September 11: 9-11, Patriotism, Better Than We Are, "The Names"

You will excuse me if I step away from Hitchhiker's on this day.

Today is the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11.  Eighteen years ago, the world was changed irrevocably.  I'm not going to rehash my memories of that day.  The news playing 24/7.  The images of innocent people jumping to their deaths from those burning towers.  The towers collapsing.  Those ghostly faces of survivors stumbling out of that cloud of dust and dirt and smoke that covered and hovered over everything.

I don't believe in calling September 11th "Patriot Day."  For me, this day shouldn't be about patriotism, creating this feeling of the United State of America versus the world.  I am proud, most of the time, to call myself a citizen of this country.  (These Trump years have tested that pride a great deal.)  The kind of nationalism that exists in this country at the moment, that sometimes gets branded "patriotism," makes me a little ashamed of being an American.

For me, what I remember most about the days following September 11, 2001, is how it brought strangers together.  It seemed to provoke both the best (and worst) elements in human beings.  In some places, people (white, African American, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, man, woman, gay, straight, transgender, immigrant, citizen) felt a united grief and a united hope.  We simply weren't going to live in fear and hatred.  In other places, hatred did emerge, in the form of attacks against Muslim Americans and their businesses and homes.  That was the shameful side of the aftermath of 9-11.

Me?  I hold onto that grief and hope.  The idea that we can all be better than we are.  We can love each other more.  Respect each other more.  Support each other more.  Make the world a better, safer place through kindness and compassion.  That is something I can remember and cherish about this day when so many lost their lives.

So, if this day, for you, is about flag waving and chanting "U.S.A.!"--then this post is not for you.  However, if this day is about remembering the victims, joining together in love and support with all of your neighbors (no matter what color or gender or religion or nationality or sexual orientation), then you are a true patriot.

Saint Marty remembers this day with a poem from Billy Collins . . .

The Names

by:  Billy Collins

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.

A fine rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,

And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,

I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,

Then Baxter and Calabro,

Davis and Eberling, names falling into place

As droplets fell through the dark.

Names printed on the ceiling of the night.

Names slipping around a watery bend.

Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.

In the morning, I walked out barefoot

Among thousands of flowers

Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,

And each had a name --

Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal

Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.

Names written in the air

And stitched into the cloth of the day.

A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.

Monogram on a torn shirt,

I see you spelled out on storefront windows

And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.

I say the syllables as I turn a corner --

Kelly and Lee,

Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.

When I peer into the woods,

I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden

As in a puzzle concocted for children.

Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,

Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,

Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.

Names written in the pale sky.

Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.

Names silent in stone

Or cried out behind a door.

Names blown over the earth and out to sea.

In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.

A boy on a lake lifts his oars.

A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,

And the names are outlined on the rose clouds --

Vanacore and Wallace,

(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)

Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.

Names etched on the head of a pin.

One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.

A blue name needled into the skin.

Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,

The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.

Alphabet of names in green rows in a field.

Names in the small tracks of birds.

Names lifted from a hat

Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.

Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.

So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

September 11: Once a Year, September 11 Anniversary, Judith Minty, "Hawk," Adventures of Stickman

And once a year, in the winter, a day or two after Christmas, he and Annie would visit their son's grave.  Standing in the cemetery before his son's marker out in Long Island, as the years went by, Ives did not for a moment envision a seventeen-year-old in eternal repose, but a man the age his son would have been.  And there were occasions when he viewed the grave as some kind of "stopover" his son had made on his way to another, more beautiful place.  Sometimes Ives felt that a kind of trick had been played on him.  Why else would he walk into a church and have the sensation that his son was that priest up by the altar, raising the Host and saying Mass?  Why did he often think that he would see Robert again, his face serene and secure in his intimate knowledge of the Lord, that way Ives once used to see it?

The annual pilgrimages that Ives makes to his son's grave are not passive moments of reflection and sadness.  Even years after Robert's murder, Ives continues to imagine that his son grew up, entered the seminary, and became a priest.  Robert is not frozen in Ives' mind.  Instead, Robert grows older, grayer, wiser.  Basically, he is everything that Ives dreamed he would be.

Today was the fourteenth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks.  There were concerts performed, poems recited, and songs sung.  This evening, I attended a football game at my daughter's school.  Before the game began, the announcer asked everyone in the stadium seats to stand and observe a moment of silence.  And then, as the flag was raised to half-staff, the pep band played the national anthem.

I found the moment incredibly moving.  For those few moments, it felt like everyone was united in remembrance.  A collective grief and pride.  I could hear a few people in the stands singing The Star Spangled Banner quietly. 

I often wonder why it takes tragedy to bring human beings together.  For my sister's funeral, my brother from Pennsylvania came.  It was the first time I'd seen him in several years.  In the days following the 9-11 attacks,. I felt incredibly close to everyone--family, friends, complete strangers.  Everyone comes together in moments of despair.

I do not have any pithy words of wisdom this evening.  In honor of the thousands of people who lost their lives on this day fourteen years ago, I offer two things:  1) a prayer of healing for anyone who is grieving a loss; and 2) a poem.

Saint Marty has no fairy tale this evening.  There is no happily ever after on this day for many people.

Hawk

by:  Judith Minty

Dead hawk outside my bedroom window,
even the cats won't touch it.
I laid low for three days,
didn't leave the house,
and wrote my Cherokee friend.
He hasn't answered, the hawk's
been waiting.  Today I took

the tail feathers and geet.
I feel worst about the feet,
hanging from the backporch beam--
fists clenched, claws like my own hand
holding the knife.  I knew
when the other one flew over, keening,
he wouldn't recognize her like that.

               --Jacoby Creek, California

Adventures of STICKMAN