9/11?

I totally missed 9/11. The last two years I had some awareness that the day was passing. Just after the attack I bought a t-shirt on some donor campaign for the foundation or something. For the last two years I've worn the shirt on 9/11 - like it was a concert I'd been to or something. This year I think I was oblivious.

I wonder if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I am someone who (at least I think) has never really come to grips with what happened that day. I can talk about it fine, but visuals are hard, and that "thud thud thud" audio of the tower collapsing is just too much. But even in that state of being, the date itself crept by unnoticed. Maybe there's a holiday dimension to the thing. People rushing to memorialize the occasion with a holiday or a monument I believe have really missed the gravity of the event. I guess geographically this is a harder argument to make, but temporally I think it makes sense.

Interestingly, probably the most aware I was this year was a geographical connection. I'd gone to see Melissa Etheridge at Seven Springs. The ski resort is in rural PA, and actually fairly close to Shanksville - where the fourth plane went down. Melissa has a song "Tuesday Morning" about 9/11, and this time it got a very emotional response from the crowd. It was interesting seeing the looks of recognition on the artists and some of the other fans as they made the connection.

I think its odd that with all the emphasis being placed by the Bush people on 9/11 in his re-election campaign that the date itself got by with so little fanfare. Maybe that means that they actually are people and they didn't want to insult the memory, or maybe it just means that I don't pay even the least bit of attention to the Bush people. Let's hope it is the former.

But is it a good thing or a bad thing? Does this represent some kind of recognition or healing or is it more indicative of a typically American short attention span? I like to think that I am not as afflicted with political ADHD as the next person, but this might prove otherwise. I have to say, I think that in this case its a good thing. In general I think people have been attached to 9/11 in an unhealthy way. In the beginning it was different, but over time the media representation, legal wrangling, and political ass covering and glory hounding (a real interesting combination I must say) have really split the country, upped the hype and the body count, and in the end done very little to make us more unified, proactive, or smart about our role in the world. Maybe a little distance will help to show how loud we've been shouting and how little of substance we've been shouting about.