Pillar of Smoke, Pillar of Fire

I wrote the following last year in anticipation of the first Tuesday, September 11th since THE Tuesday, September 11th. But, I didn't get it done in time. So, here it is now, a year later. Keep in mind, this was written during the old administration. It was too long, so I edited it down. It's still too long. Here goes:

About a year after the attacks on 9/11, the editor of my hometown newspaper asked if I wanted to contribute to a story about reactions to 9/11. The story was going to be 11 unique voices discussing 9/11. I was going to be the "young voice." I'd contributed to the paper off and on for years at that point, but I decided to turn it down. I didn't want to touch 9/11. I didn't want to put my own conflicted thoughts on the line. I didn't feel like a moment impossible to put into context should even be attempted to be put into context. Anything I'd write, I thought, would be fake. On top of that, it would be misunderstood. So, no thanks.

I do look back at the journal I kept in college, from time to time, and there are a few entries that stick in my memory. The entry from 9/11/01 is one of those. It was written before homeland security, before terror alerts, before the Iraq war, before FAHRENHEIT 9/11, before Abu Ghraib, and obviously before the 2004 and 2008 elections. I'm somewhat mystified by the things I wrote, the tone of what I wrote, and what it might mean, even to myself.

I wrote the entry while I was sitting in my Tuesday morning class, "Religion in America," waiting for class to start. I make a reference to my professor "playing name games" because of her annoying proclivity to conduct the class like she was dealing with elementary schoolers:

"So I'm here in class and the World Trade Center has been shot down with innocent civilian-filled bullets. Hundreds of pieces of human shrapnel. Both towers fell. And if the professor comes in, happy, playing name games, I don't know what I'll do. Probably sit and take it. Take the laughter and moving on in the face of charred innocent human bodies taking off half the Pentagon. What an economical, piece of shit way to fight a war. But all wars are pieces of shit, and so are the people who wage them in the name of the innocents who are recruited by propaganda, the draft board, or even hijacking. What a morning. It'll happen again, but hopefully never again here, as if anything can be controlled in this Godless spiral. We'll discuss it away, I know, like college students do. The U.S. can go around and mess with everyone else, but if someone does it to us. . . watch out, people here don't care about people who aren't white, they don't care about people who aren't Christian. . . if Kosovo is bombed off the face of the planet every few weeks, no one here says a word in protest. Say we blow up Baghdad to lower or raise gas prices. Who cares? Yay Bush."

The funny thing about the entry is that it says a lot about my gut feelings at the time but nothing about the actual sequence of events of the day, and 8 years later, the mundane events of daily life that morning stick with me more than those gut feelings do, if only because of how surreal they were.

I had just started my junior year of college in Southern California. I woke up at what must have been right around 6:30 am to the sound of my iMac beeping. It was my friend Clint instant messaging me. He was studying abroad in Prague, so he was wide awake and witnessing the news in real time. Our online conversation went something like this:

Clint: Are you seeing this?

Me: What?

Clint: Planes are falling out of the sky. One just hit the World Trade Center.

Me: Is this some kind of accident or hijacking or what?

Clint: They're not sure, probably hijacking. The tower just fell.

I would have checked my TV, but it was useless. We didn't have cable, and the cement walls of the dorms didn't allow for decent TV reception. I tried the CNN website, but it was too clogged up to see any video.

Before I left for class, I decided I better tell my sleeping roommate what was going on, so I shook him awake.

"Planes just crashed into the World Trade Center," I said, "The buildings fell down."

He mumbled something incoherent, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

I stepped out into the hallway. I expected people to be looking out their doors, or standing in the hall talking to each other about what had just happened, but there was no one around. As I neared the door to the stairwell, I heard a door open and close behind me and saw my friend Matt heading towards his room. He had an even earlier morning class than I had, and was just returning.

"Did you hear?" I asked.

"Hear what?" he said, unlocking the door to his room.

"Planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the buildings collapsed," I said.

"What?" he asked.

"I have to go to class," I said, and since he had cable, "Turn on your TV."

I drove to the coffee shop I usually went to each morning and listened to AM radio. Some talkshow host was droning on:

"This whole thing reminds me of a scene in THE GODFATHER," he said. "There's a scene where Sonny Corleone is talking to Tom Hagan, and he has to break the news to him that he's firing him as his Consiglieri. During peace time, Tom Hagan was a fine Consiglieri, but now that the mob is at war, Sonny needs a new Consiglieri, because, according to Sonny, Tom Hagan is not a war time Consiglieri. So, I'm glad George Bush is president right now. Because Bill Clinton just isn't a war time Consiglieri."

This struck me as stupid then, and with the benefit of hindsight, has since been revealed as even stupider than I originally thought.

