Eleven Anniversaries

9/11/01 9/11/02I'm one hundred miles away from the nearest international airport. I'm a freshman at Applachian State University. People on campus seem quiet today. I go to class wondering if we should all have the day off. One of my professors has assigned a book this semester called 'the Clash of Fundamentalisms'.  I have a philosophy textbook called 'Never Argue about Politics or Religion.'  I spend much more time watching the Simpsons than reading.  I don't know anything.9/11/03In January I went with my Mom to New York and we stood at Ground Zero, freezing, touching the fence and looking into a sad emptiness. Today I'm a sophomore and I'm still in the mountains, far away. I am failing most of my courses because I smoke a lot of marijuana. I'm still watching the Simpsons a lot but today they are replaying the destruction of the twin towers, over and over and it makes me feel like shit. Six months ago the President declared war on Iraq, and I did not consider joining in.9/11/04This is the first anniversary I've spent back at home, in northern Virginia. I dropped out of school six months ago and I took the train downtown and sat on a bench and watched a squirrel jump back and forth between the gate around the White House. I'm working in a record store on this day and I ask people about what it was like to be here that day and no one seems to want to talk about it. The election is coming soon. I feel more scared of another Beltway sniper than of another 9/11.9/11/05I spend the day with 31,834 other people at RFK stadium watching the Nationals lose to the Braves by two runs. After the game  I walk around the Mall, look up at the Washington Monument, climb the steps to the Lincoln Memorial. The sky is that same blue. I feel good to be here and if it all happened over again there is nowhere I'd rather be.Two months earlier I landed in London for vacation the same day terrorists exploded a bus and several subway stations. I told the taxi driver I was from DC and maybe I knew how he felt. On this anniversary, for the first time, I feel somewhat informed. Now I watch the news and read the newspaper. Now I don't smoke marijuana.9/11/06I'm traveling to Italy today on an airplane. It feels strange to be in Dulles airport where 5 years earlier, to the day, murderers checked into a flight that never landed. I don't feel nervous on the plane because I would love to catch a terrorist with my own two hands and strangle him, but I haven't decided to join the military. I just want to catch the bad guys on a plane while I'm going on vacation.9/11/07I'm a student again. I have a copy of the 9/11 commission report, but I haven't read it.  I'm back on a college campus for the first time since the second anniversary. More people seem to be laughing, enjoying a kind of normal day. There are little American flags planted by the dozen in the grass outside the student center. I feel smarter about the world now.9/11/08I'm an intern for the Washington Post and we are reporting on the new Pentagon Memorial. I find it beautiful and heartbreaking. The politics seem heavy today because Bush is leaving and maybe no one knows what to really think. I ride a crowded bus every day and sometimes I fantasize about strangling someone who tries to detonate a bomb on it.9/11/09I'm in Beijing, China. No one seems very interested in America or September 11 here. I've been away for a month and I am ready to go home. I catch a glance of a TV and see the news and it's in Chinese so I don't know what they're saying. I feel glad to be American and to have the freedom to be in Beijing, China for no particular reason.9/11/10I have my first real job and I'm sitting at a desk two miles away from the Pentagon and it is a pretty normal day. This morning I heard bagpipes near the Courthouse. I feel old, because nine years have gone by, and if something can't make sense in nine years, how long will it take?9/11/11Ten years and it still stings like hell when they replay that video of the crash.Today I'm watching TV, the opening of the memorial in New York, and I'm crying my goddamn eyes out. Two weeks ago I was sitting in a conference room on Broad Street in Manhattan, and I could see the new World Trade Center rising four blocks away. The unfinished building was gorgeous and powerful and gave me a good feeling.9/11/12I'm working in an office with veterans and I say thanks to them. The sky is that blue again, and the air is that crisp again - I haven't forgotten that color blue and that crisp air.