Last year I posted this cartoon based off of notes and sketches I made on September 12, 2001. It took me a few years to even be able to try to get it down on paper, and it’s still not right, but I think the idea is there: we were all hurt that day, and we all wanted to do something, no matter how small.
I’ll never forget lying in that cold vinyl chair on Old Canton Road, feeling like I was nothing, gray, muddied, staring at the ceiling and closing my eyes tight against the pressure in my left arm, fist closing on a rubber ball. Everything changed when I saw that woman kiss that box, a box filled full of Mississippi blood and she didn’t have to write “FOR NEW YORK” on it but she needed to, and God bless her for it, because by doing it she brought me back to life and made me feel like I could do something.
I still can’t talk about it very much. I remember going to Musiquarium on 9/12, where we would hoist a gigantic American flag, so large it was visible from the highway, and where if you were wearing a sticker saying you’d given blood you got free beer. We really didn’t talk about it that night, or any other night, just as much as I couldn’t talk about United 93 with my dad just the other night.
As the 9/11 Commission Report makes clear, United 93 was intentionally downed by the terrorists because they realized they could no longer fulfill their mission and they could no longer restrain the passengers. Even though they had killed several men and women that were fist-fighting their way to the cabin, the hijackers were scared: they knew they were losing, and they knew that the people on board weren’t going to back down, even if it meant their death.
That is the America I love, the people that I love. Those were the people who ripped atoms apart, who walked on the moon, who put their fists in the face of hijackers and, in doing so, prevented further harm to their fellow citizens.
September Eleventh is a day of mourning, and it should always be; but there must also be a component of pride, for even in this worst of our days there was heroism and selflessness. We can yet use those virtues to build America strong again, to regain our stature, to again peer into the building blocks of nature and stride across the stars.
Update:
A friend sent me the video of the first Daily Show after September Eleventh, which I’d never seen, and which is magnificent. Like the man says, this is why we should “grieve, but not despair:”
I love you.
On the first NFL weekend after Katrina last year, ESPN showed a clip of the New Orleans Saints running onto the field in Charlotte for their game against the Carolina Panthers. The Carolina crowd gave the Saints a minutes-long standing ovation, a salute to the team’s tenacity in the face of the incomprehensible events that had recently transpired in their hometown. I know this is trivial compared with the unmitigated evil of 9/11, but it made me weep with pride like Jon Stewart just did.
Thank you.