I don’t want to ignore it I don’t want to embrace it I don’t know how to deal neither works, neither fits. I am going to go watch movies and not talk about it with a new yorker friend, but I will probably not be avoiding the internet like he is, and I will probably be reading about it and I will probably continue trying to engage with it on some level as I have been recently. It is not exactly helpful but it is not harmful either? I’ll watch the Mets game a few hours after the fact. I will be okay.
I will probably get angry at each mention of “the day we united as a nation,” and not from the typical liberal perspective. It is so fucking condescending. If you want to unite with new york city, do it decades ago, when the economy nearly destroyed the city. If you want to unite with the country? Do it by funding education, housing, healthcare, ensuring that the nation is united by being a place that has these vital things. There are so many ways we can and should unite.
Do not “unite” because of a tragedy because it comes from the wrong place and it comes with the wrong understanding… . We did not stand together. If it felt that way to you… Like I always say. I am a huge advocate in people dealing with things in ways that make sense for them, so… okay. But I can’t even begin to understand the experience of my friends who lost someone, who had to evacuate their schools, who couldn’t contact their parents, who couldn’t go home for weeks. So really. Can you?
Honestly that is my least favorite, after the gifs and videos. Talking about how we united as a country. As a city bothers me less, and perhaps shows my bias, and is problematic (probably). But I cannot handle “stood together as a nation” because when I flip out over low flying planes, I get a lot of “chill, what are you doing, it’s just a plane,” and giggles like it’s me doing an eccentric emily thing, which it is not, so no, we were not united, no, we did not come together, no, no, no.
And like I am always saying… this is from the perspective of someone who did not 1. lose anyone. 2. need to evacuate 3. witness the crashes first hand. Like I keep saying I had a fucking “good” experience of the day. Ok? I can’t begin to come together with the people who did lose someone, did see it, was a first responder… I cannot claim that experience as my own I cannot understand it. So no, no, no, we did not come together stop saying that, stop and think about what you mean. I love unity I love solidarity but no just no it is the emptiest of statements when you talk about Today and the country coming together. No.
This probably won’t be the last thing I say today, but it probably should be.
I really am bothered by all the 9/11 videos and photos on my blog. It just disturbs me to no end.
You guys, my sister is so smart and this is really great to read.
different perspectives, I’m all about this.
BY STEVE POPPER
When the bus reached the George Washington Bridge carrying the Mets back from Pittsburgh the conversation stopped, players crowding onto one side of the bus to stare silently at what they saw in the distance.
The smoke and spotlights. And there was an acrid smell in the air.
…
Mike Piazza’s home run is something I remember, even though I wasn’t a baseball fan at the time. This was my first season where I will identify as a Baseball Fan, so, you know. The role that entertainment and sports had, for a lot of people, in dealing is… Again something I cannot look at critically. It is what it is. (I think back to SNL, Lorne Michaels asking Giuliani, “can we be funny?” And his response, “Why start now?”)
I was home watching the Mets/Phillies game the day Osama Bin Laden was killed, which I wrote about at the time, and I was aware of the connection between that and Piazza’s home run. And I was aware of the fucked upness of the U-S-A chanting, but it was interesting to watch on tv, the way people learned from phones, texts… I cannot disengage, cannot be critical. I just found it interesting… it’s something I am acutely aware of everytime I check twitter when I am AT a baseball game… it is this space where you are away from everything but the balls and bats and beer and baseball but real life keeps happening outside.
So I cannot look at it critically and I cannot look at it “intelligently” but like. IDK, I just wanted to reblog this because I love NYC and I love the Mets and I can never articulate that love adequately, so I keep trying, too many words and not enough meaning.
Anyway, I’d just like to say, in case it wasn’t obvious already, that this is what my tumblr will be like a bit. I don’t know how else to be. I can ignore it I can think about it it all feels wrong. I feel so far away from it all. That’s…good? I don’t even know. So I mean I apologize and hope y’all are enjoying scrolling past all I keep writing because I really don’t expect it to be read.
“U.S. Terrorism Officials Investigating Reports of 9/11 Anniversary Threat”
And I mean, of course. Of course. But I really cannot… it is not like being home would make me feel any less helpless but there is something about physical proximity that makes me feel better when these things are discussed and it has been that way since I was 14 and at nerd camp and there were vague threats against wherever back home. proximity. I cannot move past this need for proximity to thinking critically, cannot sit and go “well of course” because all it serves as is a reminder that I am not where I belong when these things are discussed.
AS PER FUCKING USUAL THIS GOT LONGER THAN I INTENDED.
Patriot Day is not a real holiday. You made it up. Patriot’s day is, I go to school in New England! I don’t really understand what it is but it exists.
Patriot’s day is real. Patriot Day is a non-holiday you put on my calendar as if I could ever forget what it feels like for a whole city to stop in a way only NYC can: to keep going but feel fuzzy and off all at once. As if every five minutes the video wasn’t replayed on the news for weeks. As if I cannot remember what a daylong wall of sirenssirenssirens sounds like (Okay, point to you, Calendar, I can’t. It is this sound I remember and don’t, cannot recreate. I remember what it felt like, to hear it, but the sound is just gone in my mind.). Patriot Day isn’t a real holiday and putting it on the calendar is this weird acknowledgement of things that you do, calendars, and I wish you wouldn’t.
The September 11th retrospective stuff is beginning. Or at least the media coverage of how media coverage of retrospectives will soon begin. In either case, I simultaneously want to attempt to write something and hide until the 12th. I still don’t know what that will be like up at school, I have been saying this since May.
Blah Blah Blah I am emily I like to whine and talk about how I DON’T want to talk about things, but I do, but it’s complicated.
I will say this, though: when you hear people talk about how it was an eerily beautiful day, the kind of weather that cannot be described, where everyone’s first thought that morning was “God it is gorgeous out,” it’s true. That isn’t some retrospective romanticizing. It was so gorgeous out. Everyone noticed.
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