|
And
Then...
A thick cloud of smoke and we could see one of the World Trade Towers on fire. The other occluded, gone. The commentator told us the horrifying facts. I watched people smash windows and wave sheets of paper to try and cool down. I saw people jump from a hundred stories up.
As we watched, the second tower crumbling fell. Roaring, billowing. Sickening. I tried to go to work. They sent me home. Karen and I spent the rest of the day watching the tv. Hours passed. We went for a walk. It was a horribly beautiful day. Clear, sunny, warm. The sun was too bright. We stood on the beach and looked at San Francisco. I cried a little. I imagined my city burning. As the days passed, we watched the news. 7000 dead. A hole in New York’s heart. A hole in America’s heart.
I’ve always liked my country, in a lucky to be a female living in an affluent society kind of way (I can afford to go places. I can vote. Earn my own money. That kind of thing.) And of course I’ve had the odd flash of patriotism on the 4th of July. But I was always so aware of the things that were wrong, cynical about politicians, hope, change, etc, that I never knew that I loved my country. In the way I love my parents. That moment that you realize that they’re human, that you’d do anything to keep them safe. Passionately. Absolutely. I talked a couple times with mom. She was planning on going to Egypt. I never questioned that. Mom did go to Israel between wars. Did go to Peru when Shining Path was at play. That wasn’t the question. The question was, what were Karen and I going to do? Where were we going to go? We studied the news, although after awhile I cut myself off from victim stories. No real research value and it just hurt too much to watch. I weighed options, studied facts and feelings and decided. Although, it was so very hard...
I decided to be prudent. I decided not to go. Karen suggested that we go to Victoria in Canada. I said only if we wander. I wanted to stretch across the Great Plains. Crawl through the Rocky’s. See kitch and history and some impossible incredible thing that would make me feel better. And so this album is for that trip. Not a trip of strange mystic lands and sighs. No forbidden foreign deserts and temples and strange languages. No fleeting glimpse of an old world. It wasn’t the best trip that I have ever taken. How could it be? It was a trip permeated with news broadcasts and newspapers and odd flags and bombings and fears and the ever present honored dead. But it was the most emotional fulfilling trip that I have ever taken. Because for once this wasn’t someone else’s country, it was and is mine. This was a trip across the new world. My world. My flag. My fears. My honored dead.
It wasn’t the trip that I wanted to take. It was the trip that I needed in that moment in time. All 6700 miles of it. Oregon, Washington, into Canada - British Columbia (Vancouver Island), Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, then back into the US - Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and then a little place called California.  |
|
one
beautiful fall morning, Karen and I turned on the t.v. to see the world
turned upside down.
Chills
on my skin. Nausea in my stomach. No tears yet. I could not process the
event enough to cry. It’s hard to understand impossible things.
I
don’t know anyone who died and yet, I found myself wearing red, white,
and blue. Going to memorial services. Burning candles. Hanging wee flags
from our window.
If
I never knew that I loved my country, then I had also somehow forgotten
how vast America is. How we stretch out in bustling cities and empty spaces.
We have so many quiet places where you can hear the nothing. Where the
stars are cold and clear and bright. Places where everyone looks the same.
Places where everyone looks a 1000 shades of different. Empty canyons for
religious martyrs and forests for dissenting atheists. Room for any and
everything.
