11 September 2001 // Terrorized
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The first thing I heard when I became conscious this morning was the song "Hunter" by Dido.
The second thing I heard was that planes had crashed into both World Trade Center towers.
I had other things I was going to write about today, but everything seems so irrelevant now. Tens of thousands of people in those buildings... I can hardly wrap my mind around it. As I had been hitting the snooze alarm on my radio, this incredible act of terrorism was occuring and people - real people - were dying.
As soon as I heard the announcement on the radio I got up and turned on the tv to see what was happening. I tuned in just as President Bush was finishing his statement from Florida. Then I saw the live picture of the towers, still standing, with smoke pouring out of gaping black holes. I sat down on the couch, just shocked... crying. I watched ABC's coverage, listened to eyewitnesses and correspondence as I numbly cleaned up my living room, still a bit of a mess from the game Friday night. I saw the story unfold before my eyes... the plume of black smoke coming from the Pentagon, at first thought to be a fire in the courtyard, finally confirmed to be another airplane that had crashed into the building itself. Flipping through channels at one point, I heard about the plane that had crashed near Camp David - on its way to, apparently - and the remote fell from my hand. I saw the first tower collapse on tape-delay, the second live as I was checking webcomics. As I watched a replay of the footage of the second tower being hit by the plane, I was astounded. Hollywood studios pay big bucks for that kind of pyrotechnics, and here it was happening in real life. It couldn't be happening. I couldn't believe it.
This is like Tokyo Tower being destroyed in all the apocalyptic anime - the symbol of a nation's strength and achievement reduced to rubble, showing how vulnerable that nation, and humanity in general, really is. Only this is real. Too real. Too horrible to comprehend.
Explosions in anime and movies are cool. They're safe, they're removed from us, we can stand back and ooh and ahh and know that we're safe because it's just fiction and special effects. Explosions in reality are very much not cool. They destroy real property, real lives. They kill people. Mothers, fathers, children, lovers, friends - wiped out. On this scale, even as we watch from a safe distance through the television, they strike at the very core of our sense of security.
That's what the terrorists want... and that's exactly what they got.
I'm scared. I came in to work today, but really, I just want to go home and hide in a corner and cry.
Tonight at 6:30 p.m. there's an ecumenical service at Civic Plaza here in Albuquerque, and another prayer service at my parents' church at 7:00. My church, New Life, is having a prayer service tomorrow night at 7:00. I'm not sure if I'll go to the ones tonight... the one at Civic Plaza will be hard to get to because of parking, but I could go to the one at Covenant with my parents. I'm just not sure I'm ready to deal with that kind of... "rhetoric" seems too harsh, but I can't think of the work I want... about this yet. It's not comforting to me, because it's not what I believe anymore (I was uncomfortable watching Earnhardt's memorial services, too - they were so "Baptist"). I will go to the service at New Life tomorrow.
Update: I ended up going to the ecumenical service after all - please see the next entry...
Instead, tonight after work I'm going to United Blood Services to give blood... for the first time. I keep saying I should do this, now that it's been more than a year since I got my tattoo, but I never get around to it.
If you're in New Mexico, click here for information on how you can help. (opens in a new window)
My thoughts are scattered, I'm rambling, gomen nasai...
One thought occured to me as I looked at my calendar... mixing anime and reality again... in Neon Genesis Evangelion, the date of "Second Impact" (the cataclysmic event that precedes World War III) is given as September 13, 2000. What if that was a year off?
I feel like we're now on the brink of destroying ourselves...
... and I feel like watching Evangelion again.
Nothing like scaring yourself a little with fiction to avoid being terrorized by reality.
recent alterations //
21 November 2002 // I'm not dead yet!
03 October 2002 // Snarling bitch to genki fangirl in 0.8 seconds flat! [i]
27 September 2002 // He's got butterfly wings, not feathery angel wings. Geez, people!
25 September 2002 // The Great Oekaki Contest Begins! [ai]
14 September 2002 // The obsessiveness continues...
