New Publication:
Issue 8 of Sediments Literary-Arts Journal went up today, 9/11 — take a look!https://sedimentslit.com/
On this 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the first poem of the current issue, “in America we like our heroes dead” by Matthew Bendert, has particular significance.
Where were you on 9/11?
I was at work. I walked through the basement level of the research building I worked in and saw several people huddled around a television set. Some were crying. I couldn’t see, at first, what was happening. I had to push myself to the front of the group.
It was an old-style television, set on a tall, narrow cart, too heavy to move easily on its own. By today’s standards, it is now ancient. By the standards of its time, it was a little out of date, but not ancient.
It reminded me of the first moon landings, when I was in kindergarten. I watched film of those landings from the floor of the gymnasium, staring up at the huge, bulky television with its tiny black and white screen atop the towering audio-visual cart. My friends, silent as I was, watched with me. We craned our necks up, as if we were looking into the night sky.
But this was no moon landing.
That day, I watched the news on that basement television set as the second of the Twin Towers fell. I missed the fall of the first.
Whatever sound played, whatever newscaster spoke, I have no memory of.
Just that picture, over and over, being replayed: the first plane hitting the tower. The tower coming down.
Later that day, I had a call from a client in New Jersey.
They had spent most the day on their rooftop, watching what seemed like the world coming apart. They felt we should wait on the next delivery. I agreed. I wasn’t sure there would ever be another delivery of anything again. I wasn’t sure what might happen tomorrow.
Tomorrow is never assured. We get so used to the sun coming up, so used to the next day being so much like the previous, that we think is has been assured to us. We think we can count on the tomorrow we envision.
Of course, there is far less we can count on that we realize. Yet, there is a positive side to this uncertainty.
If we lived with the knowledge of the raw uncertainty of life foremost in our minds, we could accomplish nothing.
The illusion of permanence, the illusion of safety, lets us forge forward into the future. It lets us create, and build. Invest, educate, sow, reap. Without the expectation of safety, we would accomplish nothing as a people.
9/11 reminded us of the fragility — and preciousness — of living in our illusions just enough to forge a society, a people, a future.