12:33 am - THU 9/13/01
\"I don't see a building. I see people\"
TUE 9/11/01

8:00 pm

Back home from work, watching more of the news about the terrorist attack.

It was bizarre being at work today. It just felt strange, and WRONG somehow. I wanted to be at home, watching the news ( Most of the city was closed down today--including the Beverly Center, across the street from the bookstore--but we stayed open until 6 pm. I thought it was a very odd half-measure ).

I found myself agreeing both with Michael, who wanted to be "alone with his thoughts", and with Juniper, who understood and shared my wanting to keep watching the news, even when there wasn't anything new to report, as wanting to not feel "so alone" ( It might sound odd, to want to "not feel so alone" by being alone in your apartment, watching television, but in this day and age, that's how most of us connect to our society in a crisis. We watch tv. We "follow the story" anxiously, wanting to KNOW, wanting somehow to UNDERSTAND, even though "understanding" is truly impossible in the face of such insanity ).

WED 9/12/01

10:55 pm

Watching the news...

At the bookstore, for some reason we only received our usual couple copies of the New York Times, and of course they were gone within the first minute we were open ( Whatever the reason, I thought it was really unfortunate that we didn't seem to have ANY extra newspapers. Someone seriously dropped the ball ).

Nobody was talking about the attack, but the tv was on all day long in the back room, and there were people gathered around it any time I went back there. Upstairs, in the cafe, Josh had a radio on, playing the news. But I didn't really talk about the attack with anyone from the store, except for a very brief moment at the start of lunchtime, and none of the customers I dealt with during the day brought it up either.

It still seems bizarre to me, that life should just go on, but there it is. This morning, I got up, I watched the news till it was time to go to work, I worked, I came home, and am still watching the news.

I'm still trying to sort out how I feel.

I've heard some of the things I've thought echoed in the comments of other people-- "It's like a nightmare", "like a movie", "I can't get my mind around it", "How could people DO this?"--but the person who seemed to touch me the most was one of the eyewitnesses who was interviewed, deeply upset, who said "I can't look ( in the direction of the World Trade Center ), because I don't see a building. I see people. People hurting. Children who won't have parents...".

That got to me.

I feel sad. I feel afraid. I feel angry. I feel impotent. And I feel like the world I live in has CHANGED forever, even though I don't think I really know or understand yet what that's going to mean in the long term.

I find myself wondering what we're going to do now. What CAN be done now. You can't erase the horror of what's happened. The insanity. The hatred.

You want to hold on to the stories of heroism, of courage, of people reaching out to each other, in their grief, in solidarity, people realizing that when it comes down to it, we ARE one people.

But the part of me that falls, perhaps too easily, into despair and discouragement was struggling with the stories of attacks on mosques here in the US, of threatening calls and e-mails to Islamic believers here ( I am no expert on Islam, but I have to believe that the fanatics who did this do NOT represent the whole religion, no more than the extreme Christian right represents all of Christianity ). But realistically, at a time like this, in a country as large and diverse as ours, you have to realize that both the best AND the worst of people will emerge. But it still left me feeling upset at the streak of prejudice and stupidity in some of my fellow Americans ( I understand the anger--I feel angry TOO--but how does it justify hurting OTHER innocent people? ).

I feel odd...I want to report on some of my "personal news" and at the same time feel a little silly, and a little guilty about it.

But it's late anyway. I'll probably try to write something before work. Maybe by tomorrow, it won't feel quite so "silly" to start reporting on events in "Jimlandia"...

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