It's
like a dream. Every night, before I go to bed, I walk out onto the
deck of my apartment in the Angeles Mountains, and take in the crystalline
view of thousands of stars in the expansive night sky.
Impossible six months ago at my old place in North Hollywood, the
ritual serves as an affirmation of self-goal accomplishment. I'd always
said to myself I'd get away from the utter insanity of life in Los
Angeles. The millions of colliding people, like so many electrons
surrounding an atom; the perpetual, snarling, dehumanizing traffic;
the noise, the lights, the maniacally constant energy—all gone.
At long last. Up here, from my deck, the only visible hint of hustle
and bustle are the stars that blink and move.
Not shooting stars. Airplanes. On an average night, I can see as many
as eight planes darting across the moonlit landscape. I look up and
think "that's pretty cool" before coming inside to look
over The List once more before going to bed.
Ah, The List. The "master plan" of my life. Filled with
List Items, Things To Do, and Reminders. This guy owes me money, I
should call him. I'm working on a new website, I should write a couple
of paragraphs and scan a few pictures. Call the doctor about my knee
so I can begin working out again. Buy healthy food so I don't overeat.
Remember to take care of that problem at work tomorrow. Pick this
up. Drop this off. Call him. Write her. Practice this. Work on that.
The satisfaction I get from completing items on The List is comparable
to sex, only more predictable.
All of these little things I cared so much about made me feel powerful.
And then Tuesday came along and rendered it all completely meaningless,
and me wholly impotent. Insignificant.
Then the worry clicked in. My father commutes into The City (as us
tri-staters call it) every day, and my brother and sister both lived
less than thirty blocks from the World Trade Center. My father worked
in the Financial District for years. I know the area. I've walked
it. I knew what it meant when the Towers went down.
Calls into the 212 were useless. Even Westfield, NJ's 908 was impossible
to reach. I left for work with the images of horror in my head. Grainy
close-ups of people jumping out of eighty-story windows were what
stuck the most.
At 8:45 AM, I got the call I was waiting for on my cell phone. They
were all safe in my brother's 14th Street apartment. The good news
came over a backdrop of car radio reports recapping the fact that
a third plane had nose-dived into the Pentagon. The Pentagon.
No one in the office was talking much about it, save a quick "can
you believe this?" or something similar. I sat at my desk and
stared blankly at the file folders. Why was I even there? A phone
guy showed up. That's right, we were installing a new voicemail system
that day. I scheduled it weeks ago. We zombied our way around the
building, writing down extension numbers and learning the new software.
The install went badly. It became a ten-hour project. As the day wore
on, a strange anger seethed through my veins. While thousands of New
Yorkers were being burned alive and crushed by pancaked concrete,
we were running about the office, ripping apart a perfectly good phone
system in the name of "efficiency." The longer we worked
on it, the more imbalanced I became. By 5:00 PM, it was all I could
do not to embed a desk chair into the telephone switchboard. Mind
you, this is a job I actually like.
That night I had two very close friends over. I'd had a meticulous
plan for that evening: coffee and a health bar, work out, shower,
practice tunes for an upcoming session, work on the website. Instead
it was Absolut Mandarin, CNN, and a shared gratitude for not having
to spend the night alone.
The List sat in my bag, ignored for a full night for the first time
in…I honestly don't know. Call it more than six years.
I'm
not a joiner. To me, organizations suppress individuality and freedom
of thought, and it's my view that group behavior is often less virtuous
than individual behavior. Though I was raised Jewish and strongly
identify with that in a familial and cultural sense, I don't practice
and, to be frank, I'm not much on organized religion in general. (For
some it makes life whole and complete, which I respect.) Professionally
speaking, I think it's no secret that I'd love to be a full-time writer,
work for myself, and stay home quite often, alone with my priorities,
such as they are. (For some, offices make life whole and complete,
which…OK, I don't get.)
Thus the dilemma: how to express the ultimate group sentiment, patriotism?
I look back on what I've written so far and it all just looks so pathetic.
Rantings about me, I, me, I, I, I. How has this affected me, what
do I think about it, what can I do about it. Hell, I'm writing this
for a website solely dedicated to the Temple of Me. The Life of Bryan.
Really, who fucking cares?
But the truth is that this is all I know how to do right now. I didn't
put a flag on my car, though I saw so much red, white and blue on
the roads that I thought I was in a military parade. I didn't give
blood—by the time I was set to do it the Red Cross said they
had enough. I'm trying to figure out where best to donate money, but
I haven't done it yet because…well, I'm in a fog. I don't know
what I really think about something until I write about it.
So this is what I think.
I think that, while on the one hand to completely disrupt my life's
routine is exactly what a terrorist would want, that most of what
I've done in my life has been not only unimportant, but has come at
the expense of communicating and spending time with those I truly
care for. This I plan to remedy as best I can, as soon as possible.
