PART ONE: An Online Illustrated Anthology: 9/11: The
Artistic & Spiritual Experience
PART TWO: An Online Illustrated Anthology: 9/11: The
Artistic & Spiritual Experience
PART THREE: An Online Illustrated Anthology: 9/11: The
Artistic & Spiritual Experience
PART FOUR: An Online Illustrated Anthology: 9/11: The
Artistic & Spiritual Experience
Christal Cooper
An Online Illustrated Anthology:
9/11: The
Artistic & Spiritual Experience
Part Four
Six individuals from across the globe were
asked two questions: 1. What is your personal experience of 9/11?
(and) 2. How did 9/11 influence your art and/or your faith? Their
responses, photos, and examples of their artwork
are included in this post.
JANET BURROWAY
CHRISTAL RICE COOPER
GABRIELE GLANG
LARRY JAFFE
SHONDRA JEPPERSON
SHONDRA JEPPERSON
TIMOHTY SCHMALTZ
JANET BURROWAY
Writer
Chicago, Illinois
It
was my intention to search my memory and try to recreate the first days of my
experience after 9/11. To that end, I turned to my journal of those days, and
having reread it, decided that I could do no better than to present raw the
recording of my thoughts as they occurred. So the journal from September 11 to
October 11, 2001 follows, edited only for length, clarity and spelling.
Peter
is my husband, Tim and Alex my children; the other people mentioned (not always
generously) are if not well known, then friends and colleagues at Florida State
U.
These
events informed my life in a fundamental and permanent way. Some of my
imagining of what the 9/11 victims endured found its way into my novel Bridge
of Sand (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2014).
Of
the many things I did not then know, the crucial one is that I did not know my
son Tim Eysselinck, who was at the time leading a team of mine-removal trainees
in Ethiopia, would be doing the same in Iraq by June 2003, or that his
enthusiasm for that war would turn to disillusion and disgust, that he would
return to his family in 2004 and two months later take his own life.
That
story I have told at length in Losing Tim and will not repeat here, only
register that these events, which I then wrote of in ignorance, now are charged
for me with anger, grief and better understanding of what loss is.
I
have long known that I use my writing to make order where there is internal
chaos. I trust writing as a process for my own understanding, and have found a
spiritual peace in the writing of others. As I put it in an essay many years
ago:
I
believe in the moral use of written words, as a vehicle for the capacity humans
have of imagining each other. I think this capacity is urgently in need just
now, in the societal pastiche we do and will inhabit. Literature is my credo
because it is capacious, tentative, and empathetic; because it acknowledges
irony and anomaly; because it poses dilemmas, for which it declines to offer a
way out, in small acts of perpetual reconciliation.
The
journal:
September
11th, 2001
Was
doing my exercises to CNN news as usual when they interrupted some sports or
fashion drivel to switch to the pix of WTO with a gaping hole in the side. I
called out to Peter and then saw the second building blister and break with
flame—I did not realize a plane had gone into it, though I had vaguely been
aware that planes were in the sky because I had thought: do they fly too close
to those buildings? CNN at that moment too was speculating some air traffic
controller screwup. P & I both said: nah, we have been ripe for this. P in
fact has sat in front of the news for two years saying: why haven’t they?
Tried
to call Tim—he is not in danger and won’t think I am, but my impulse was for
contact. Could not get through—busy—and the same for Alex. P was by this time
at the U. Learned that the Pentagon had been hit and called him. Left a message
for Julia assuming she had heard but later learned that I was her first
inkling. Watched the band on the bottom of the TV screen register a 150 point
dive in the DOW and then the little amber arrow blipped away and UNCH appeared,
and I knew the stock market had been shut down.
Mark’s
email, jaunty (for which he later apologized) said we would nevertheless meet
this aft. for Writing committee. But Peter came home having cancelled classes;
shortly after that, all gov’t offices closed, and shortly after that, the U.
Afternoon,
Robert O B (Olen Butler) points out that though everyone is assuming Bin Laden,
what have we got? Four hijackings. What’s to say it isn’t domestic terrorism a
la Murat? Just this maybe: 11 Sept. 1992 was the Camp David accord. Rumors or
info, the plane that went down in PA was said to be headed for Camp David.
Various
Claudia calls—(her daughter) Anne Loomis works on 25th St. with a view of WTO;
she called to say she was okay. But her company, Royal Blue, has annex office
on 40th of WTO second building hit, and she watched the building fall. Anne
walked over Brooklyn Bridge to home in Brooklyn, is apparently very strung out.
Edith
in the Travel Agency—called (I was in no hurry to check on airplane tickets)
with itinerary, needed to vent. She was headed home but leaving home number for
stranded clients. Thirty of them, a bunch of FL lawyers who retreated last year
somewhere (Carolinas maybe) from which they had to evacuate on account of
hurricane, are now stranded in Bermuda.
We
swam. Glorious sun and the pool an aquamarine.
We
admitted, P & I, there is a thread of awed admiration in the horror, that
they could pull it off, the timing, the scope, the intensity. And certainly we
are paralyzed: terrorism works. Planes grounded, stock market and all gov’t
closed, shortage of blood. There is in it the element of caper: the Cosmic
Caper, so many movie heroes from Alec Guiness to Dinero and Norton, intricately
outwitting big business.
actor Alec Guiness
But
our President mouthing, posturing, belligerent little kid. Giuliani, for all
his faults, sounds genuine, plain talker, spontaneous, focus on the job at
hand. McCain as well—otherwise among the politicos so much pompompompomp.
