Sunday, September 11, 2011

9/11. I was out of touch.

I must have been one of the few Americans who spent most of that day not knowing it had happened.

I was spending a few days in the emptied house in Crescent City of my recently passed away mother-in-law. No radio, no T.V., no internet. Neighbors were all all strangers and lived hundreds of yards away.

I spent the morning finishing reading Lord of the Rings --which was going to be a movie in the near future.

It wasn't until the middle of the afternoon that I called my wife.

Who told me the Twin Towers went down.

"Oh, you're exaggerating," I said. "You mean part of it fell off, don't you?"

"No...they are both gone."

I still didn't believe her. As I was driving home, I got the eerie sense that every car had it's radio on and we were all living in the same moment. Even on the road, there was a sense of oneness that I can't explain.

And when I finally saw the footage on T.V. it put lie to any idea I might have had that reality couldn't live up to imagination. In my wildest imagination, I didn't see what I was seeing on T.V.

I'd been listening to the radio, but I just didn't get it.

Anyway, yesterday MSNBC ran real-time coverage of the events, so ten years later I finally got a sense of what everyone else went through.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

A tragedy to be sure, but the bigger one is how the US has responded in the last 10 years. We are not a better nation. Many of us are poorer and in more debt.

Duncan McGeary said...

I agree. I think the whole country had PTS. A nervous breakdown.

H. Bruce Miller said...

Instead of using the tragedy of 9/11 to unite Americans, Bush, Cheney et al. exploited it to divide the nation, branding anyone who didn't support them and their policies 100% as "traitors" and "appeasers." The wound they inflicted by doing that hasn't healed; if anything, it has deepened and festered. And instead of trying to heal it, their successors take every opportunity to inflame it.

Anonymous said...

OREO & SHRUB(twisted-little): SideBYSide at ground-zero

Brings tears to mee eyes it does.

Finally the siamese twins are joined by common arsehole forever stiched by 911. Hey its USA they use duck-tape.

*

Bush and Obama: Side by Side at Ground Zero
New York Times

Anonymous said...

Fascism is said to be the result when the people no longer have a voice in their government. Certainly that is the case post 911. The 'bankers' now have a license to spy and print money with no regard to the 'little people'.

“The best answer is, I don’t know,” Harper said. “We have had a real breakdown in government and public oversight of government. We have a real secrecy problem in this country.”

How 9/11 Completely Changed Surveillance in U.S.

By Ryan Singel

Anonymous said...

x100

See Bruce we have stuff in common!

Anonymous said...

I always talk about 'fascism', but forget to define, ... so let's remember,

"Fascism is government run by Business"

Bend is essentially a FASCIST city-state, as it is run by the RE biz.

The USA of course is ran by Wall St bankers, .e.g. goldman-sachs... et-al

The 'fascists' greatest fear is an armed populace.

Anonymous said...

Going to to the toilet can send you to prison.

The big 911 story this week is that a flight to CHICAGO was aided by 2 f16's, because of an alert.

3 people arrested, they had spent too much time in the potty. Well now we're a nation that spy's on each other and narcs on each other. If you fly stay in your seat, only terrorists shit on an airplane.