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I'd like to buy the world a Coke
OK, well, here's my stab at gushing out my 9/11 thoughts. You of course know how to skip this if you are fatigued of such things, or just sick of me in general. I meant to write this last night but I was too tired, also strangely anxious.
I'm tired tonight too so this will probably be pretty random and semi-coherent. Sorry.
On September 11, 2001, I was still living in Chicago's "South Loop", which is very near to downtown, just about two blocks from the el track that defines the Loop itself. I was still working for Shaftco, and no one was paying much attention to me at work... as long as the network kept running as normal, no one had a whole lot to say to me. This was fine; it also meant that I could do my typical work-thing, where I laze in bed of a morning til the last possible moment then drag myself out to face the day. I was living in a building called Printers Square then, which in addition to renting overpriced apartments, was also a "telco hotel" - many different telecom vendors met there to exchange connections. Shaftco had some lovely space on the first floor. This was an "unmanned" site but I worked there off and on. One the morning of 9/11 I was supposed to meet some technicians there who were going to do maintenance on the half-dozen air conditioning units that we had in the alley behind the building. I knew these guys would have to call me when they got there to work, so til I got that call, I was just going to sleep. When they called I could throw on some clothes and stroll downstairs to meet them. All very nice.
At some point before 9 a.m. that morning my Internet addiction overcame my basic laziness and I rolled out of bed and heaved my bulk into the chair in front of the computer. I was always in IRC in those days, and as soon as I looked at the monitor I saw Tracy and Jes talking about something in IRC... something about planes hitting buildings. Ay ay ay. What was this? I turned on the TV... Fox News, CNN, I can't recall.... Over the next hour or so I chatted with people in IRC and AIM, watched the news, and tried to get various news websites to load. The AC contractors showed up after all; I let them in and showed them what we wanted then went back upstairs. I have felt guilty since then, more than once, that I didn't ask them if they knew what was going on in the world that morning. But they stayed and went about their business. As for me, it turned out I would not going into my actual office that day; someone had made the decision that the Merchandise Mart was to be evacuated, and I worked in the Apparel Center building right next to it, so they closed our office as well. I called Blake to tell him to turn around and head home, but he was already on his way back to Tinley Park.
As soon as I saw the planes hit the towers, my first thought was, "They must've had their own pilots - I can't imagine the airline pilots would go along with this," which I guess is no great insight. My second thought was, "This is Iraq's revenge for the Gulf War". I did not think that the towers would fall. I had no concept of the toxins that would pour off them. Until I heard that the Pentagon had been hit as well, it didn't dawn on me what a calculated assault on the U.S. this really was - hit the financial nerve center, decapitate the military and the federal government... at the very least strike serious symbolic blows....
As the story emerged I found myself feeling both rage and shame. How could we have allowed this to happen? Who fucked up so badly that four planes could be hijacked simultaneously, and three of them flown miles off course and into actual buildings? And I felt sad of course... sad at the loss, at the enormity of all this, that this was not some trivial non-event. The World Trade Center was gone. Crazy casualty figures were being tossed around on the news reports that evening - tens of thousands potentially dead. I remember noting that the network news channels seemed to grope for appropriate fanfare for their coverage in the days after 9/11, but they used the same graphics and sounds for the Chandra Levy story... any news just expanded to fill the void of their airtime. How could they distinguish this tragedy from the endless string they had already paraded before us?
As the details of the hijackings emerged I only felt more shame, but also a kind of cold fear. It took so little to destroy so much... these men could never build anything like the World Trade Center, but they could certainly destroy it, and with only the barest of tools and their own hideous effort of will. The old saw that our enemies wanted to live as we do did not apply here. These men had lived in the United States for months and seen America for themselves. They were still happy to murder us, to try to tear our nation down. I realized too how audacious and brilliant this was. Why build missiles when you have men willing to give their lives in jets? No one expected this. This was not how hijackings were supposed to work. All the rule books would say, if your plane is hijacked, do not resist... obey the hijackers... just completely blind to this possibility that the terrorists homed right in on. And so the passengers went to be incinerated, strapped in helpless. And so people who had gone to their jobs found themselves opting to leap to certain death from one of the world's tallest buildings rather than perishing in the fire.