ROB
also says that the training of the suicide terrorists promises them harems of
women at their disposal in heaven; they head in to the target with a hard-on.
P
says maybe we will learn a little compassion from this. I say, you kidding? The
hawks are aloft. Our lives have changed today. Security, censorship, military
carte blanche. P says we should now ask: what have we done to be hated with
this intensity? I say: that is the question. But you would not dare to stand up
in a public place and say it. You would be “blaming the victim.” Never mind the
victims in Palestine, etc.
All
day I have wanted to eat.
A
nap. Now missiles in Kabul. We wouldn’t, would we? Retaliate before we know
who’s responsible, we of the innocent-until-guilty persuasion, a pillar of our
socalled superiority?
Well,
no, apparently, thank god. An internal attack against the Taliban by a group,
don’t have their name clearly yet, whose leader was yesterday wounded, possibly
killed. Rumsfeld says that the US govt. is “in no way” involved in the attack
on Kabul. But ABC reporter says that everyone he’s met at the Pentagon today is
angry, and that the President’s speech tonight will be “retaliatory.”
The
Taliban emerged in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar around September 1994.
Peter
Jennings is the best of the lot, but even he sentimentalizes the cacophony of
Senators on the capitol steps singing God Bless America, my home sweet home.
What is one to feel who has never been entirely at home here, first in the
desert and then in the dry philistine air? The emotions are not right. I am
awry, wry where I should feel grief, judgmental of the pres’s beady eyes and
simplistic sentence structure when I should...
Time
to register two sour turns of mind: when Claudia called to tell me of Anne’s
proximity to the scene, I thought—how glad Claudia is to be able to claim a
connection to the disaster. And when I talked to Mark and he said the baby had
not come yet (Jennifer overdue by two days), I thought—if his child is born
today he will race to do a death/birth article. These impulses not necessarily
inaccurate, but unworthy, accompanied immediately by a twinge of envy. And here
I am diligently writing down my own paltry experience.
Sept.
12
From
Tim:
I've
been sitting watching CNN since about an hour after first attack... Sitting
here in disbelief and horror- can't do anything... Seeing the footage thought
it was a bad dream or trailer for latest hollywood block buster. Birgitt and
Thyra (his wife and daughter) are fine and are supposed to come on Friday
morning. We are wondering if it is safe to travel?
I
think probably international circuits were jammed or I was on the phone with
Birgitt. Much Love, Strength and Courage,
Thyra
up front, and Janet Burroway in the background at Tim's funeral.
Slept
medium badly, awake at 3:28 (by the digital clock) and twisting for some length
of time while the images of the plane going into tower two, the fire ball, the
implosion like a feathered flower being pulled into the ground by its stem.
At
mucky-talk (over coffee) we imagined it, the perspectives: you are sitting at
your desk, absorbed in some minor problem of mismatched figures or wrestling
with a paragraph of company policy initiatives. Glance up to see an airplane at
an unfamiliar angle, yet not entirely so because the movies have done this from
time to time. Wobbly, nose foremost. It is heading for you and you don’t have
time to believe it before—what? the noise registers? or does not? death comes
as a thunder that does not quite reach your brain before the glass, shards of
steel, the paper weight from the third desk over, a crown of Bic pens is
imbedded in your torso.
Or:
you are on the plane, reading your magazine, aware of only a slight scuffle and
disturbance—the drinks cart rattling?—and look up to see a stewardess bleeding
from the back, or from the throat; she staggers toward you and collapses in the
aisle. And then there are how many minutes? Half an hour by all reports, to sit
nauseated, needing to pee and with some small part of your mind designated to
guard against that humiliation. You hope the aliens—you see them this way, the
dark skin, the set of mouth, the jerky movements—in the aisle, barking, going
about their business, will not notice you. You sit rigid. You think of spouse,
kids, a dull undercurrent of acceptance runs in you because you believe in your
life; you say, well, here it is, but you don’t believe it; the building is in
front of you but you don’t believe that either though you say, here it is, now
we are gone, and things become violently slow and clear in the suddenly
augmented light, the oriental cutie on the page of the magazine where it sits
still open on your lap, beckoning to some island paradise; the texture of the
fabric on the seat ahead of you, its ugly functional pattern of blues and reds,
the drops streaming almost horizontal now on the little oval of light beside
you. Sphincter, stomach, lungs, cranium, toes fingers clenched. You say: I
love...
Or
you are in the cockpit, the captain with his throat cut in the cramped space
between the seats, the copilot still breathing bubbles of blood where he sags
against the window; you have trained seven months for this, you are primed as
an athlete, nervous as a state of extreme exhilaration; honed. There is no more
fear than a runner with the hurdle in front of him, the hunter with the gun
raised at the kudu, only a concentration so fine it is like the moment just
before cosmic coitus, God in a fireball—get there, get there, Yes!
Or
you are three floors above the gaping hole; the flames are at your back, below
you the cascade of paper like some monstrous ticker tape parade, a snow of
daily slog, the trivia of little deals and desires. The heat comes hugely at
you and you know you will either burn or leap into that shower. The pieces of
it flutter, waft. Choice seizes you.
