You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Like Dana's experience, I also had a stranger make an unsolicited 9/11 comment to me earlier in the week. He said, "Remember the last clear, September day like this?" However my stranger added, "Those bastards...you can't even enjoy a beautiful day anymore." I thought, well not now, thanks.

For the last three years we've been told unless we keep shopping, using mass-transit, watching sit-coms, taking vacations and buying large automobiles--it means a terrorist victory. And that it's our civic duty to keep up the appearance of business as usual, pretend that everyone hasn't been irreversibly changed, that the world hasn't been irreversibly changed. Bullshit, all of it. You'd have to be pretty soulless in my opinion to successfully sublimate and deny the hideous events of three years ago. But if you look up at a clear sky, feel the perfect 76 degree air brush your skin, and find yourself totally unable to enjoy it, haven't--to use the language--the terrorists won? Oahu was enjoying a picture-perfect day the morning the Japanese kamikazes bombed Pearl Harbor, yet generations of Americans and Hawaiians somehow escaped being paralyzed by puffy, cotton-ball clouds and low humidity. Hell, we've even stopped being scared of the Japanese. It's the date which will live in infamy. The date.

So...the anniversary. And it just so happens to be a gorgeous day, the kind which would normally make you want to get outside, be with friends, laugh, and be grateful you are alive. Which is what I plan to do.

Posted by Antigeist at September 11, 2004 12:08 PM