There is no question in my mind that the hijackers acted to generate maximum terror, but these "terrorists"... well who were they? To my mind no one has clearly claimed responsibility, although I am willing to abide by the weight of the evidence against Al Qaeda. But really, a year later and almost all we are left with (if I may be inappropriately decorous) is a screaming horror of a Rorshach stain that seems to spread ever-outward... smashed jets, thousands dead, skyscrapers turned to rubble... and no one signed this note. No one called up to claim responsibility. No supervillain appeared on a monitor somewhere to gloat and make demands, threaten additional strikes... just nothing.
So now where are we? All I have known for the last twelve months is that we cannot allow this to happen again. Exactly how we achieve that, I don't know. There are always going to be people out in the world who feel small yet righteous, who have grievances, and who will find followers. If someone wants to hurt you badly enough, they are likely to find a way. This is probably more likely in a relatively open society like the United States, but it could happen in any city, really. We cannot have a repeat, not in the United States, not in Germany, not in China, not anywhere. Yes I know we will all die someday eventually, and like the glaciers of the last ice age receding, someday the age of meat will come to an end and the human biomass will wither away. But I still have my wishes and my will for the short term. I don't want to have to throw myself from a skyscraper window and meet my end as a pink mist because someone felt god told them to kill. I don't want to see the beautiful, sweet children of my friends terrified then murdered in hijacked planes. I don't want to see the ideals that the United States is supposed to live up to just cease to be. And I don't know for certain how to assure any of this.
Actually there is one other thing I know, which is that the events of 9/11, and so much that happened in response to them - most especially the actions in Afghanistan - just strike me as the most awful sort of waste imaginable. There has to be a better way for us to get along.
Hmmm I was going to say something about the expressions of patriotism that I have found strangely comforting, and that others seem to find annoying, but I am tired now. Maybe some other time. Well OK, actually probably some other time. Anyway - everyone, be safe.
This picture was taken atop the World Trade Center in the summer of 1993. From left to right we have myself, Mike C., Jim D. and "Hippie" Mike P.
I'm tired tonight too so this will probably be pretty random and semi-coherent. Sorry.
On September 11, 2001, I was still living in Chicago's "South Loop", which is very near to downtown, just about two blocks from the el track that defines the Loop itself. I was still working for Shaftco, and no one was paying much attention to me at work... as long as the network kept running as normal, no one had a whole lot to say to me. This was fine; it also meant that I could do my typical work-thing, where I laze in bed of a morning til the last possible moment then drag myself out to face the day. I was living in a building called Printers Square then, which in addition to renting overpriced apartments, was also a "telco hotel" - many different telecom vendors met there to exchange connections. Shaftco had some lovely space on the first floor. This was an "unmanned" site but I worked there off and on. One the morning of 9/11 I was supposed to meet some technicians there who were going to do maintenance on the half-dozen air conditioning units that we had in the alley behind the building. I knew these guys would have to call me when they got there to work, so til I got that call, I was just going to sleep. When they called I could throw on some clothes and stroll downstairs to meet them. All very nice.
At some point before 9 a.m. that morning my Internet addiction overcame my basic laziness and I rolled out of bed and heaved my bulk into the chair in front of the computer. I was always in IRC in those days, and as soon as I looked at the monitor I saw Tracy and Jes talking about something in IRC... something about planes hitting buildings. Ay ay ay. What was this? I turned on the TV... Fox News, CNN, I can't recall.... Over the next hour or so I chatted with people in IRC and AIM, watched the news, and tried to get various news websites to load. The AC contractors showed up after all; I let them in and showed them what we wanted then went back upstairs. I have felt guilty since then, more than once, that I didn't ask them if they knew what was going on in the world that morning. But they stayed and went about their business. As for me, it turned out I would not going into my actual office that day; someone had made the decision that the Merchandise Mart was to be evacuated, and I worked in the Apparel Center building right next to it, so they closed our office as well. I called Blake to tell him to turn around and head home, but he was already on his way back to Tinley Park.