Or
you are falling with the rubble inward, downward, arms above your head because
that is some odd peculiarity of gravity/physics/psyche; hit and hurt on all
sides but only dimly aware of this because you can take nothing in but the
elemental sensation of falling, the way you’ve dreamed it a few dozen times in
your life, but this time it does not end, you do not wake, it keeps going, going,
on, on until the breath is all sucked out of you and your feet touch something,
are broken on something, that is not the ground but is now the ground, the
mountain of mortar and mortality where you lose finally consciousness
Went
to get the NYTimes and went into the vet’s for flea stuff (business as usual).
The girl behind the counter watching CNN said: oh, look it’s that lady.
Christianne Amanpour, and we agreed that she is in the center of everything,
she flies to the center wherever disaster is. Now, though, in front of 10
Downing Street, which I recognized at a glance—curious that, too; I would not
have known I would identify it so automatically. Nor would it have occurred to
me that the vet’s receptionist wd. be aware of Christianne Amanpour.
Christianne Amanpour
This
is the story of the three little pigs. The WTO was concrete and steel, but it
was too tall. All skyscrapers are a house of straw.
At
no time, not one moment of the last several years, have I had any attitude toward
the military-industrial complex but recoil, scorn and disdain. This morning
between Publix and the vet I found myself thinking, well, we’re so big and
strong that nobody will think they can invade us; whew.
But
P & I agree that biological weapons are another matter; one missile of
anthrax—could we do anything? P also reports that Wm. Sapphire says we must
“pulverize” those guys. How can anyone having seen the trade towers go down
yesterday with their burden of smoke-hidden body parts, use that word?
William
Sapphire
Still,
from time to time a formula of words strikes me right (or wrong, in any case
otherwise than mouthing and pieties) and the desire for revenge rises in me,
before I remember how pointless the fighting against those who obsessed me and
how much better even a contemptuous détente.
One
of the insights of psychology that can be statistically proven is that victims
of abuse grow up to be abusers. Around the world in the last few decades we
have seen this principle in action—in Israel, in Kosevo, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan.
We see its potential in the disenfranchised of our own country. We must,
ironically, look to South Africa for any attempt to break the cycle of hatred;
and in South Africa the outcome is far from certain.
The
voices raised for “swift justice” in the wake of the terrible events of this
week seem almost universally to equate justice with revenge. But we must also
examine our justice in the sense of fairness to other nations, peoples, and our
own people. Where have we been arrogant, greedy, intolerant, contemptuous to an
extent that other people have suffered and died? How has our pride in our
status among nations been used to abuse the poor and the weak? What have we
done to foster the intensity of their hatred?
Painting
of Irish ship of immigrants coming to America . .
The
ancient Greeks believed in The Dike, a trap of revenge from which one could
never escape. Athenian justice—a jury of peers and the principle of innocence
until proven guilty—was their attempt to break that trap. Our judicial system
has its roots in that attempt.
1886
sculpture of Astræa, signed "A," possibly the work of August St.
Gaudens. Old Supreme Court Chamber, the Vermont State House, Montpelir,
Vermont. August 2007.
In
a story on life in the capitol of Afghanistan yesterday, the New York Times
reports that in Khair Khana, a man selling fertilizer in a Kabul market, had
three things to say about the catastrophe:
1)
The terrorists are “the enemies of God.”
2)
“Americans are powerful and can do anything they
like
without us stopping them.”
3)
“Americans should look into their hearts and minds
about
why someone would kill themselves and
others”
in such a way.
I
hope our statesmen have this breadth of mind. Our lives depend on it.
Sept.
15th
My
television tube has a bad case of post traumatic stress syndrome, keeps
flashing on the same four or five images of horror, terrified anew by them but
cannot let them go. At night when the tv is off I wake to carry on the same.
The
news media are doing a good job, I think, no commercials, not too too much
ambulance and tears chasing; Peter Jennings the best, lowest key, measured hour
after hour—yet even he capable of cant lapses... Joanna says they are
“profoundly unimpressed” with W.—what can one say? A moral pygmy, even P agreed
at dinner last night that we wish Clinton were back. Also we all confessed to
low thoughts; Elizabeth that it would buy her time on her novel; Bob that he
had his new short story in Hemispheres, magazine of United Airlines, and had
eerily (perhaps proudly; that was the low part) thought that it might be the
last thing some of the victims had read before they were hijacked.
Trivia
compared to, this morning, some first real fear that we will go to war. Not
fear of “them”—I have seen the enemy and it is us. A nationwide passion to go
bomb somebody. But who, is the only trouble. News reports the belligerent
stance of this general and that, this senator and that, this man in the street
and that—but there are far too few to who notice, for example, that the mood of
sudden unification we are all feeling wd. also apply to the “enemy.” We have
lost five thousand souls and half a dozen buildings and we are enraged and
fist-shaking around our barbeques. Why should the Afghanis, the Pakistanis, who
have nothing in the world but land and life to lose, be any less enraged when
we come after them? I don’t see how we could any better play into bin Laden’s
hands than to bomb Afghanistan and so unite the Arab countries against us.
All
the signs are that we will “go to war.” Go where?
Sept.
16th
This
news is two days old, but holds my mind—the piles of rubble, staggering as they
are (a million and a half tons, did they say?) are not big enough. According to
the physics of the thing, they should be stories higher. The explanation for
this is that gypsum, drywall, concrete, fiberglass, perhaps brick, were
pulverized in the tectonics of that collapse. That is why “smoke” poured
through the streets and still hangs in the whole sky, in eyes and lungs.
