9-11 has caused some subtle changes in my life. Strange but ordinary NYC life has put me in some hair raising situations that did not affect me. I have seen drive by shootings in the Bronx, A bizarre incedent of the SI Ferry involving a bezerk man and a machette in the 80's , car accidents galore, indcustrial accidents, blackouts, Hurricanes and blizzards and of course the WTC 93 bombing that I am a survivor of. None of those incedents changed me so why should 9-11. The reason is it was not death alone as I have seen it more then a normal person would. Death is part of our lives.
Industrial accidents are an unfortunate part of work . People fall , get run over and machines malfunction and hopefuly nobody gets hurt too badly but it happens. Sadly, in reference to the machette wielding lunatic in the eighties people break down . The man was obviously deranged and it is sad but unfortunate. This is also why
mental health and people taking their medication is so important. The forces of Nature are also a part of life as Nature blesses us with her bounty sometimes we endure her wrath. Fires, Car accidents, blackouts and a certain amount of crime are just inevitable in a big city. Even the 93 blast the toll of death was slight and I certainly did not see it, despite being in the building.
The WTC was not an exotic place for me as I passed there daily. My usual partner was my coworker thne Late Big Bad Larry Yeah Yeah. He recently passed away having nothing to do with 9-11. The place was alive with energy even at 2AM one could find workers scurring to and fro and there was a shopping center with a Borders Bookstore among other stores and Resturants. Beneath that were a maze of trains carrying people everywhere.
The site looks alot larger on TV. People often wonder about how small the site is when they see it in person. Yet this is where my life and some of yours were changed
forever. Many people tell me of weeping at home or at work. The question of my generation is often where were you on 9-11. I walked through the parking lot at work in VT and was touched to see a plaque and a tree planted . 9-11 was larger then a NYC event and many people around the country and the World were horrified and wept at the pointless horror of death, chaos and mayhem for no reason. The victims were going to work or racing to save lives and represented a cross section of NYC and the world. Pointless death is life's ultimate crime and to cavalierly waste life on some religious or political idiocy is evil incarnate.
CTD
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2 comments:
Beak,
Interesting thing here...about differing perceptions. Maybe FJ will address some of this.
Those of my family and my friends who have visited the WTC site thought it seemed larger than it appeared on TV. From our vantage point, the trucks we saw crawling around in the pit (well after 9/11) looked like toys. None of us had ever spent much time at WTC before 9/11--each of us had paid one or two visits, as tourists, many years before 9/11.
Now, every time we see a movie which shows the WTC standing, we point to the screen and say, "Look! The Twin Towers!" Then we sigh--or curse the evil ones who brought on the atrocity.
The 9/11 attacks on the WTC were attacks on all of America and on all who value freedom. Yes, go on with your life, but don't let the significance of 9/11 or the memory of lives lost and sacrifices made fade away.
I wish there were a simple answer 'always, but perhaps you can extrapolate this little piece of Plato's "Philebus" for yourself... (or perhaps read the whole dialogue for a better idea of what I'm getting at). As "mixed" beings, the body has a tendency to amplify perceptions... depending upon it's initial "state" and the extremes to which it has been subjected.
"SOCRATES: But now it is the pleasures which are said to be true and false because they are seen at various distances, and subjected to comparison; the pleasures appear to be greater and more vehement when placed side by side with the pains, and the pains when placed side by side with the pleasures.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly, and for the reason which you mention.
SOCRATES: And suppose you part off from pleasures and pains the element which makes them appear to be greater or less than they really are: you will acknowledge that this element is illusory, and you will never say that the corresponding excess or defect of pleasure or pain is real or true.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: Next let us see whether in another direction we may not find pleasures and pains existing and appearing in living beings, which are still more false than these.
PROTARCHUS: What are they, and how shall we find them?
SOCRATES: If I am not mistaken, I have often repeated that pains and aches and suffering and uneasiness of all sorts arise out of a corruption of nature caused by concretions, and dissolutions, and repletions, and evacuations, and also by growth and decay?
PROTARCHUS: Yes, that has been often said.
SOCRATES: And we have also agreed that the restoration of the natural
state is pleasure?
PROTARCHUS: Right."
-FJ
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