The Po Show

Today

My husband was in Washington, DC today. He flew back this evening. Thus, he was in both DC and NYC on Sept. 11.

I'm glad he's home, because I couldn't shake the feeling of unease about his being in both cities on this day. If something bad was going to happen in a really ironic way, this would be the perfectly symbolic day for it.

I've been feeling vaguely angry at reading people's comments about 9/11, as I am every year. I can't stand it when people talk about how it was the day "everything changed," "we lost our innocence," "we discovered the evil in the world." What happened that day was so gigantic, but I can't believe that anyone truly was innocent, failed to understand that there was evil in the world, prior to that day.

Tragedy is a daily occurrence in the world, on small scales and large. Slaughter takes place every single fucking day, somewhere in the world, casually and without comment. I am not trying to diminish the horror of 9/11, but can't I mourn the suffering, torture, and murder of non-Americans as readily as I do that of Americans?

Psychologically, the mind can only hold so much. I understand that. People can only grasp so much. They can understand a single day, murders that occurred in places that are familiar, much more readily than murder spread over months, years, decades, in places they may not have even heard of.

But those people are still dead, and it's happening right now, today, and it's going to keep on happening. Words fail me.