23 Years Ago Today.

8 Years Ago Today.

This photo of Mary-Louise Parker will make sense if you read to the end. PROOF on Broadway inspired my passion (which I still am workin’ on, y’all.) NYC was my dream, so were cool projects like this.

Reflecting, remembering where I was on 9/11. But also where I have been since.

I came across a post I put on social media in 2016 about my experience of the events of 9/11. It kind of struck me in its openness and vulnerability compared to how I express myself online lately. Most days I am more cautious about how I say things or which feelings I express now that algorithms are our collective burden, flattening out discourse and diversity of thought.

Things have changed, we all adapt.

When I posted it on 9/11/2016 it was before we had that incompetent grifter as our president who would blowhard himself through a pandemic then try to overthrow a free and fair election. A grifter who wanted the Taliban to hang with him at Camp David, and who spewed divisive opinions about bigotry being a fine thing after Charlottesville and who tried to openly blackmail the president of Ukraine in a cartoonishly buffoonish fashion.

Today I remember 23 years ago, and I also was just reminded of 8 years ago.

Every year we turn somber reflection toward the 9/11 attack, the deadliest terrorist attack in history. All within a beautiful, crisp sunny morning, we witnessed how close to 3000 innocent civilians could die going to work or traveling in a meticulously thought out, premeditated peacetime murder planned by infamous militant Al-Quaeda members who spent years and money crafting a large-scale destructive and senseless horror. Think about that. We, as a country, watched 3000 of our citizens die on our TVs in real time together while learning just how hated America was that day, as we all were just trying to go to work, pay rent, chase dreams and survive at the same time. Now, Americans just hate on each other the most. We kill one another in churches, mosques, synagogues, concerts, schools and stores. We scream at each other online for having different worldviews or opinions and try to control one another through policies or diminished education opportunities.

I remember feeling deeply scared watching the Towers fall and being terrified that someone like Bush had muscled his way into the White House for this unsettling and frightening moment in history. I can acutely remember his face when getting the news and thinking how screwed we all were and how it would have been better to have had Gore leading in that moment (and now we know, had it been Gore, he may have literally “gotten the memo” before the terrorism happened.)

Bin Laden Determined to Strike US Daily Brief that was, I guess, ignored by the Bush admin.

Anyway, I don’t believe America has healed much at all from that day. I ran across some “jokes” about 9/11 on ex-Twitter today from some edgelords that were not only unfunny but kind of tone deaf as we are all still living in this bigoted and divided nation. Gallows humor can be healing, but I do think it has to come from a place of processing the pain of a thing to strike an amusing or thoughtful note.

Seems no one wants to acknowledge or process pain at all. It is either too draining (which, fair enough, we are over-stimulated and wrung out) or just too unpleasant and therefore holds no value in our numb-out needs to survive a society that nurtures hate, mistrust and disposable human relationships and frosty interactions. But in my experience healing takes reflection. Examination.

I don’t know anything really. I just want us to all heal. Reject hate and violence and learn how to speak respectfully to one another to cultivate closeness and intimacy that leads to fun and safety.

I am not saying I do that or know how to be a certain way all the time, but I am familiar with the emotion of longing. And I yearn.

Here’s the post I shared in 2016 before we were exposed to more normalization of shitshow ideologies. I still feel the same things!!!

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