My Rememberance

[mbarrick]

I've heard now of more than one person confused about how they should feel. You shouldn't feel any particular way. You can feel any way you like.

I didn't know I would lose my job. I had my trip booked before it happened. So I went anyway. I smelled the smoke with a hint of death on it and saw the rubble. I watched people in Battery Park City walking their dogs, going to work and just going on with their lives while the dust still clung to the torn awnings in front of their apartments. I went clubbing. Had Sunday brunch. Giggled on the top of the Empire State Building because I was enjoying my life. Later bdallaway and I had a coversation at Steve's birthday party last year about how perhaps the good of this might be a gerneration waking up and learning some hard lessions about the world like our parents learned during WWII. But no. We've just got another push-button murder-factory war run by a trained chimp, idiots like Reptard, his intrepid reporter Carey Wong and the like blaming it all on aliens and death-rays, and freaked out sheep willing to throw away their rights, accept lies and forego freedoms to in the name of paying ironic lip-service to justice, truth and freedom. How about a popular movement to impeach Bush on the grounds of incompetence and a real, tasteful, and meaningful memorial (not just another damn post-modern slab-with-names-on-it peice of crap) sitting in a small park surrounded by a collection of brand-spanking-new towers? Get rid of the moron, give the dead their honours, and get on with the living. There is 3.8 million square feet of office space missing from lower Manhattan and a crap load of living people who need jobs and space to work.

Today I avoided most of the crap, but of course it was ultimately unavoidable. There was the conversation in the elevator about cheap air-fares today. There was the coffee-room discussion about retarded airport security. There was the discarded special edition of the Vancouver Sun I looked at in the Seabus terminal (and then put down in disgust). There was the really excellent and factual show freaturing the structural engineer who built the towers that I let myself get sucked into for a while. But I avoided all the prefabricated whipping-up-support-for-daddy's-war schlock.

So here is my rememberance. Yesterday I said happy birthday to flashman. Today let me say a big fat fuck you to the cowardly weasels at HSBC. And tomorrow I'll get on with my life.

Comments

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

"the man who would exchange liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security" benjamin franklin...couldn't be more pertinent in a post 9/11 world...i avoided all the hype just as i said i would...and luckily i heard no discussions...it'll take a great deal more than this to wake up this new generation...because it still doesn't reveal our greatest enemies...they'll come through unscathed and looking like heroes...but time will tell...

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

That quote is perfect.

Re:

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

yeh i read it somewhere last year after 9/11 and thought what a brilliant guy benjamin was...so i put it on my info page...

[bdallaway.livejournal.com]

Freedom, Security, Comfort: you can only have two at the same time.

I read that on Usenet today and wow, how true.

Me, I watched the HBO special last night. Twice. I can't stop watching the planes hit the towers, and the people jumping. It's horrible and so uterrly and completely compelling for me. The people jumping is what really gets me the most, especially the description of that woman who was trying to HOLD HER SKIRT DOWN while she fell. I can't imagine how it must have felt for those people, all of them there and the only way I can describe it is this childlike naive feeling that if I can somehow feel it too, it would help dilute everyone else's horror and pain. Because it's definitely NOT entertaining.