What
survived, wafting through this dirty apocalypse like the famous plastic bag of
American Beauty, was paper. Thousands upon thousands of sheets of paper
snowflaking, dancing, gliding, wafting, coming lightly to rest on the
destruction and the dead. Rock, scissors, paper. Rather: steel, box cutters,
paper.
And
this image of the strange survival of paper leads me to observe, that this week
people have set aside all manner of thing because it puts it in perspective and
makes you realize, it’s only sports/a vacation/a conference/a rock concert.
Nobody has suggested that it makes you realize it’s only writing. Now more than
ever we need writing; the news, the interpretations, the analyses, the
commentary; even the journals like this one that become particular memory. I am
(is this a low thought? don’t think so) proud of being part of this profession.
Also
on the subject of paper: thousands flock to hospitals and check points, are
interviewed on TV, holding up photos of the “missing,” hoping that “somebody
has seen my husband/brother/daughter.” The authorities gently ask them to bring
dental records and DNA samples, but here they come with their photographs. “I
have faith he/she is alive. Perhaps in an air pocket.” Moving but also moving
in the way you are moved by someone who was once sane and now isn’t... Might
there, possibly, be yet a rescue or two? Not likely. What, in this context, can
“missing” really mean? There could be (and, I said to P, will be at least one
novel this year on the speculation) a person or two who survived and took the
opportunity to flee an unsatisfactory life. One woman this morning on CNN held
up the picture of her husband, a technician for CBS who had lived through the
earlier WTC bomb, was on the 110th floor this time. She hopes he will be found.
The anchor does not comment. Hard to tell what the interviewers are feeling (saying
in the green room) about their task here. You can’t pull grieving relatives up
short on national news—but we are having a very public demonstration of how
denial works.
Grieving
and, a little, afraid. I read this over for the first time and I see that I am
up to old tricks. I always cope first with mania. On the subject of low
thoughts; Mark’s email Tuesday had as subject matter: Yikes; which I registered
as trivializing, crass. But I now see that I too started out in little frets,
distractions, banalities, yikes of one sort and another... The horror feeds in
slowly, the losses, the days ahead. Mary Balthrop in London said she is
suddenly aware of one daughter in Florence, one in Boston, herself in London,
her husband in Florida: what is she doing there? And I have not yet, not yet
been able to catch Alex at home. I am going to insist he get an answering
machine.
Sept.
28th
Nearly
two weeks of focus on getting the Imaginative Writing ms. in, then oral
surgery, writing the NYTBR review of Klima. Everywhere, everyone: life is
altogether changed and so much the same. People differ in what way this is so.
Karen full of life, not afraid of death but tentacles-out as after a near death
experience. Anne Loomis doing also well in the solidarity among her friends and
the city—the opposite of what was feared—though she was afraid to go back to
work. Me ashamed, here, of my reaction toward Claudia because I have now seen
the view from Anne’s work window and she did indeed watch from terrifying
nearness, escape in fear. Peter and I conscious of shifting sands and view with
sense of inevitability a showdown, this decade or next, with the Arab world we
have exploited and teased and misunderstood... Chilled by the reaction to Bill
Maher—comedian who said: they weren’t cowards, they flew in deliberately at the
cost of their lives; we are cowards to bomb long distance. Media, gov’t., other
actors zapped down on him, he in near tears apologizing on, I think it was,
Letterman. But, but, but! He was right and even if he were not, dissent is the
precious right we hold and the Taliban crushes, is it not? Truisms, but I am
fearful when I see so little said in his defense.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/11/books/half-life.html
Clinton,
however, did, today, indirectly defend him, saying that the “peace
demonstrators” had every right to say what they felt, etc. Slick Willy
launching a scholarship fund for the children of the dead, so statesman-smooth,
all the right notes, he’s a boomer bad boy but we could sure do with him in the
WH at the moment. Knows how to say the strong thing in the lower register, low
key, instead of the weak thing squealing. However, one of his points was that
the gov’t has been more restrained than we’d’ve expected, and that is blessedly
true.
Later—Arianna
Huffington also, strongly, Maher’s defender; and there have been a raft of
others; some sponsors pulled out, but this gave rise to cries of Shame! and by
early October the networks have made clear they will not pull the show—clear it
would be worse for their reputations to be seen to be on the side of censorship
than on the side of sentiment. (Later: but they did fire him...)
Oct.
11
In
Phoenix, nine years ago, we went to an IMAX and watched a documentary on the
making of Independence Day, how they did all those explosions of the Capitol
with models, bomb shots, mini-dynamite placement. The experts were enthusiastic
kids. What I came away with, more than the wonder they intended for me, was the
understanding that Hollywood movies are full of bombs and car crashes because
these guys have the toys. Also it is their living. So of course the movies are
going to blow things up, you bet!
I
have exactly the same insight watching some general or other on CNN this
morning as he circles the bomb craters on the recon photo of the runway in
Kabul, describing (voice of pride) the B-2’s, the exactitude of the missiles’
trajectory, the altitude of the surveillance equipment, the payload of the
bomber. They have and love the toys; it is their livelihood to deploy them; of
course we will go to war against the Evil One.
