9-12-02
It's been a year. Has it really been a year? The Earth is in the same relative position, with the same relative tilt, denoting end of Summer, beginning of fall season, in respect to the Sun. I avoided the smarmy gloss that the media fed the airwaves with yesterday. Media sickens me. Politicians sicken me. The ceremonies and parades humans need to somehow feel "in touch" sicken me.

I put it in the back of my mind that, yesterday, while I was blog-surfing for present day accounts of last year, I recorded the Naudet brothers' documentary "9/11". I was watching the Frontline documentary "Where was God?". I don't mind documentaries. They present a viewpoint, as it is, nothing smarmy, nothing tear-jerking. It is only one viewpoint, but from this viewpoint, this is what happened. I remembered I recorded "9/11" after I got home this evening, after running errands.

This documentary is unreal, it is so vivid, so casually in the moment because the Naudet brothers had no idea how big this thing was going to become, that it is timeless. You watch this documentary, and this is not a year ago. It doesn't matter when it happened or how long ago it happened, this footage is just . . . "pure", almost innocent.

Jules Naudet's camera was the only one that caught the first strike, and the footage of the plane hitting the building has been replayed by the media ad nauseum. But in the documentary, it's a long seamless shot. Jules is with Engine 1 Ladder 7 on a routine call and he's filming them responding to it.

Boring as hell footage that will end up on the cutting room floor. Except that you slowly hear the roar of an airplane overhead, one firefighter looks up, acknowledges it's an airplane and looks away, and then the camera trains to the sky and catches the plane hitting the building. It is unscripted, it is completely in the moment, the reactions are completely in moment, a microcosm's moment.

Gedeon Naudet's camera caught the second strike, but unlike the distant shots that we are all familiar with, Gedeon had been making his way on foot to the Trade Center towers knowing that Jules was probably in them, and he was worried about him. As he walked, he shot footage of people reacting, panning to shots of the burning North Tower, and his camera just happened to be trained on the Towers from the ground pov when the second plane hit. Very sudden, totally unexpected, and the camera completely captures this.

I read on many weblogs that they can't stand to see those planes hitting those buildings over and over again. What's to be gained from viewing such media sensationalism? Maybe I'm a sucker for sensationalism, but I can watch that footage over and over again.

But it's not the sensational nature that is the reason why. Every time I see it, I feel disbelief, desperation. How could things have been? It's a year later and the Towers are completely gone, excised from the landscape, delivered to Staten Island in remnant pieces, but why aren't they there now?

Why aren't the people still working there, a year older, dealing with the economy, lay-offs, their lives, new people hired, people working there anew? Why couldn't the people in those planes have reached their destinations, been met by friends, acquaintances, loved ones, and where would they be now, a year older? It's a much more boring scenario, but certainly preferable.

The short answer is entrenched in history and U.S. dealings in international affairs. Consider why these "religious" fanatics did what they did, and don't write them off as frenzied barbarians with no regard for human or American lives. But as humans with faces and backgrounds that started somewhere and developed into cold zealots, frenzied with the sole mission to kill American lives.

And rewind the clock and keep rewinding and rewinding and consider how these 19 people got to be the way they were. It's not genetic. It's not even social or religious. It certainly is NOT MAJORITY. Arab and Middle Eastern societies have not developed with an inherent bent to hate Western societies and bring them down.

But U.S. foreign policy, with its complete disregard for Arab, Palestinian, and Middle Eastern lives, society, and culture, gets met with, and all it takes is, 19 fanatics with a burning hatred for what the U.S. has done to their "brothers".

And thinking total strangers are "brothers" just because they are Muslim is not primitive or barbaric. Early Islam preached Muslim brotherhood as a means to achieve peace, to look at another human being, a total stranger, and despite what argument or differences they had, recognize they are Muslim and believe in the same spiritual higher power that is beyond them, and in that way we are the same, humbled, petty.

There is no justifying or condoning what those 19 people did. An Onion article was particularly adept in publishing a satire of the 19 hijackers thinking they would end up in heaven, but surprised at ending up in the lowest level of hell possible. And all I can think is that the media/politician storm of sentiment and smarm is just a smoke screen, a distraction from thinking, processing, getting to the ugly root of the matter because, goddammit we need our oil. THINK! THINK! THINK!! Grieve, mourn, detach, deny, do what you have to, but THINK