Hard to imagine it will be 18 years tomorrow since the World Trade Center attack. On the one hand I don’t want it to mark a turning point for me personally, it did really. It’s impossible to ignore that on that day, having never thought too much about my identity as an American, I “became” one and we all as a group joined the world community. The chickens came home to roost in a way and all the sins of the fathers abroad visited themselves on us here at home. That’s the thought that went through my head as I watched from the Prospect Expressway overpass at 7th Avenue and the second plane went through the tower. My first thought was, “This was bound to happen.”

I’m not minimizing it at all. It was as horrifying as anything I’ve ever witnessed. I’m just saying that at that moment, I became (for better or for worse) an American. Not a matter of national pride at all, but there was no more ignoring or denying it. I was part of the Big Machine and now that machine wasn’t doing so well. It doesn’t matter at all how you see yourself when 7 billion people are telling you who you are. You can’t argue with those numbers. Anyway…

What strikes me now, today, is how much time has passed. There’s been, of course, no healing at all. I mean, I’ve healed personally from every manner of affliction, including my terror on that day. The world though, is still a hot mess and it like any conflict resolution on any scale. Until both sides accept culpability then there will be no progress. There’s not even two sides and there probably never was.

I’m not going to get all political though. I’m thinking of this really only to restate my own purpose and that’s to take care of my own two square feet of space on this rock. The rest is just too big for me. I’m too fragile to cope in any productive way. The toll that fighting took was too large, so like Chief Joseph, from this day I will fight no more, forever.

Selah.