9/11 museum reaction.

I could make this a piece more fitting with the goal of this blog, but sometimes emotions are too raw to apply logical analysis.  Sometimes things just need to be said and heard for what they are.  This is one of those times.


One beautiful September day, some thirteen years ago, something unthinkable happened.  The entire country stopped, held its breath, struggled to integrate what was happening on television, on the radio, via phone, with what we generally consider "reality".

There was this...dreamlike quality...to everything after the attacks.  We fumbled through, those of us who didn't lose anyone in specific.  We quietly thanked...whoever...that no one we knew or loved was on that plane or in that building, but at the same time, we were surrounded by people who did know someone who was there, in the air, on the ground, in a building.  So to say that we were unaffected was merely a comfort, a lie we told ourselves.  But it was a lie that we needed, because the unimaginable horror of what the victims went through, what the first responders went through, what their families would always have to live with...we couldn't even imagine.

I suppose that is the defining memory of that day, of the next year, really: just...keep going.  Nothing's changed.  Even the president told us to not alter our daily routine--it was imperative that things went on as usual.  Normal.

But there was nothing normal, not anymore.

I found a book at my mother's house, What We Saw, stories from journalists reporting on that day.  This was, oh, maybe four or five years after the fact.   I saw the pictures again, remembered sitting with my housemates at Smith, watching tv, first thinking the girl across the hall was watching action movies again, hearing her say "...This is CNN...this is real."   Remembered the numb repetition "It has to be an accident...somebody just fucked up...", remembered trailing off as we watched  the second plane hit.

I slid off of the bed where I was reading, curled into a ball, crying uncontrollably until well after the sun went down and the room went dark.  I had no words, just this silent scream in my head.

For years, I've watched people cringe when a plane was too low.  Or the skies too silent.  Beautiful September days would forever carry a sense of foreboding, and somehow, the most beautiful days have become the most terrifying--a terrible trigger, because what was stolen that day was the easy peace of a perfect fall day, ripe with the promise of a new school year.

It's gotten better in the past few years--there are more of us who have only a vague recollection, those who were too young to really understand, or too young even to know.  But I maintain, as I have since that day, that we are a nation of survivors, and that most of us are suffering from a kind of culture-wide ptsd.  We didn't mourn.  Some of us went to a blind anger, and honestly, that was probably the healthiest response.  The rest of us just tried to keep going, and moved from numb to slightly less numb.

So.

The unveiling of the new 9/11 museum.

I understand that there's this sense that we need to remember.  But honestly, are we going to forget?  And isn't there something a bit... I don't know...crass...about bringing people down into the foundation of a collapsed building to view the melted remains of fire trucks, of charred clocks stopped at 8:50 or 9:05, of recordings of voicemails from doomed spouses?

I understand, too, that the argument could be made that it's for those who weren't there, who are too young to remember.  But doing it this way, full of shock value and intentional triggers, cheapens and dismisses the experience of those of us who were affected, who were there.

I suppose I could pull out one systems thing to say.  We've become a society that does things simply because we can, without spending all that much time asking whether or not we should.


Update: I found this article on Buzzfeed of all things, and it sums up what I was getting at far more eloquently, and from the perspective of someone who lost his sister.  Be sure to click the link to view the gift shop.  Yes.  Gift shop.