Rad Geek People's Daily

One year ago today, the world stood still as carnage and madness consumed New York City and Washington DC. I remember that just a bit before I was supposed to leave for school at 9:00 my mother came in and told me that she’d heard on the car radio that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I turned on the television next to my computer and saw it there. The massacre unfolding before all our eyes on live television. The home video of that explosion and the screams. I don’t even remember how I went through the rest of the day — I know I went to school. Silent crowds of people—a few whispering around the edges—stood fixed in front of the television screens in Haley Center. None of us knew what to do but stand there.

I’m not going to wax elegiac or maudlin about it today. I’m told that there has been wall to wall media coverage for the past week or so, but I’m cut off from TV right now so I have been mercifully spared most of it. I am tired of the soft violins and the misty-focus interviews and the incessant attempts to wrap up this ugly, horrible crime in some kind of lyrical closure. Well, closure doesn’t exist. Some 2,000 people were brutally murdered and there is nothing that can close the wounds — no heartfelt words, no bombing of foreign lands, no teevee specials will ever bring them back.

Solace is the best we can strive for. Take a moment at 8:46am and 10:30am to silently remember those who died in that awful day. There will be performances of Mozart’s Requiem being sung around the world (including here in Auburn)—take the time out of your evening to listen to it, if you can. You don’t need to put on any big production of mourning. Just remember, and be still, for a while.