9/11/02

This is a hard musing to write, since it's been a year in the making, and all my feelings are tied up like a tangle of yarn. You just have to pick an end, I guess, and pull until you reach the other end.

First I just have to say that this thing of "Remembering September 11th" is a total lie. It's impossible to remember September 11th. You can't remember something you've never forgotten for a single moment. I have been aware of that day every other day since it happened, the way I'm aware that there was a day I was born and the way I know I live in New York City. These are all things I don't forget.

I remember every single second of it perfectly. I know what happened. But there's something no one's really addressed to my satisfaction: this air of... fashion. Suddenly, the mystique of New York is heightened by tragedy. "If you're not really a New Yorker, you can't understand." Sure, a lot of us -- most of us, I think -- are honestly deeply heartbroken by it. But sometimes, this public mourning has an air of ghastly holiday, a sort of perverted celebration of pain. It reminds me sometimes of the mourning for Kurt Cobain. People stand out in a park, crying together, and are they out there, outside, publicly mourning because this makes them feel better? Or because it's just the coolest place to be seen?

They keep saying that we should feel free to feel better, like it's our patriotic duty to snap out of it. Feel better? Feel better how? Explain exactly how you're supposed to do that. Just say, oh, so my city has fallen down and it's okay? I'm not sure how that would work.

And oh god, commercials use fire-fighter imagery to sell things. And oh god, the tourists stop me on the street and ask me what's the quickest subway route to get to Ground Zero. I heard a guy say to his fellow tourist friends, "okay, so we'll go to Herald Square, then we'll go to Ground Zero, then we'll get dinner." I had to fight myself not to punch him, just punch him so hard he would never again confuse a national tragedy (even tragedy doesn't go far enough. A national horror? A national amputation? A national trauma?) with a tourist attraction.

Not that I have any right to sit here and say any of this. How can I put this on my website with my stories about hanging out and flirting and hating my job and washing my dishes and act like I have a corner on suffering? It's all vanity. I'm sorry.






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