Feline Warrior

Music for tonight’s post. (Don’t watch the video if, like me, you find images of September 11th to be way too painful.)

The flag outside my building was flying at half-mast today. Nobody on campus really talked about 9/11, just in passing here and there. I think it would have been different if I was still in Washington, DC - more talk, more emotion. Here in Ohio, as it was in Charleston, WV, I think it must have felt somewhat distant. Not to say, of course, that people in those places didn’t feel the tremendous fear and sadness that people in the places that were hit did… but it does seem to be different.

Anything-But-Bacon told us last year that she went to see the 9/11 movie (whatever that was, in theatres, something awful). She said she went “to honor the people who died.” I exploded in one of my idiotic reactions (note to self: respond, don’t react) asking how in the hell 9/11 victims were honored by paying $8 to see a fabrication of an event… She didn’t -couldn’t- reply. I compared that movie to Mel Gibson’s “Silence of the Christ” (or was it “Passion of the Lambs”?) in terms of filmmakers using poetic license to the extreme for the sake of exploiting an event. That didn’t win me any fans.

Why do I try to change people’s minds?
Why do I think I’m right?
Besides the very obvious answer that I AM.

So anyway, here we are, six years later. After fleeing WashDC the month after the attacks (to the biscuity comfort of West-by-God-Virginia) I still cried about it. Saw the Michael Moore film and had such a reaction that I thought maybe I had PTSD. (Really.) Ask Baby Judas, he’ll tell you - it was noticeable in the theatre. I wrote an essay about September 11 and what it was like for me - and I won an award for that essay.I’d give up awards of all kinds if I could have the power to take that day back.To keep people from the horrific choices they had to make and for all the choices they were KEPT from making. The memories of that day and its aftermath bring home the fragility of life… it is fleeting, tender -though sometimes so very hard.

So cry for the losses, but keep living your life. Live it full, with joy and abundance of spirit. Love is easier than hate - it feels better, aids digestion and if what goes around really does come around, by gosh, wouldn’t you rather it be love?

Blogged with Flock