At the coffee shop, no one said anything. I ordered with my mouth shut, they made my drink with their mouths shut, no one even mentioned the tragedy, but you could feel it in the air.

Back in the car, I got some more AM radio. They were already starting to mention the name Osama Bin Laden, though back then they called him Usama Bin Laden, pronounced "ooo-sama." This was followed by mentions of the Taliban, which no one really talks about anymore in favor of Al Queda. Anyway, the mention of the name confirmed what I had been fearing, though I hadn't realized I had been fearing it, yet. As I parked and walked to class it became clear to me that I had been pushing thoughts about who was responsible for this into the back of my mind and that I was afraid to find out who had done it because I was afraid to find out what the U.S. would do in return.

I didn't want to admit it consciously, but I was worrying about what the aftermath would be. World War III?

With the mention of Bin Laden it became clear that this was probably the work of Muslim Extremists, which meant that everything they had ever threatened had come to pass, and everything every anti-Muslim extremist had threatened had also come to pass. There would be little chance of any other aftermath excluding war, which would include the bombing of innocents.

The attacks complicated things for someone who considered themselves to be open-minded. Suddenly, overnight, open-mindedness seemed to have been proven to be TOO open-minded. Sympathy towards innocent victims of war seemed to be TOO sympathetic. For the first time, I felt afraid to speak my mind, for fear of how it might me look, or what it might provoke in others -- after all, the nightmare had come true. The same way Saturday Night Live had to decide when it was okay to be funny again, I had to decide when it would be okay to be liberal again.

When I got to class my professor was appropriately somber. She had taped the news coverage and we watched it all morning as most students hadn't seen it yet. Then we discussed, as college students do. Being a religion class, the discussions always veered towards the emotional as the more conservative students felt threatened by an academic and intellectual approach towards theology. But this morning, everyone was even more defensive and emotional than usual, for obvious reasons, with most students voicing a, "Kill 'em all!" and "Vengeance now!" attitude.

Despite my own journal entry which was alternately militant, angry and nihilistic, this response from fellow students depressed me. Without even knowing who did it, or why they did it, or even considering how we'd go about punishing what appeared to be a terrorist organization and not a country, these students were ready to nuke the Middle East. Our own innocents were dying as collateral damage in a political/Holy war, and these students were ready to kill other innocents in countries where innocents die all the time. I thought, the way I feel about the people who just died in America is probably the way these people in third world countries feel every day with every suicide bomb: scared, angry and confused.

The following weeks and months were all defined by the disaster:

A current events class that started out with a long list of issues to discuss ended up being an all 9/11 class, all the time.

Once, I asked the Chaplain how I could register as a conscientious objector, and a female student overheard me and asked if I felt bad that I didn't want to go over there and fight, and let other people die in my place. She wasn't asking because she was doing anything to fight. She just felt self righteous because her boyfriend was in the military. It was easy for her not to worry about a draft, because it'd be a cold day in hell before the drafted women. Anyway, I didn't give her a good answer, but I wasn't afraid of dying as much as I was of being ordered to kill people.

I drew a cartoon for the school paper based on student reactions to the event and instantly regretted it. I felt like I wanted to say something poignant and meaningful, but as soon as I saw it in print, I asked myself, "What can you say about a disaster like this? How can you even attempt to put it in words, hoping for some kind of perspective that isn't there?"

Oliver Stone came to speak and stirred a controversy. He was late, he cursed in the chapel, and he dared to talk about the geo-political implications of 9/11. Front page school paper stuff. Nevermind that the reason he's famous in the first place is that he's controversial -- the students and indignant parents didn't want to hear any of it.

I was interested in hearing what he had to say and was glad everyone was pissed. No one else was saying anything interesting about 9/11 -- it was just "the march to war" and "these colors don't run" and "it's a flag not a rag." People were proudly sticking American flags on their SUVs and then letting them blow off in the wind and rot on the freeway under tire treads at 80 mph. But no one was saying anything controversial, unless you counted Jerry Falwell who said the attacks were caused by "pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians, the American Civil Liberties Union and the People for the American Way." Or, Bill Maher, who said the terrorists weren't cowards, and go this show canceled.

Interestingly enough, a couple years later, Oliver Stone released a film called WORLD TRADE CENTER, about the brave firefighters who risked their lives on 9/11. I wonder what the indignant students and parents had to say about that?

In fact, I spend a lot of time wondering what people think. What do the people of Iraq think, now? What is George W. Bush thinking? What are the citizens of America who voted him into a second term thinking?

Unfortunately, I'll never really know. All I'll ever hope to know is what I think, and most of it is formed from my memories of those confusing days after 9/11 and before history. The problem is, no matter how much I hope, I don't know if I'll ever know what to think.