All blood is blue beneath the skin
Christal Rice Cooper
Writer and Artist
St. Louis, Missouri area
September 11, 2001 was a remembrance day for me
– not only because of what happened to our country, but because of what
happened to me. I was a first time
mom. My son Nicholas was born four weeks
prior, and I was going through post partum depression.
Being a military spouse is not all fun; but it
is all rewarding. Even when the bad
things happen, something so tiny can be so beautiful: picking a flower to lay on a hero’s grave; or
simply watching the red, white, and blue flag wave in the breeze.
So even before September 11, 2001, I was
in need of many heroes and heroines. The
heroines, other military spouses, came to my aid. They knew what it was like to have husbands
gone for three months at a time; to feel fear that their husbands are in
danger; and to experience the unbearable ache, especially during the night,
when missing their husband was physically felt.
Fortunately for me, my husband was
home. We were stationed at Altus,
Oklahoma where he was an Instructor Pilot, and in September 11, 2001 my post
partum depression was still in full swing.
I remember that morning so well – it was a
Tuesday morning – and I was watching Good
Morning America, holding my baby in my arms.
I was about to go to a Bible Study at the First
Baptist Church of Altus. This was a
huge feat for me because when you go through depression like this, you tend to
feel so exhausted (even though you may not do much work) that it’s so easy to
stay in the house, your brain overcrowding with every dark and negative emotion
there is.
Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson were
covering a story about a family man who commuted form a small town in New
Jersey to Manhattan every morning for work.
He kissed his wife and children goodbye, hopped into his car, and
started driving to Manhattan, the Good
Morning American helicopter above, video taping the car’s every tire
step. There was the time at the bottom
right hand side of the screen. Then
Sawyer and Gibson took a commercial break.
And then Sawyer and Gibson broke in an
emergency news alert that there was an accident at one of the Twin Towers where
an airplane hit one of the towers.
There were two videos – one of the tower already
impregnated with the airplane, burning hell fire; and then another video of Sawyer and Gibson
watching along with the rest of America.
Another airplane appeared on the video, flying toward the twin
towers.
I thought, “Good
they can get some help, but how can that airplane in the air help anybody? They can’t drop men off in parachutes on the buildings
– they’d burn to death. Maybe they’re
going to drop tons of water and kill that fire.”
The moment the airplane crashed into the
building I knew that it was a terrorist attack.
I can’t remember if I screamed, but I do remember saying, “Oh my God.”
I forced myself to go to the Bible Study. The minute I got to the church the room was
empty. Then a friend of mine walked in
and told me that Bible Study had been canceled and that they were having prayer
time instead. I decided to head back
home and as I was exiting the room to go pick up my baby from the nursery the
same friend said, “They’ve hit the
Pentagon.”
I made it home in quick and safe time, right
before there was a standstill at the gate.
My husband’s flight had been canceled and was told to go straight
home. And he and I watched the news.
The most shocking thing of all was that those
two powerful towers, more powerful than the Tower of Babel, more durable then
Noah’s Ark, collapsed into mini particles of metal, mortar, wood, flesh, and
bone.
I remember them saying that they thought Osama
Bin laden was responsible for these terrorist tragedies. I knew he was suspected of being involved in
other terrorist acts, but I never really knew him until that day. I knew him, and like most Americans, particularly
those in the military, police force, firefighters, knew Osama bin Laden in a
very personal, intimate way – that of true anger, desire, and lust. True anger for what he had done; desire for him to face justice; and lust for
his death.
I was still going through the post partum
depression; seeing the psychiatrist once
a week, the family advocacy nurse once a week, my counselor once a week, and
having some military spouses stop by in shifts to keep me company.
The post partum didn’t’ seem as “heavy” as it had been before. Is it possible that this event distracted me
from my every day post-partum life; that I didn’t think about being depressed
and that somehow led me to healing? I don’t
know.
But I do know this – if I could go back in time,
I would erase this. But I would never
erase my faith and especially the Object of my faith – the Trinity God – the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
I have a few Christian friends who believe God
made this happen or allowed this to happen as a punishment to America.
I cannot and I do not blame God; this event happened at the hands of an evil
man and his followers. In fact, Osama
Bin laden gave credit to “his Allah”
for what happened. Osama Bin Laden’s “Allah” does not exist and was an evil
hallucinogenic in his evil mind.
I am convinced most people are law abiding and
would never dream of masterminding the training of terrorists to commit a
suicide-terrorist mission attack against thousands of people, many of them
women and children.
Osama Bin Laden and his group wanted us to
become afraid, defeated, victimized, and unable to become unified again.
But he was wrong. America and the world became unified, like
Isaac and Ishmael became unified when they buried their father Abraham
together.
The Muslim’s God Allah never approves of these
terroristic acts; the Jewish God mourned
at the evil of these acts; the Christian
God, prayed for justice again Osama Bin laden and his perpetrators. Every religion represented by the American
people came together, not in the belief of the same God, or the same
philosophy, but the belief of one thing:
we are all human beings and as a humanity we must unite, try to find the
thing we have in common, and with these things we save ourselves.
You see it is not the powerful tower that saves America
– it is we. And those are my heroes and will be forever my heroes, regardless
of our differences.
The Moment Of Time In The Atom
September 11, 2001
9:02 a.m.
