When I was in Ft
Augustus Scotland, the bartender told me a story about a local retired fireman
who went door-to-door and raised a collection to bring the families of
every firefighter who had died on 9/11/01 to their little town. The
whole community, one tiny village of 650 people, paid for their flights.
Doors opened to homes and businesses and the mourning tourists didn't
pay a dime for their entire stay: everyone simply refused to let them
pay for anything. They were given a place to come and mourn and grieve
amongst strangers who had taken it upon themselves to be friends.
I
have mixed feelings about this day. Whether or not we should be
celebrating it with the jingoist slant that we tend to have.... whether
or not I believe every lie that's been told to me. How I should react
to it, if at all. I'm still frustrated that a war that
started ten years ago is still going on today and angry that I disagree
with so much of all of it. Those who perpetrated one of the worst
crimes of the modern century are still profiting from their crime (yes,
I'm looking at you, Dick Cheney and Junior Bush and your entire Axis of
fucking Evil). Every year I rail against the catchy slogans
that are supposed to embody our collective anger and sadness in nice
little bite-sized portions and get pissed that our memories and feelings
are so easily manipulated and used by others to support causes I don't
agree with. Every year, September 11th is just another fucking day to
me. And just because the difference between the number of years since
then and now has a convenient "0" behind shouldn't make the event any
more or less important than the year before or the year before that or
the year before that.
But this year, I'm reminded of
sitting in the pub on the ground floor of the Catalonia Hotel with a
local named Duncan and a bartender named Mike, far after closing time,
listening to him talk about the father who lost his son in the second
tower, who traveled thousands of miles to come to the gorgeous majesty
of Scotland, and cried into the arms of an old, weathered ex-fireman
whom he had never met before.
And all I can think of is
how, if some random stranger can take the time and effort to do
something like that just because of the sheer need to empathize with someone else... maybe our species is not so fucked up after all.
Dan Tabayoyon
09/11/11
