Remembering
remembering, remembering. i remember the impact shook me out of my chair on the umpteen and eleventieth floor of wtc1 and i thought oh shit, it’s a cessna, no wait, it’s a jumbo, no wait, it’s the entire islamic world riding a fucking jumbo jet into the rotting carcass of western civilisation and screaming death to the great satan, and also i remember that wtc1 had a lot of stairs. and i remember when they yelled death to the great satan and took over the plane and i thought does this mean we won’t get a sandwich and then somebody said let’s roll and i thought a roll would be good too and then everything went black and i’m still waiting for my roll. and i remember thinking this was our pearl harbor and trying to remember how we felt last pearl harbor and not really knowing because it was before my time and so i just winged it and put military pictures on my blog and lots of flags. and i remember pacing the corridors of the white house wondering what to do next and an angel appeared at my shoulder saying remember, remember the eleventh of september and i said of course i remember it was only yesterday and he said yes but you have to keep remembering every day from now until the end of your life, it is your curse. and i asked how i could lift the curse and he said invaaaade theeemmmm and so i did. and i remember standing out in the street as dust from wtc1 rolled over me and it seemed strange because my street was in kabul but this was after all the day that shook the world and its impact was felt everywhere and also its dust. and i remember not doing much that day. and i remember as dust from wtc2 rolled over me and it seemed strange because my street was in baghdad but what can you expect, it’s a dusty place, and the wtc was our mount pinatubo, its dust got everywhere and turned our sunsets red for months.
and i remember that for a long time it seemed disrespectful to voice any kind of mixed feelings about what we were all experiencing, every man, woman and child in the western world, because our experience belonged to those who were there, or lost somebody that day, or knew somebody who lost somebody, or knew. and i remember making a picture one month and one week after september the eleventh two thousand and one, and not posting it on my weblog because it didn’t have enough flags and wasn’t exactly respectful and i was feeling confused. and i remember writing a lot of words remembering these events but these not being enough, because every september 11 everyone tells me i should keep remembering, and i remember thinking three september 11ths ago is this it, is this every september 11 forever, because nobody I know personally died, and nobody i know personally knows someone who died, and i’d like to save some grieving for people i know who die, even if they die in a small way, even if they aren’t killed in an explosion or buried in rubble or martyred, because so many people aren’t, and yet they have lives and deaths and so do i and so will i.
and i remember deciding to leave the anniversaries to those with real cause to grieve, those who had lost a loved one and not just an ideal or an idea. and i remember not writing anything about the anniversary in 2004 or 2005. but this is the fifth anniversary, and five years is more significant than three or four because it’s the fingers of a hand. and so the memories wave at us every five years, more and more hands waving goodbye, five, ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred years. goodbye world trade center, goodbye saigon, goodbye hiroshima and dresden and coventry and guernica, goodbye gallipoli and the somme.
remember remember
remember remember
remember remember
remember remember
remember remember
remember remember–<–’
remember remember
remember remember
remember remember
remember remember
remember remember
remember remember
remember remember
remember remember
remember remember
remember remember
remember remember
remember remember
remember remember
and this wasn’t written on september 11 two thousand and anything, so that’s all right.