What I Said on the 1st Anniversary of 9/11

 This Is Your Life          9/11/2002

Last year about this time when I found myself suddenly and resolutely awake--snap! just like that, I interpreted it spiritually, feeling summoned for intercessory prayer. For who or what, I had no idea, so, that being the case, I prayed that much more fervently.

 Jesus; look what happened a scant five hours later. The emotional magnitude of the devastation was absolutely beyond my imagination. Keauki was away from New York when it happened; she was in the Midwest somewhere I think...maybe on an Indian reservation, and she mentioned how sympathetic the people were, but how they clearly perceived it as something that happened to you all", in New York, or on the East Coast, I guess.

I was surprised that anyone in this country could suffer such a luxurious delusion; distance. But then again, I'm here, a good percentage of my time well within collateral damage distance of here, so...quite contrarily to the folks she met, I felt like a sitting duck. And I was one--and not because my VP encouraged it, (which he did, in a pep rally in the hall a half hour or so after the Pentagon was hit ("this is news! this is why we're in business!")minutes, perhaps, after the rumors about the fires at the State Department, the felling of USA Today.
(USA TODAY?!, I thought. Right. Either that was a purely logistical consideration, a symbolic gesture of an attack on American media or, the start of hitting all the high profile members. In the latter case, I'm reluctant to admit, I then thought: any second now...)

I stayed because I figured the traffic getting out of the city would be so bad; it would be tied up and emotionally charged for hours; and also, because, at that moment, I couldn't be deprived of any source of information. I wanted and had, frequent, easy access to a tv, and a radio, and the Internet, and phones, (cell and landline), plus my beeper. The phone was of little use, but the information, knowing whatever could be known, was critically necessary at that juncture. It was the best time to get any real grasp I'm sure, of what was happening, while it unfolded, before it got the chance to be propagandized, stylized, packaged and marketed for sublimated desired effect. Raw. Real. Realer than ever, for every American. This wasn't over there , somewhere remote and fantasy-like, like Hawaii(ah, sweet luxury of generational distance), but the financial and political founts of the lord of the world; where peasants were going about their working lives! Where I live.

After a few days of constantly attended television--I practically had MSNBC and CNN on speed dial;--augmented by NPR, I cut back to nearly constantly, and life interceded. But I didn't want to forget. I didn't ever want things to return to the status quo (an illusion at best) where this horror became "an Event", its sweepingly cross-cultural heaving emotional impact, relegated to memory. Things get lost back there.

So here I am, a year later. Up again in the wee hours(the dog pestered), I began to remember.
 I can't decide whether the delayed recollection is courtesy of my boycott of news and information media since Sunday or so, or by a degree of spiritual dissonance.

 I mean, I got a kind of "heads up" last year; this year, I'm remembering to remember?

In either case, remembering, I made this prayer:Bless the souls of the slain, nurture the spirit of the stricken, comfort the pain of the aggrieved, cleanse the hearts of the guilty.Forgive us all.Let there be mercy, peace. NO FEAR. Let us not need be reminded to love each day-- not in passive appreciation, but as a manner of being;to live the day, every day-- actively, consciously, interpersonally, with great intention, in all aspects, in every way, to the nth degree-- as though it were the last day.Namaste