieved widows to demand an investigation?
Why does the "official version" not address or attempt to explain the collapse of WTC Building 7?
Why did NORAD not respond according to protocol?
What about the war games being carried out by the military the morning of 9/11?
Why did Bush continue reading about a pet goat if the nation was under attack?
Why was the evidence removed from the scene of this most heinous crime and immediately shipped overseas?
What about all the put options on American Airlines and United made prior to 9/11?
Why were Iraq and Saddam Hussein implicated when it was clear that they had no ties to 9/11?
Why did we ignore Saudi Arabia when they were the supposed home of most of the supposed attackers?
Why has Bin-Laden not been brought to justice?
What about the Bin-Laden/Bush family ties?
These are just a few of the questions. There are many more. And I had intended on detailing them here because part of me believes that in order to see where we are going we need to understand where we are and what brought us here. There are plenty of websites dedicated to trying to uncover the truth regarding 9/11. And they are worthy of a look. Questioning, is not, nor never should be, considered a fascist or terrorist trait. If something is the truth, it should be able to hold up to any kind of scrutiny. So we should, each and every one of us, question away.
But something within is begging me to put aside these questions for the time and give voice for a moment to the other part of me who believes that it's just as important, if not more so, to consider what kind of world I want to live in, what sort of world I want my children to inherit, to imagine it and work towards it. The events of 9/11, and those that have followed, force us to consider this.
9/11 was a crisis moment. Crisis, however awful and painful, creates change. Change creates opportunity. 9/11 was a moment we did not ask for. But it does offer us an incredible opportunity for change. Wouldn't the victims of that tragic day, suggest no less? Perhaps the question we most need to be asking is what kind of change do we want that to be? What kind of lasting and beautiful memorial can we create in honor of all those who have lost their lives, not only on 9/11, but in the wars born of that fateful day?
One of my favorite tunes at the moment is Michael Franti's I Know I'm Not Alone. This past week the San Francisco Chronicle ran a piece on Franti regarding his music and observations following a personal tour of Iraq and Palestine:
What surprised him most was the lukewarm reaction from the locals he got to the first song he played, "Bomb the World," an anti-war tune that includes the lyrics, "We can bomb the world to pieces / But we can't bomb it into peace."
"People told me afterward that they didn't want to hear songs protesting the war," Franti says. "They wanted to hear songs to make them laugh, dance and get on with their lives."
He went on to say regarding his new album Yell Fire!:
"I guess I took my cues from people on the street in Baghdad," he says. "I didn't want to make depressing music."
This reminded me of something I'd heard Julia Butterfly Hill say a few years ago. Julia had come to Ashland to give a presentation and said that perhaps the most effective way of bringing about needed change was to show people how rewarding and fun it can be. That perhaps it would be most effective, as Gandhi once said, to Be the Change.
Yes, there are questions. Questions that we deserve truthful answers to. But in the end it's what we the people, what humanity as a whole, imagines this world can be that will be the final truth of 9/11. It is the cusp we are on. It is our turning point. There is no question that we are being transformed, it's up to us though to decide if it's for the good. What will we choose?
Personally, I'm going to record a new image onto the tape of that morning. It is going to be a towering memorial. A memorial to our common humanity. To all that binds us. Not a physical building, but a flame that will continue to grow brighter and brighter as we come to more fully realize our true nature. As we come to fully realize that we are all connected. The caption on this image will be the words (if he doesn't mind) of Zen Buddhist Monk, Thich Nhat Hanh--We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.
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