So what are my thoughts these days? What is my life these days? Am I resigned to dying on my 34th birthday?
I don’t care about much. My life doesn’t mean very much. It really isn’t going anywhere worth living past 34. I’ve said it all before already. I’m not here for the same reason as most people – to live this life, to ascribe to some normative matrix that defines what we’re supposed to do between birth and death.
Career doesn’t mean anything to me. Friends, I don’t feel I really have any friends. Love, love is insignificant at this point. Music, it’s just a distraction. The family website is worth while, it’s not for me, it’s for descendants, and I think I can lay the appropriate groundwork for the website by the time I’m 34 and done.
I don’t need to move out of this apartment, I don’t need to move out of this city. I don’t need to change jobs, I don’t need to find the perfect band, I don’t need to write songs, I don’t need to figure out all the loose ends. I just need to make it to my 34th birthday and know what I want to accomplish by then.
Sunday, September 23, 2001
Monday, September 17, 2001
1557 Noe Street, San Francisco
Dear Mimi,
It's been a harrowing week that brought me to call my parents this past Sunday, a gesture that I think may have shocked my mom. I was walking around today at lunch, realizing that I still haven't come to terms with what happened in New York last week.
I'm still grappling with it; and even more of a revelation was that I was trying to come to terms with something and grappling with it. We are not just by-standers, witnesses to a historical event. This is an event that is affecting all Americans deeply; we can't just watch and then go on with our daily lives; we're trying, as a nation and as individuals, to absorb and understand what happened and all the ramifications of what happened.
As images continue to pour out of New York, they are getting etched in our collective memories and are demanding some kind of explanation or resolution that we may never be satisfied with. We did not just passively watch, given in horror, the images of the planes hitting the towers and of the Twin Towers collapsing, but we watch the images and replay the images and something in us, whether we are aware of it or not, I think, is trying to actively find some resolution.
The latest image that stuck in my mind is from a bystander with a video camera as the first tower came down. She was reluctantly pulled into a cafe as someone, maybe the owner of the cafe, forced her in and wouldn't let her out and blocked the door as she continued to shoot out the store window. As the debris rushed past the store, she finally obeyed the shouts to stay away from the window and as she continued to shoot, you can see how the dust and debris completely shrouds the daylight and it looks like they are in the cafe at night.
It's hard to come to terms with the reality that these things happened. That there were moments in the lives of the innocent people on board the planes when they realized that this was no ordinary hijacking that they had heard about in the news, happening to other people. Perhaps there were moments at the end of their lives when they realized they were on someone else's suicide mission, and this was the end of their lives. There would be no landing and negotiation of demands, no storming by commandoes to save them, no protracted ordeal. It's hard because their tragedy affects us so deeply, and we'll never know what they experienced.
But we do have go on, and ruminations do need to be kept in the background to whatever extent possible as they tend to be more philosophical than practical, even giving blood is difficult at this point. The foreground of our lives need to continue.
It's been a harrowing week that brought me to call my parents this past Sunday, a gesture that I think may have shocked my mom. I was walking around today at lunch, realizing that I still haven't come to terms with what happened in New York last week.
I'm still grappling with it; and even more of a revelation was that I was trying to come to terms with something and grappling with it. We are not just by-standers, witnesses to a historical event. This is an event that is affecting all Americans deeply; we can't just watch and then go on with our daily lives; we're trying, as a nation and as individuals, to absorb and understand what happened and all the ramifications of what happened.
As images continue to pour out of New York, they are getting etched in our collective memories and are demanding some kind of explanation or resolution that we may never be satisfied with. We did not just passively watch, given in horror, the images of the planes hitting the towers and of the Twin Towers collapsing, but we watch the images and replay the images and something in us, whether we are aware of it or not, I think, is trying to actively find some resolution.
The latest image that stuck in my mind is from a bystander with a video camera as the first tower came down. She was reluctantly pulled into a cafe as someone, maybe the owner of the cafe, forced her in and wouldn't let her out and blocked the door as she continued to shoot out the store window. As the debris rushed past the store, she finally obeyed the shouts to stay away from the window and as she continued to shoot, you can see how the dust and debris completely shrouds the daylight and it looks like they are in the cafe at night.
It's hard to come to terms with the reality that these things happened. That there were moments in the lives of the innocent people on board the planes when they realized that this was no ordinary hijacking that they had heard about in the news, happening to other people. Perhaps there were moments at the end of their lives when they realized they were on someone else's suicide mission, and this was the end of their lives. There would be no landing and negotiation of demands, no storming by commandoes to save them, no protracted ordeal. It's hard because their tragedy affects us so deeply, and we'll never know what they experienced.
But we do have go on, and ruminations do need to be kept in the background to whatever extent possible as they tend to be more philosophical than practical, even giving blood is difficult at this point. The foreground of our lives need to continue.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)