You Cannot Hear Us For The Cries, But We Are Here.

The stock market crash did not bring an era to an end. This era, the era of exploitation, had died quite some time before and the crash simply revealed to what extent rot had set in. In America, the nineteenth century had lasted until 1929.

(Willem van Loon, son of Hendrik Willem van Loon, in his addendum to Hendrik's The Story of Mankind, chapter "The United States Comes of Age")

There was a TIME editorial that came out right after the September 11 attacks once the shock of getting smacked down on our own soil began to wear off. I remember the last sentence: "Now America understands how Israel feels." The implication was that the Jewish state in the Middle East that's the size of New Jersey was surrounded on every size by nations whose majority Arab populations would love to see it wiped off the map and now (by 2001, but we'd been setting this up for decades with a steady flow of arms to the proto al-Qaeda while we had a common enemy), even with the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as natural barriers, we were the ones under attack now. No conspiracies. No compromises. And as of these past thirteen years, no relenting.

The September 11 attacks did not bring an era to an end. This era, the era of cold war and peace, had died quite some time before and the attacks simply revealed to what extent rot had set in. In America, the twentieth century had lasted until 2001.

(my addendum written in van Loon's style)

A few weeks ago I bought a reprint of Amazing Spider-Man #36, original cover date December 2001. Since comic books are generally dated three months ahead, this would have come out -- and as I recall, DID come out for I read Crescent City Public Library's copy -- shortly after the September 11 attacks. In fact, the library is where I was when I first heard about a plane hitting the Twin Towers; Mrs. Colette the librarian had come in shortly after 9 am and said that very thing. I didn't learn about the second hit or Shanksville or the Pentagon (the other plane crash sites) until later that day. For a few days anyway, that's all anyone could talk about, that and having to stay where they were because President Bush had ordered a no-fly zone over the entire country.

...God...

(Spider-Man, saying his first word in the comic -- nearly all the rest is interior monologue)

I worked at Winn-Dixie later that day, and I recall one customer who complained about that, something like "now I can't fly home". I wanted to reach across the counter and slap her -- perhaps terrorists should have called her and asked for a more convenient time to attack -- but of course I didn't. As soon as I could (I think it was that night; this is when I was in Florida and I'm the one who had to call Martha when I could since I didn't have a home phone) I called Martha and found out where she was. It turns out she was in the middle of her student teaching internship and that day she taught music at the elementary school out at Minot Air Force Base; her and all non-military personnel got evacuated, and quite naturally my lady love was on edge. So was I.

We could not see it coming. We could not be here before it happened. We could not stop it. But we are here now. You cannot see us for the dust, but we are here. You cannot hear us for the cries, but we are here.

What to tell you now? Not much really; as I type this, a lot has happened in my life, in Martha's life, in all our lives in the thirteen years since. This was a day when the superheroes were EVERYBODY who did something (various Avengers, Fantastic Four, X-Men, and other solo superheroes appear in the story, working alongside policemen, firemen, military, and civilians), so you don't need a costume to do the job. You've never needed one. I've never needed one. When this pushed "where were you when the Challenger [space shuttle] exploded" out of the memorable events category -- and that's another story I have, but for another time -- we realized that the world's not as simple as we think. In some ways, it's even simpler.

Ordinary men. Ordinary women. Refusing to accept the self-serving proclamations of holy warriors of every stripe, who announce that somehow we had this coming. . . . Bodies in freefall on the evening news. Madness in mosques, shouting down fourteen centuries of earnest prayer, forgetting the lessons of crusades past...that the most harmed are the least deserving.

Today, September 11, 2014, I first grumbled about the paper route we're substituting on because I could not find my way yet it's only my second time delivering on it. Yet I got done on time; Martha caught me grumbling when I came in though. And yes, I needed the kibosh put on that. I smile going through my kids' school assignments and practicing their spelling with them and driving them to school and learning when I'm scheduled to work Saturday (for it shows I CAN work, and I know many who cannot) and I am refreshed by morning coffee -- more morning coffee, if you know me at all -- and seeing the youngers at Story Time following along, with their wonder and their caregivers learning to wonder again.

Perhaps we tell them that we are sorry. Sorry that we were not able to deliver unto them the world we wished them to have. That our eagerness to shout is not the equal of our willingness to listen. That the burdens of distant people are the responsibility of all men and women of conscience, or their burdens will one day become our tragedy.

There's a book I finished reading yesterday. A few years ago, Brandon Stanton worked as a bond trader in Chicago and took photos throughout the city on weekends with his camera. As social media developed and more people became interested and Stanton found himself with more time to take pictures -- he started with the photography in January 2010 and lost his bond trader job six months later -- in Chicago, then Philadelphia, and finally New York. Gradually his photos went from architecture with the occasional person to photographing people themselves, wide and varied, and not only is there now a Facebook page and a Tumblr account, we have a bound collection as well, equally wide and varied and captioned, of Humans of New York (ISBN 981250038821).

Stand tall, David