As soon as I saw the planes hit the towers, my first thought was, "They must've had their own pilots - I can't imagine the airline pilots would go along with this," which I guess is no great insight. My second thought was, "This is Iraq's revenge for the Gulf War". I did not think that the towers would fall. I had no concept of the toxins that would pour off them. Until I heard that the Pentagon had been hit as well, it didn't dawn on me what a calculated assault on the U.S. this really was - hit the financial nerve center, decapitate the military and the federal government... at the very least strike serious symbolic blows....
As the story emerged I found myself feeling both rage and shame. How could we have allowed this to happen? Who fucked up so badly that four planes could be hijacked simultaneously, and three of them flown miles off course and into actual buildings? And I felt sad of course... sad at the loss, at the enormity of all this, that this was not some trivial non-event. The World Trade Center was gone. Crazy casualty figures were being tossed around on the news reports that evening - tens of thousands potentially dead. I remember noting that the network news channels seemed to grope for appropriate fanfare for their coverage in the days after 9/11, but they used the same graphics and sounds for the Chandra Levy story... any news just expanded to fill the void of their airtime. How could they distinguish this tragedy from the endless string they had already paraded before us?
As the details of the hijackings emerged I only felt more shame, but also a kind of cold fear. It took so little to destroy so much... these men could never build anything like the World Trade Center, but they could certainly destroy it, and with only the barest of tools and their own hideous effort of will. The old saw that our enemies wanted to live as we do did not apply here. These men had lived in the United States for months and seen America for themselves. They were still happy to murder us, to try to tear our nation down. I realized too how audacious and brilliant this was. Why build missiles when you have men willing to give their lives in jets? No one expected this. This was not how hijackings were supposed to work. All the rule books would say, if your plane is hijacked, do not resist... obey the hijackers... just completely blind to this possibility that the terrorists homed right in on. And so the passengers went to be incinerated, strapped in helpless. And so people who had gone to their jobs found themselves opting to leap to certain death from one of the world's tallest buildings rather than perishing in the fire.
There is no question in my mind that the hijackers acted to generate maximum terror, but these "terrorists"... well who were they? To my mind no one has clearly claimed responsibility, although I am willing to abide by the weight of the evidence against Al Qaeda. But really, a year later and almost all we are left with (if I may be inappropriately decorous) is a screaming horror of a Rorshach stain that seems to spread ever-outward... smashed jets, thousands dead, skyscrapers turned to rubble... and no one signed this note. No one called up to claim responsibility. No supervillain appeared on a monitor somewhere to gloat and make demands, threaten additional strikes... just nothing.
So now where are we? All I have known for the last twelve months is that we cannot allow this to happen again. Exactly how we achieve that, I don't know. There are always going to be people out in the world who feel small yet righteous, who have grievances, and who will find followers. If someone wants to hurt you badly enough, they are likely to find a way. This is probably more likely in a relatively open society like the United States, but it could happen in any city, really. We cannot have a repeat, not in the United States, not in Germany, not in China, not anywhere. Yes I know we will all die someday eventually, and like the glaciers of the last ice age receding, someday the age of meat will come to an end and the human biomass will wither away. But I still have my wishes and my will for the short term. I don't want to have to throw myself from a skyscraper window and meet my end as a pink mist because someone felt god told them to kill. I don't want to see the beautiful, sweet children of my friends terrified then murdered in hijacked planes. I don't want to see the ideals that the United States is supposed to live up to just cease to be. And I don't know for certain how to assure any of this.
Actually there is one other thing I know, which is that the events of 9/11, and so much that happened in response to them - most especially the actions in Afghanistan - just strike me as the most awful sort of waste imaginable. There has to be a better way for us to get along.
Hmmm I was going to say something about the expressions of patriotism that I have found strangely comforting, and that others seem to find annoying, but I am tired now. Maybe some other time. Well OK, actually probably some other time. Anyway - everyone, be safe.
This picture was taken atop the World Trade Center in the summer of 1993. From left to right we have myself, Mike C., Jim D. and "Hippie" Mike P.
no subject
I feel lucky that I live outside a not-so-big-city like Seattle.
no subject
Of course I now live by Princeton in New Jersey, right at the veritable hub for clandestine anthrax distribution in the U.S.