Afternoon Baseball

I've written about 9/11 twice before, and there seems to be a bit of public fatigue on it.

A lot of it is understandable. It's been six years, and even events that people carry around their whole lives become more internalized, as much for their sanity as for our comfort. While post-9/11 films are springing up everywhere, 9/11 itself is a part of history, even if still in the living present.

The angry mob that seems to be dominate the 9/11 family of victims now seems whiny and unable to be placated (as in the never-ending protests of the damn memorial that's solely constructed for them). "Rescue Me," the best (fictional) depiction of the emotional devastation 9/11 created, seems a little tired, and now just a plain-old good melodrama set in a firehouse. This many years later, there's little or no life progress from Denis Leary and his gang. The younger characters, those outside the firehouses, don't get what's wrong with these guys. True, many just don't get 9/11, period, but there's been no honest attempt to move forward. They escape in destructive habits, their jobs, or suicide, if you're the captain.

Meanwhile, the health aspects, much as in Hiroshima, are the living, breathing effect of 9/11, and much as 60 years ago, being paid little attention. To do something about opens old wounds, disrupts the continuum of all in NYC that day being stoic heroes who returned to their lives after and lived happily ever after. We want to remember those guys for then, not for now.
And, of course, there's the wars, which, even if they went perfectly, would still, six years on, be a drag on the public mind. We want them to be home, job well done, let's never think about that again.
America so wants a return to normalcy, as it has since presidential candidate Warren G. Harding invented the word.

But 9/12 is America at its starkest, its best. Not just the patriotic coming-together, but the realization that life isn't easy, fair, kind or necessarily long. And the corresponding realization that much good can be accomplished despite, or because of, knowing those cruel facts. Our bubbles, dreams and perceptions can be shattered, yet we can pick up the pieces. We can survive in a world without sports or plane travel, yet again return to them without being overwhelmed by fear or guilt. 9/12 was a day of overcoming paralysis to act, however one could, without a plan but somehow making it work.

Those are things to remember. Right now, we too much wish to escape. The celebrity culture is peaking, not in the height of outrageousness, but the width of its reach. Any person can be a star, a public event to cash in and be cashed in on, because it's like the bar never closes. 24-hour viewings, no charge, no thinking, no lasting judgment brought upon spectator or spectacle. Without the health risks. Physical, that is.
Mentally, we suffocate ourselves. Emotionally, we shutter ourselves.

The parallel is at the WTC site. Let's build big, memorial or skyscraper. Let's just build quick. Let's get something up to say, there, we did it. Just what we did is unclear, but the action matters more than the reason. Just as a drunken binge allows physical expression with a disconnect -- the mind doesn't have to confront what lies before it. Not that a project needn't happen, a memorial not erected -- but it's escapism. If we build it, the ghosts won't come.

It's time for an end to escapism. That won't bring happiness immediately, or perhaps ever. But it may help us truly place 9/11 in history, with its lessons intact, instead of pretending its not there, and learning nothing.

So, let 9/11 be an impetus to examination, to setting goals, to saying, hey, if we survived this, what's there to fear? And let 9/12 be the day you take that first step toward fulfilling that optimism.