I didn't have much time to write a post. Interestingly, I've already told my Sept. 11 story. It's posted here if anyone cares to read about a bright-eyed young reporter trapped at a chemical weapons incineration plant.Anniversaries, especially uniformly numbered anniversaries, always bring out an awareness of the time that passes. People usually spend anniversaries adhering to some tradition, focused on reflection, or lost in memory. I tend to fall in the third group. I can still feel the numb shock, taste metallic stillness in the sinking air, and see the televised images that I, and every other American, watched in horror as our bright, mundane mornings were violently jarred from their routine. It was a Tuesday. That fact felt important to me.
Every year since, I usually spend some time on Sept. 11 reading the words that people wrote around that date. As we march through this endless War on Terror, I'm always drawn to a quote that my friend sent me in an e-mail two days after the attacks. I read it because it speaks to me exactly what we're up against:
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Great qoute. Keep up the great work.
ReplyDeleteDillon
That kind of talk wil get you on the NSA watch list little missy!
ReplyDeleteHi Jill,
ReplyDeleteI realy like that quote. I have recently visited Bali where terrorist bombs have also been used to kill people. Before visiting there I read a book called 'On the Edge of a Dream: Magic and Madness in Bali' by Michael Wiese. The author comments on the Balinese concept of duality and how they are able to express the good and the evil within their own nature. As if the two forces are integral to the human spirit and human beings would do better to acknowledge both sides of his or her own morality.
Wiese thought the Balinese had a more stable society due to their acknowledgement this. After visiting Bali I found the people had a way of dealing with the horror of the bomings that many westerners do not understand.