This is what I think

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