My Thoughts
September 12, 2001
Like everyone not actually there, I watched the television. Watching was very hard. It was hard beyond the fact that this was surreal and devastating, beyond the basic premise that real people were in deep, deep despair. I felt anxiety under my skin and a creeping sensation on the back of my neck that I couldn't completely explain. I'm not actually there, I kept telling myself. They are the ones who have it hard. I have it easy. Why do I feel so incredibly bad? I watched as images piled atop images: gray and yellow smoke billowing over the city, a black gash in the Pentagon, people running in the streets. I found myself trying to find the one image that would sum it up, the one picture or that one phrase that would bring it all into focus. That's the problem, I thought to myself. If I can just find something here that I can grab onto, I'll understand. Then I'll feel better. The television ran video of the plane impacting the skyscraper again and again. That video--chilling and terrible as it is, and long lived as it will be--can never be the sum of this event, though. Scenes of the two towers crumbling down upon themselves can't, either. Those images are ugly, and spare. They are too one-dimensional, too minimal to speak about this story. A fireman sat on a street corner with blood running down his face. A reporter chanted "I hope I live, I hope I live" over and over while a cloud of black debris rolled over him. Another reporter told her chilling tale of being trapped in the streets and trying to breathe while the dust covered her. People's voices came over video--"Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God." Every image and every moment was so overwhelming and so painful to watch. I felt terrible fear for the people involved. I was pleased to find out that those New Yorkers I knew were all right, but then guilty for my celebration when so many others were most definitely not all right. By the end of the evening, I still felt so bad. I went to bed realizing I could never get that one moment that would make it all so clear. That was too much to ask for. Sane people cannot ever truly understand these kinds of things. So I went to bed feeling small and weak, and not very happy with myself. The next morning I watched more coverage while I ate breakfast. It was all the same. Nothing had changed. I tried to write. It worked for a little while, but it takes audacity to write, and I didn't have any audacity in me. I did my best, though. When I finally came upstairs, I was tired, perhaps a bit cranky, and still out of sorts. Lisa sat at the kitchen counter drinking her coffee. The television played in the background. She told me a few new things. Six people were pulled out of the rubble. Six precious lives amid the barges filled with dead. And then it happened. The image. At first the camera focused on only his shoulder. He was a fireman or a police officer. His jacket was heavy black cloth, dirty with white ash and dust. The sound of a diesel engine idling was in the background. The camera pulled up and back and you could see the man was sitting in an emergency vehicle of some type. He was black. His lips were thin, his hair was short and neatly kept. His face was smooth, with bits of plaster stuck under his eyes and over his forehead. "What was it like?" the reporter asked. But the man wasn't really there. His eyes had a frozen glaze like he was trying to focus a thousand miles away. His jaw hung slack, and he was so very still that for a moment I thought he wasn't going to answer. "I tried to save them all," he said in a wasted monotone. "But I couldn't."   Despite a fairly lax attitude to anything that resembles a true religion, I found myself talking to God a lot today. For the victims and their families I asked for solace, acceptance, and every ounce of grace the universe can muster. But more than any other, my heart aches today for this tired man with the plaster and dust rings around his eyes. I keep coming back to him because, in the end, I revel in him. I admire him. I find myself thinking about him, sitting so plainly defeated in the idling truck. He had done so much. He had given everything he had, and yet it could never be enough. I'm sure he felt drained and devastated and small and overwhelmed. I can't begin to imagine his experiences, and I hope that I will never experience them myself. I'm sure he will be haunted by what he has seen. But I am just as sure that he will be back again, and again, and again until the job is done. It was written in his face. I was wrong about the image, of course. It didn't help me understand everything. I still don't know what this all means. I needed to see this man, though. I needed to know such nobility still existed in this world in order put all those images from the day before into their right frame of reference. From the moment this thing started there was realistically nothing anyone could do to stop it. This is life. Sometimes all you've got to cling to is your hope, and your knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. I think this is what everything incomprehensible comes down to. We have to do what is right. We cannot change this. All we can do is to try to do what is right in our response. These were the sum total of my thoughts today. Not much, I guess. But it's a start. Just as I prayed for the victims and their families, I prayed for this man throughout the day. I asked God to give this man the strength and fortitude he needed to complete perhaps the most horrific job known to humankind. I prayed that he find someone alive so that he could have something tangible to see for all his grisly labor. But mostly I prayed that he will survive this and will eventually come to know the power and the beauty of his efforts. Because like all those around him today, he is a great man. And like great men everywhere, I believe he will wear his actions like a badge upon his soul. As, I must believe, will the men who flew the planes.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
|
BACK TO 
|