Looking back

I really hadn’t been thinking about the anniversary itself at all, maybe because the 11th seems like less of a milestone. I only realized the date because of a reference to the day of service. Now there are all these thoughts swirling around in my head, and I do not know that they will come out right, but that’s kind of normal.

Even before remembering the date, I have been thinking about September 11th a lot, and it is because of the comic book. There are just a lot of elements in it that are reminiscent of the attacks and their aftermath. Last night I was writing a scene where Liu is appealing to Mitch’s patriotism to get him to do her dirty work, and there are actually a lot of correlations throughout, some of which I had not initially noticed. I’m sure the election has been influencing things too.

This really isn’t at all surprising. My Chemical Romance even forming as a band is a direct result of September 11th. It is not necessarily obvious when you are listening to Bullets, but with “Skylines and Turnstiles” you can really hear it, and there are other echoes of it throughout the album.  It was a huge event anywhere you were, and if you were close, if you saw it in person, that can only have increased the impact.

Obviously I have been listening to Danger Days more, but to some extent I feel like Danger Days is a follow-up to Bullets. Some of the imagery is the same, especially on “The Only Hope for Me is You”, and there’s a really important question in there: “What have we learned?” The answer would appear to be not much, which is kind of mind-boggling. How did we not learn?

I was in bed (I was working the late shift), and my mother came and told me, and it did not make any sense, but I remember sitting on the couch and watching the footage of the planes hitting over and over again (that wasn’t healthy) and trying to understand.

There was extra security at work, but I still did my shift, and I went for a walk at lunch like I always do, and I don’t know how many times I had walked and seen helicopters from the flight school overhead, but I remember that the next time I saw one (it might not even have been that day, because nothing was normal that day), I suddenly felt afraid. I knew the likelihood of anything happening there was small, but there was a new sense of vulnerability that took a while to subside.

I was at work, but no one really did any work. The phones were silent, and the only email to answer was stuff that had already come in. We talked in small groups, and surfed the web. At the time I was pretty active on the IMDB forums, and I remember people asking about users from New York. One poster asked about someone he did not get along with—they disagreed on a lot—but now he was worried, and when the other user showed up he was touched and the other was relieved.

I think there are a few things that went wrong, including some people shamelessly exploiting the circumstances to push unrelated goals, and other people being weak, but maybe the real issue is that we don’t change easily. Something affects us, and we feel differently, but without a real effort, or something happening below the surface, we revert back to form, usually within a year.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though that ends up being much easier. I remember talking once with someone in the singles ward who was frustrated, because people had so many needs, and most of them would have felt a lot better if they were serving each other, but they were not. They were only thinking about themselves.

I really wanted to help her, and I didn’t have any easy answers, but the only thing that I could suggest was to maybe enlist some in serving the others. Make cookies for person A and invite person B to help you. Maybe it gives people a chance to feel a spark, and see, yes, this does feel better. This is a good thing.

Which I guess is really my way of saying that I think having a day of service is a really good idea. There are a lot of great ways to celebrate being alive, but that one might be the most useful.