There is, I suppose, nothing more American than football on a Sunday afternoon. Unless, perhaps it is the particular genre of commercials that accompanies such games. So far, I've seen three commercials tagged with the promise to "Never Forget." Such is the corporate response to memory.
Earlier this morning, before the football began, my wife and I sat outside on our porch swing, talking. I mentioned that I was planning to spend much of my afternoon, like this, writing about what happened. She pleaded with me not to, suspecting--with good reason--that my response might seethe with political ire, and thus, be less than empathetic. There have been such responses. There have, likewise, been responses that foreground the individual experiences of those only peripherally impacted by the events 10 years ago today. Moreover, there have been the responses of those directly affected who, as Lee Siegel points out, are obliged to perform their grief publicly for all of us.
I am thankful for all such responses. I am--even--thankful for the politicians, even if many respond with little more than propaganda. That is, after all, what politicians do.
In my opinion, however, September 11, 2001, is not about what politicians, writers, or corporations do. The narratives that they have told us, whether through speeches, articles, history books, or those stirring, string-field commercials do matter immensely. They shape the way future generations, our future, will view those attacks, that insanely sunny day, the smoke, the rhetoric, and yes, the violence. Yet, increasingly, I fear for that future, for what people--like my students who were 8 to 12 years old at the time--will eventually make of that day. Will it be a day whose significance is occluded by commercialism, by media, by performances of grief? Will it become a template for the fungibility of facts? A kaleidoscope of possible conspiracies?
That, really, is why I feel obliged to write today. I want to look elsewhere, to touch, briefly, on the ways in which that day differed from today, from the days prior, and importantly, how it didn't. I hope, of course, my wife understands this, that she reads the post, and might one day show it to younger members of our family as a way of explaining.
For me, what is remarkable about 9/11 is that all of us have a story. There are thousands upon thousands of stories. The normal prerequisites that our culture seeks for authority, or the very right to speak, are, for the most part, non-existent. And we all hear those stories--similar in their confusion, in their fear, in their resolve, and yes, in their Americanness.
More, most of us recognize the smallness of our sufferings. Waking at 2 AM to the sirens barreling down Van Ness Avenue and believing, as if it were an article of faith, that our city was next. Looking up into the empty skies of Pittsburgh to see a single plane, a plane that shouldn't have been there. None of these small narratives compare to the years without for so many of our countrymen--not just in New York or DC, but in small towns everywhere, including Afghanistan, including Iraq.
From a more cynical perspective, one could see the proliferation of stories as symptomatic of our culture's narcissism. Indeed, it is difficult to fathom the number of bylines generated. It is difficult to contemplate the sheer number of Facebook status messages and blog posts. Yet today, I prefer to listen. I prefer to believe in the need for such storytelling, for the repetitions that make sense of our lives. I'd prefer to be thankful for all of those stories--even those of politicians--because they offer a glimpse into the complexity of what happened around the country; they suggest the enormity of loss that the numbers, memorials, speeches, and editorials don't quite capture. All of these moments that we might prefer to forget bristle against the simple narratives, reminding us that history, by and large, remains unspoken.
So today has been a confluence of personal narratives. Small sorrows. Ineffable tragedies.
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| Union Street in Cow Hollow (Photo by Alexrk2, Creative Commons License) |
Like many twenty-somethings on the West Coast, I woke to the news, turned on CNN before I'd had a cup of coffee and watched for hours. At the time, I lived in one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco with my partner at the time. She was working from home that day, and as a freelancer, I was planning to scrounge for one or another contract job, or perhaps, I was planning to work on a novel that's, thankfully, been lost in the interim. I doubt either of us did much work that day.
We stayed fixed to the televisions, watching like everyone else, until we couldn't really watch any longer, and then, by mutual agreement, we donned our jackets and went out into a San Francisco with deep blue sky, flecks of sun glinting from every metallic surface. We walked down Union Street, past the Octagon House, past the jewelers and furniture stores, where life was continuing in a fashion resembling normalcy. We looked for something to eat and decided, for some reason, on Extreme Pizza, where the television in the corner was tuned to CNN, turned up. I can't, though I feel like I should, remember what we ate. Maybe subs. Maybe not. I do remember that everyone there--when they were not eating, talking, or working--was watching. The conversations were muted, not at all like they had been on previous days or like they would be in a few short days. Everyone wanted simply to know.
That day, both my partner and I spoke to total strangers with an openness and vulnerability that--a few days previously or a few days hence--we would not offer to our closest friends, or even each other.
I asked across tables, "Have they learned anything new?"
And for a few moments, you knew, like everyone else, that this was history. This was our history. We all wanted to know why. We all wanted to know how. We all wanted to know.
Now, ten years later, I want to recognize what happened that day, but more than that, I want to reflect on the few hours that afternoon when all sought to understand, and ask whether we really have.
What all such memories make abundantly clear are that loss and love are inextricably bound, and though, in the decade since, our nation, our world has surely lost more than enough, have we loved enough? Have we listened to complete strangers as we did that day? Have we wept, yet, for people we never knew?
Should we?
Or should we give into the silence, watch football?
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