Red,
Yellow, Black, White,
every
other color in between
Muslim, Christian, Jew, Atheist, Agnostic,
Muslim, Christian, Jew, Atheist, Agnostic,
every
other religion in between
A+, A-,
B+, B-
O+,
O-,
AB+, AB-
Nothing
in between
All blood is blue beneath the skin
All
blood is red when it is shed
70
countries in the two towers
3000
hearts beating,
sounding
the same
indicating
one thing:
the
power of life
Spirits,
souls
Black,
or white,
Or void
he with
his black soul,
thriving
with the beating of his heart
icy cold
never
functioned to begin with
except
for that dirty, depraved
spot
that
only he and his followers
paid
attention to.
All that green money spent on:
bombs,
All that green money spent on:
bombs,
Pepsi
cola,
trained
pilots,
Coca
Cola,
guns,
black
hair dye
Knives,
Computers,
Wooden
walking cane,
And the
Koran
Making
him feel self-righteous
One
wonders how a holy book
Could be
so misinterpreted
Was all
of this worth it?
blue
thumbs?
Suddam
Hussein’s hanging?
his shooting
death?
ten
years of death
Tears,
anger, violence, depravity?
everyone
dies
an atom
in time
All of
us made of atoms
Each
atom different
Atoms of
fire
exploding
against atoms of brick, pipe, cement
pushing
the atoms of people
to jump
off
better
to die a quick, cement death
then to
burn for torturous minutes
in the
end, everyone
must die
leaving
just the individual soul
made
from what?
we have
no idea
except
this
the
breath of God, Someone, Something
or
Nothing,
which is
real,
even in
our dictionary
of every
language
Regardless
if He or She or It
Is
called God, Someone, Something,
Nothing
Those
3000 souls
See that
compassionate Face
Feeling
that breath of that Face
Touch
theirs
Here, in
this place,
he does not
exist
But they
do
All
3000,
Their hands
No
longer burned
But
lifted up
In
ecstasy.
Gabriele Glang
Poet and Painter
Germany
I
write these lines 15 years after the fact, in southern Germany, where I've been
living for the past 26 years, almost to the day. What remains in my memory is
that my family and I were incredibly lucky.
On
the afternoon of September 11, 2001, I had just dropped off my two boys, who
were 7 and 8 years old, at soccer practice. I headed over to a nearby friend's,
hoping for a good coffee and chat. My friend greeted me with a horrified
expression and the words, "There's something awful going on in New
York." She immediately led me into her living room, where the television
was showing those now unforgettable images of the World Trade Towers
collapsing. We sat down on the sofa, open-mouthed, stupefied, and watched, on
some level unable to comprehend what our eyes were seeing, our ears were
hearing.
As
soon as I'd picked up my sons from soccer practice and headed home, my husband
came home from work. We all felt the need to be together, safe and sound in our
Swabian Alb village.
We spent the rest of the evening watching television, while I tried to reach my mother. My parents lived in northern Virginia. My father had been hospitalized a week and a half earlier because of sudden and severe haemorrhaging. When the news broke that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon, the Fairfax hospital ordered blood transfusions to be bunkered for eventual victims of the crash. It took me a long time to get through:
My mother had been frantically trying to reach my brother in Boston, who in fact had been scheduled to fly to New York City for a meeting in the World Trade Tower that very morning. My mother's horrified comment, amid all her worries: "This devastation - I've seen all this before!" A German immigrant, like my father, she had grown up in Leipzig and knew first hand what a bombed-out city looked like, though she had been sent to the countryside before the Allied bombs fell (the so-called Kinderlandverschickung).
We spent the rest of the evening watching television, while I tried to reach my mother. My parents lived in northern Virginia. My father had been hospitalized a week and a half earlier because of sudden and severe haemorrhaging. When the news broke that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon, the Fairfax hospital ordered blood transfusions to be bunkered for eventual victims of the crash. It took me a long time to get through:
My mother had been frantically trying to reach my brother in Boston, who in fact had been scheduled to fly to New York City for a meeting in the World Trade Tower that very morning. My mother's horrified comment, amid all her worries: "This devastation - I've seen all this before!" A German immigrant, like my father, she had grown up in Leipzig and knew first hand what a bombed-out city looked like, though she had been sent to the countryside before the Allied bombs fell (the so-called Kinderlandverschickung).
But
this is an extraordinary story of luck: My brother had been wakened very early
by a phone call from the airline, telling him his flight had been canceled. The
woman on the line gave him two options, one of which would not have left him
enough time to drive to the airport. The other flight available was 8:30 a.m.
My brother responded, "That's when my meeting starts in the World Trade
Tower, that's too late." The airline representative apologized, saying there
were no other flights available. My brother's timeless remark: "Well, I
guess this meeting wasn't meant to be." And he took the day off.
Not
long after, my brother told me this experience convinced him his life had a
higher purpose, that he was kept alive because God still had a job for him. (He
eventually became an Admiral with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.)
Back
in the hospital, enough blood transfusions were secured for my father, who
ultimately came out of the hospital after 3 long weeks. As we now know, there
were no survivors of the Pentagon crash, so no transfusions were needed. (My
father is alive and well at 87 as I write these lines.)
Of
course the events of 9/11 had a lasting effect on me, even though no one in my
family was hurt or killed. My other brother, then a helicopter pilot, served in
the US army, so the issues that rocked my country affected me deeply. In the
immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks, I was preparing for a solo art
exhibition. My theme was seascapes. I spent weeks in my studio in the attic,
painting and weeping to a tape of whale song.
