Of course, everyone in the world, or at least America, will be writing an entry about this. Everyone has to offer up their take on the horrors, their take on the events of the day. Mine were the same as anyone else's, I suppose.
I started by going to school. Ho hum. Not shocked much by that, I suppose. First period: normal. Second period was a study hall, I have my headphones on, I am reading, I am wondering, on the rare occasions that I look up from my book, why we are watching a burning (or at least smoking) building on the television screen. Assumed it was some local news broadcast that I didn't give a shit about, moved on.
Third period, I walk to the writing lab, for English. We were going to type our essays up. Chattering: "An airplane ran into the World Trade Center. " "They bombed the Pentagon, too."
This was the first I'd heard. And everything began to click into place. I watch the flaming building on the t.v. screen, I think, "Shit, there we go, World War III."
Of course, I've said we'd have a World War III for everything that's gone wrong since Bush has been in office, but this time it actually seems somewhat plausible. One Republican, in fact, was suggesting we should do exactly that, on national television. We shouldn't wait to find out who's responsible, he said. We should just go and bomb all the countries that are known to support terrorists. This is why I hate Republicans. Have a problem? Go to war. Everything is solved by death and violence, bang bang boom.
Somewhere along the line, we decided that Osama Bin Laden (may not be spelling that
right, and
if I'm not, I'm sorry, but I'm horrible for names) must be involved. So we went to
Afghanistan,
and wired in a news report from there. Some of my favourite broadcasting quotes come
from this
section:
"I think what's on all of our minds is, is this the U.S. retaliation for the bombings?" (My
thoughts, at the time: "What the fuck? It just happened this morning. There's no fucking
way
we mobilised our troops, decided who to bomb, and then did it all in the same twelve
hours. No
fucking way. What is she [the news broadcaster], an idiot?")
"It's hard to say, the explosions could simply be part of the civil war that has been going
on
in the country for quite some time." (My thoughts: "Bingo, just like my mummy told me
when I
asked her what the fuck this part of the broadcast had to do with us." [Self-centred
American,
I know].)
Now for my favourite part: "What civil war?"
Watching the news today reminded me of watching an action film: exploding buildings, rubble and papers covering Manhattan streets like so much snow, people jumping out of 110-story buildings, airplanes slicing straight through skyscrapers. That news broadcaster was apparently the comic relief.
I'm skipping back and forth with my chronology, stay with me.
We're back to the writing lab, and I'm watching for my first information on the "apparent terrorist attack." The broadcaster, a man, at that time, was emphasising the loss of a symbol of American capitalism. I didn't give a shit about the symbol. I didn't give a shit about capitalism. I certainly didn't give a shit about the so-called "attack on freedom itself." Thousands of people died today for no good reason.
I watched, because all you can do during these times is watch. I saw them theorise, hypothesise, offer up rumours, and offer up facts. At first I was shocked, and those initial thoughts, "Well, it's about time for another war, it's been a while." After shock came horror, not horror in the sense of fear, but horror at how people can be. Horror at how incredible it is that all of those people had to die, when they had done nothing at all. Nothing to provoke a plane being crashed into their building as they worked, in any case.
Papers were found up to three miles away from the site. No kidding.
From horror I faded into a ghost state. Paled, numb, no thoughts except for that emptiness, as if a bomb had gone off inside of my head, and left me blank, dead. This state lasted for a few hours. I looked at the people around me, heard them talking, and could not understand. How could they go on as normal, when people have died like that? How can they speak of normal things, do math, read, when something like that has just happened?
During lunch I looked out the window, at the perfectly blue sky, and wondered at the fact that a bird was still flying, spinning around and gliding in turns. I didn't see why it didn't understand, at first. Why it didn't fold up its wings and hang its head as it stood on a branch. It took me a while to remember that wild birds do not watch news programs.
By the time I got home I was significantly better. Shaken, sure, but composed. "At least they didn't blow up a library," I said, while my mother and I were watching the news together.
Saw the hole in the Pentagon. Fucking amazing sight. After a while you get to thinking places like that are invincible. People asked, "How did they manage to attack the Pentagon?" My mother and I marveled at this, together. How the fuck did people expect them to stop a plane from dropping on a building? Missile defense systems?
It was a brilliantly orchestrated plan, really. Someone must've fucked up somewhere though, the whole crashing-a-plane-in-the-middle-of-Pennsylvania thing just doesn't make much sense all by itself. The rest was good though, I have to admit. Camp David, the Pentagon, the World Trade Center. Damn.
I don't condone it. Don't get me wrong. I've had The Intense Humming of Evil stuck in my head from the moment I found out about the incident. This is quite a feat. It's not exactly a catchy song.
I have nothing real to say, and I'm growing more and more trivial. I've been in a good mood today, simple as that. No national tragedy is going to spoil that. I'm simply not that flexible.
But I am devastated. I feel like my heart's been hollowed out of my body, and my brain has been blasted to ashes. But I'm still making off-beat jokes and smiling when it suits me. It's the way I am, I suppose. I'm quite a fan of gallows humour, and what better opportunity for it than something like this?
I'm trivialising. The media desensitised me. I had to watch it four hours in school. It's sad, but what can you do? Tomorrow is a mourning day. And I will be one of the ones in black.
revoless.
7:59 p.m.
September 11, 2001.
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