I think that the essential function of any government is to protect
its citizens. I think that the world's disgraceful, fence-straddling
reaction to Israel's proactive approach to eradicating terrorism on
its own soil has been discredited beyond doubt. No longer do we have
to ask the question of what we would do if we were in their shoes.
We're wearing their shoes. They're coated in concrete dust.
There are those who say that too strident a military action will turn
the entire Islamic world, radical or not, into perpetual enemies of
the United States. I concede that some geopolitical realities must
be acknowledged insofar as they present challenges to the achievement
of our ultimate goals.
However:
I think that vicious, sustained, overwhelming violence is entirely
appropriate in dealing with the responsible parties and their harborers/supporters,
and that because the call of radical Islam (not traditional Islam,
but radical Islamic fundamentalism as practiced by the Taliban, Hamas,
etc.) is to martyr one's self at the altar of destroying Israel, America,
and the entire Western world, we must be prepared to fight them to
their last standing man, on whatever soil they occupy, until the sentiment
has been completely eradicated from this earth. Don't say it can't
be done. It has been done. The word jihad should, from this day forth,
carry the same stigma as a swastika.
I think that past policy of the American government has been a recipe
for the current state of affairs. We back Israel because they share
democratic Western values and we want a strategic and military foothold
in the Middle East, while we support repressive regimes in the region
that wink and nod at people like bin Laden, simply because these countries
have oil and the power to disrupt our economy if the whole place goes
sideways. Don't get me wrong—there is absolutely no moral equivalency
in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, but it isn't like we didn't know
that there's been a death struggle going on there for thousands of
years. Their war is now our war. Do you know anyone right now who
wouldn't be willing to pay three, even four dollars a gallon for gas
to never have to look at the Persian Gulf again? Without oil, the
Gulf States have about as much strategic interest to the United States
as does Antarctica. After we settle this—and we will settle this,
no matter how long it takes—it's time to look somewhere else
for fuel, whatever the cost. Let them find other customers if they
can, and even if they can't.
I think, hope and pray that our government is up to the task of leading
us through these next few, undoubtedly painful years. It doesn't matter
how George W. Bush got there. He's our President now, fate has handed
him the burden of leadership in a time of dire crisis, and he needs
all the help he can get, believe me. He could start by not tearing
up when he's on TV talking tough about dealing with our enemies.
This isn't a cheap shot. This is important to hundreds of millions
of Americans, not to mention the world. Yes, we must grieve for the
victims' families and friends in the time of their vast, incomprehensible
loss. Not for a second do I discount that. But I like the attitude
of two of the workers helping to clear the rubble and possibly save
some lives, who, when asked what should be done with the site, responded
by yelling into the camera, "They should build it again—three
of them!" Or better yet, the idea (courtesy of columnist Jonah
Goldberg's NRO column) that two towers should be built, and that they
should be named Freedom and Unity, and we can let the terrorists try
and figure out what the initials stand for. I'd like to see a little
of that kind of attitude from W. If he can't muster it and be genuine,
he should put someone out in front of the cameras who can.
Finally, I think that, as a nation, we must commit to the notion that
this will not be easy. This will not be Desert Storm. This could take
years and will almost certainly cost more American lives. There will
be more horrors and atrocities, and with the advent of modern media,
it will all happen in real time, as a traumatized country now knows
all too well. But this is war. We may not know precisely against who,
but we know exactly against what. And wars have different ground rules
than surgical strikes or U.N. "police actions." It won't
be pretty. It will require a grim sense of purpose not summoned in
this country in sixty years. I hope and pray that we're up to it.
To whatever end I can contribute anything, I hope and pray that I
am as well.
As
I drove home tonight, I listened on the radio to story after story,
interview after interview of relatives of people missing or people
deceased. So many stories, so much grief, so much loss…it finally
got to me, and I pulled over and just lost it.
I'd read the e-mails about something happening tonight (Friday, September
14) at 7:00 PM, something about candles and standing outside. Normally
I go out of my way to take mountain roads home, to isolate myself
from traffic, shopping centers, and big intersections. You know, get
away from the city, too many people, all that nonsense. Tonight I
found myself veering off the freeway early, right into the heart of
one of the neighborhood's busiest cross-streets. Sure enough, there
it was: throngs of people waving flags, holding candles and signs,
motioning to the cars passing by. My throat swelled up again, and
I let it out by laying on the horn and pumping my fist out the window,
over and over and over again. Several folks caught my eye, and they
smiled and waved back at me.
When I got home, I looked up into the dark sky of the new moon. It
was a clear night, pitch black, perfect for stargazing. During the
previous two nights the stars had stood perfectly, eerily still.
Not tonight. A couple of stars were blinking and moving again. Not
as many as before. Just two. But two was enough to make me want to
stay out on the deck, and watch, and smile.