In retrospect, I believe I was depressed, questioning my reason for being. Two things helped me heal: the very act of painting, and writing Morning Pages (I had discovered Julia Cameron: "The Artist's Way" about 6 months earlier - it has since become my bible).
Over the next few months, I turned over all my deeply held beliefs, rejecting what seemed to me no longer useful in such a world. I began to understand on a gut level that I must embrace the moment, to live fully and with gusto, no longer put off my long-held dreams, but rather make them reality. I began to let go of fears - or, more accurately, I no longer let my fears and insecurities keep me from plunging headlong into realms far beyond my comfort zone. It was time to go forth: I had no time to waste. As strange as it may sound: the events of 9/11 triggered my emotional and artistic growth.
LARRY JAFFE
In retrospect, I believe I was depressed, questioning my reason for being. Two things helped me heal: the very act of painting, and writing Morning Pages (I had discovered Julia Cameron: "The Artist's Way" about 6 months earlier - it has since become my bible).
Over the next few months, I turned over all my deeply held beliefs, rejecting what seemed to me no longer useful in such a world. I began to understand on a gut level that I must embrace the moment, to live fully and with gusto, no longer put off my long-held dreams, but rather make them reality. I began to let go of fears - or, more accurately, I no longer let my fears and insecurities keep me from plunging headlong into realms far beyond my comfort zone. It was time to go forth: I had no time to waste. As strange as it may sound: the events of 9/11 triggered my emotional and artistic growth.
LARRY JAFFE
Social activist, artist,
and poet
Clearwater, Florida
A White Poet Laments
I
no longer weep for myself
It
rips me a part but I cast no tears
Those
are long gone in the cascade
Of
lost desire and lost defense
I
no longer hold ground worthier than thee
I
cast my britches to the earth
No
longer clothed by my own personality
I
look at friends differently
Wondering
where we lost our way
I
cannot cry for you my friend
I
cannot look through your eyes
I
cannot walk in your shoes
Nothing
seems to fit
Even
my cries of justice
Are
mourned by my neighbors callousness
We
have become a house divided
Brothers
are no longer equal
We look at pity as a driver of nails
We wash our hands at desecration fountain
Were I the one that could change the world
I would shout rise up
Do not cleanse the blood
Reenact the soul
Bring joy to life
Take
freedom from the jaws of slavery
Do
not let the ruthless win
Somehow find love
In the last ventricles of the heart
Slowly beating
I
no longer have the right to call you brother
I
reach to you and hope you will still
Call
me friend
Rabbi Alecia and Shondra Jepperson
This 5 ft. 3000 lb. steel beam transported from Ground Zero and placed here is something riveting to behold. It’s so peculiar. It’s so intimate. Being in the midst of it, feels spiritual in a mysterious way. This is an actual physical fragment taken from that day, that part of our history representing so much transformation for each of us here in the country and around the world. People who died there on that same site in which this girder comes from and those of us who continue on, we have all been transformed in our own personal and individual ways forever.
Shondra Jepperson
Professional entertainer, BMI singer
songwriter, Actress, Producer
Sedona, Arizona
I remember 9/11 vividly as if it happened
yesterday.
My husband Tom and I are full time entertainers,
musicians, singers, actors and producers and together we own a company called Entertainment by Tom & Shondra. We
were at that time, residing in a north county suburb of San Diego, called
Rancho Bernardo. I was up early walking our 4 month old poodle Kami and upon
our return home into the shared courtyard of the condo we were renting, all of
the sudden a man frantically ran out of a neighboring upstairs door and in
noticing me, yelled out in a panic, “Have you seen what’s happening? Oh my God,
turn on your TV, the world is coming to an end!”
I was of course taken aback and ran upstairs to
our front door calling out to Tom as I flipped on our TV to a prime time
morning show. Just as I did, cameras were catching a plane flying into New York
City’s
Twin Towers. Tom and I stood there watching in shock. I slowly sat down on the
floor in front of the TV half believing what we’d just seen happen LIVE
on the air. The news anchors were beside themselves, rattled, confused, waiting
for explanations to what we’d all witnessed. More
reports were coming in of a plane having crashed and of an attack at the White
House. A normal Monday was all of the sudden, tipped upside down and sideways
into complete mayhem.
Due to our professions in the music and acting
business, both Tom and I in our careers have worked, resided and even studied
in NYC. I attended the Juilliard’s school of Drama and as a young woman, I was
in love with Broadway and always had amazing experiences with the people there.
Many people have told me that they thought I was from New York, although I
wasn’t born there, that city just got into my system. Tom also always felt a
great connection to and in New York. Since we’d not ever worked or been there
at the same time, we’d been talking about planning a get away to experience I
together. Feeling this kinship to New York and what we were witnessing was
devastating to us on so many levels.
Tom and I gasped, cried, left the room from time
to time to compose ourselves, toggled from network to network hearing each
speculation and then finally confirmation on who was behind our country’s
historic nightmare caught on camera. We could not tear ourselves away for any
real length of time. I had a difficult time wrapping my mind around the fact
that this was not disaster movie but rather for
real. This
reality, although barely imaginable, slowly sunk in. Broadcasts were capturing real
people inside the Twin Towers while it imploded, people running in the streets
in terror from rubble, huge clouds of thick toxic smoke, falling steel and
bodies.
