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Notes -
The view from a quarter century later...
It's 8 o'clock on a Tuesday and I am just starting my shift. Ordinarily the TVs on display for sale would be playing a demo-loop fed from a DvD-player behind the counter but this morning they're tuned to CBS. A small crowd has gathered to watch as Tower 1 burns. I'm supposed to be answering questions, and trying to upsell people on the company's membership discount program and extended warranty plans but my heart's not in it. I watch the second plane hit live. I remember the collective gasp, and the horrified silence that followed. Then like Colonel Kurtz's diamond bullet it strikes me. This is no mistake. This is a deliberate act. An act of courage, an act of perfect crystalline Will.
100s of people dead in an instant because somebody made a choice. By the end of the day that count would be in the thousands. I would later find out that a friend of mine had lost an entire branch of their family tree in that fireball. An Aunt, an Uncle, two young cousins, and a dog all reduced to ash in the impact of United Flight 175 with Tower 2's southern face.
As the morning progresses there are rumors of other hijackings. Over a dozen planes are unaccounted for or not responding to ATC. There is rampant speculation about what target will be hit next. The President is in the air, and National Guard jets are being scrambled. The rest of my shift passes in a blur, but certain images remain seared into my brain.
Under my initial reaction of rage and helplessness something simultaneously imperceptible and momentous has shifted. It's cliche to say that 9/11 was the death of innocence for a generation but there is a truth to it. Things that had been mere abstract concepts to me when I woke up that morning, "Free Will", "Horror", "Heroism", "Good", "Evil", "Civilization", and "Civilization's Enemies", were suddenly real, immediate, and vital to me in a way that they hadn't been 24 hours previously. I can look back on my life today and say with confidence that, philosophically, the Charlie that woke up on the morning of September 12th 2001, was a fundamentally different person from the one who had gone to bed on September 10th.
In the interests of full disclosure I am tempted to turn this post into a rant about how politics and war are downstream of culture, and to wax philosophical about 9/11 as an act of theater, but I also feel like doing so would cheapen the moment, and be disrespectful to those who died 25 years ago today.
So instead I will ask, where were you on the day they wounded New York?
I was working as a caddy and was on hole #3 with one of my regulars and her friend. The club had a strict no cellphones policy so we had no idea what was happening. One of the other caddies is frantically going around in a cart talking to groups around us, who, after speaking with him, immediately pick up their balls and start walking back in. "I wonder what's up. Doesn't look like rain." I say. The ladies agree. Then my coworker heads straight for us.
"The Twin Towers in New York are on fire," he says. "You guys might want to come watch the news, it seems like some kind of attack." I'll be honest, I was pissed I was going to be out 120 bucks. When I saw they were letting caddies into the clubhouse though (where we weren't allowed), I knew it was serious.
We get to the clubhouse and CNN is on. People are mostly silent except for this one 50ish Italian member near me who says, "I bet it was that raghead, Osama something." His wife tells him not to talk like that. He retorts: "We was fuckin attacked!" I agree with him and he gesticulates in my direction, happy I backed him up. I feel my cynical teenage anti-Americanism melting away.
I didn't at any point consider joining the military. My mother even preempted this later that day, telling me in no uncertain terms would I be joining up--I was headed for college. Instead, I got recruited by a CIA officer when I was a senior. I thought using my brain for the cause would be a better idea. Besides, intelligence and covert ops were going to be how we got those responsible, not by invading Iraq. Didn't get past the psych evaluation. They don't tell you why, but I suspect it was my occasional pot use.
But I did have a friend join up, and it was exactly who I expected: the lone Republican in our friend group. He didn't handle it well and I'm afraid we're going to lose him. He's been divorced twice. The last time I saw him I watched him polish off a quart of rye, by himself, and seem largely unaffected by it. In high school he was three sheets to the wind after as many beers. It's clear to me he is a serious alcoholic. He also can't seem to talk to civilians about his experience. I'm glad he's involved with a lot of veterans' groups because I'm sad to say this is probably out of my hands at this point. All he has said to me is he wished he had gone to college like the rest of us instead, and that he lost some friends though he never specified if it was combat or suicide. If you ask him questions he just gives you a blank stare, not even a mean one just a "not talking about it" face. I call him every couple of months but he never wants to talk about his own life, only mine, which is concerning.
My oldest made a 9/11 joke on Friday I won't repeat, but I did chide him. It's a little unclear why but he seems to not have realized this was a real event so I had him ask his mom what she was doing when it happened (she was in high school, her teacher said some pretty prescient things). I pointed out I had put the flag out that morning and it wasn't just for fun. I guess the point got across; he was pretty sheepish for the rest of the night.
I was never properly mad about 9/11. I am mostly sad about it, both the event proper and the fact that it was a pretty hard punctuation mark for the end of my childhood.
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