Overwhelmed in deep sadness, I realized, as
never before, that the concept of safety in our own country had actually been a
façade collapsed forever. Now our country was included on
the list of places victimized by hate filled individuals who heinously
coordinated and successfully made their presence known and agendas heard by a
bulldoze of inhumanity and carnage.
As the afternoon progressed, announcements of
church services, memorials and candle vigils were offered by and for the
community, as a way to honor and mourn those who’d died and lost loved
ones. Unbeknown to us that day, later that week and during the months ahead
well into a year, we’d both be singing for 9/11 memorial events and
other similar services.
Emotionally spent, Tom and I chose to head out
to the beach at La Jolla Shores. It was always a place of solace and centering
for us where we could walk along the shore, intend, talk and connect. When we
arrived, the sun was setting and the boardwalk was quiet for the exception of a
small group of 12 to 15 people gathering on the sand with candles. Tom and I
joined them while I held Kami rocking her in my arms for what turned out to be
an hour.
All of us silently formed a circle saying
nothing to one another. At one point,
I started singing Amazing
Grace
and after singing several verses, all of us continued humming the melody for
quite a while and gently subsided into a renewed silence. Tom quietly led God
Bless America with everyone chiming in.
I could go on and on about how music is
universal and can be a terrific for communicating from the heart and conduit
for healing. It was an indescribable comfort to feel an unspoken connection in
a circle with strangers, sharing a sacred space and singing as one voice after
such an unforgettably tragic day. In that moment I felt that in some way, we’d
contributed some light into the world.
The next day, one of Tom’s clients shared a
story that fiancé, a commercial pilot, was scheduled to be the piloting the
plane that went down in Pennsylvania and at the last minute was rescheduled. He
didn’t know that at time though and when word got out about that plane going
down, he was of course in a panic until he spoke with her to find out that she
was okay. What a situation to be in. She lost her friends and cohorts in such a
tragedy and to top it off, she was supposed to BE on that plane.
That weekend, Tom and I had several shows and we
did what we could to be mindful of what had happened just a few days before
while fulfilling our entertainment commitments. It’s very difficult to be
upbeat and entertain people when you and everyone else are feeling sad. It does
though, go with the territory of our business as there have been countless
times that entertainers have been present to uplift spirits with their talents during
difficult times.
That Sunday we were guest soloists at Seaside, a Religious Science of Mind
church in Encinitas that we were also members of. Afterwards, a friend came up
to tell us that her brother, a fireman in New York, was not scheduled to work on
9/11 although he chose to go in that day. He was there when it all went down
and was lost in the wreckage of one the towers. She scheduled a trip to New
York in hopes that her energy of actually being in the city would help with her
brother being found. Unfortunately that was not the case. Upon her return from
the city, she told us that she was surprisingly amazed of the spiritual feeling
within the surrounding area and shared stories of what she did to do her part
to help firemen who were working at Ground Zero. She also coordinated several
peace events in San Diego, one in which I sang at.
So many around the country, were doing their
part to contribute in their own ways. Another friend, Helice Bridges, booked a
flight to NYC with the intention of placing and giving away her blue ribbons, “Who You Are Makes A Difference” on as
many of the clean up volunteers and firemen she could find.
Yesterday
marked the 15th anniversary of that insane day on 9/11. 15 years
later, much has changed and yet 9/11 feels so recent. Kami is now 15 and we are
full time entertainers residing in Sedona. Yesterday, Tom and I set up one of
our sound systems, donating it for a huge citywide memorial dedication where
one of the steel girders from the 20th floor from a Twin Tower was
unveiled at Sedona Fire District Station #6. Our good friend, fire Chief Kris
Kazian was there early to help us put that system up since we had needed to
rush off to our weekly church service where I’m the music director.
Tom was asked to open the ceremony with singing
the National Anthem in which he graciously did. He felt honored to have been
asked to add his voice to this historical moment in our city’s, (and our
country’s), history. With power, Tom’s magnificent voice rang out and hundred’s
of people in our community including an overflowing VIP section of city and
state officials and fire chiefs from all around, sang along with him. The
ceremony was beautiful, poignant which included the brainchild of the memorial,
councilman Scott Jablow, the architect for the site, the contractor Joel DeTar
along with a 9/11 story read by cohort John Conway and prayers from our dear
friend Rabbi Alicia with Pastor David Brandfass.
Councilman Scott Jablow
Joel DeTar
John Conway
Pastor David Brandfass
This 5 ft. 3000 lb. steel beam transported from Ground Zero and placed here is something riveting to behold. It’s so peculiar. It’s so intimate. Being in the midst of it, feels spiritual in a mysterious way. This is an actual physical fragment taken from that day, that part of our history representing so much transformation for each of us here in the country and around the world. People who died there on that same site in which this girder comes from and those of us who continue on, we have all been transformed in our own personal and individual ways forever.
Today, I think back to that afternoon standing
on the beach singing alongside strangers in community on Sept. 11th 2001 and
then fast forwarding to yesterday’s memorial ceremony in community here. Reflecting
on our participation with music for both and all the 9/11 services and
ceremonies in between. All the time that has passed, a cross combination of
spiritual and surreal - we will indeed always remember.
***
***
TIMOTHY
SCHMALZ
Sculptor
Canada and
Hong Kong
Sometimes there are just no words . . .
