Remembering the past

Today, of course, is the anniversary of the planes flying into the twin towers, and the pentagon. I remember the horror of the day, the weeks and months following: the anger and sadness. And I remember discovering something about myself following that: I had forgotten how to deal with this sort of gash in the skin of daily life.
Growing up in the UK, we had to deal on a regular basis with terror inflicting itself into our world. Not just the pub and car bombings, though growing up near Windsor, a regular target, these were a big deal. But also the threats against Heathrow airport: I remember the week when we had to drive through a police/army cordon every day to get to school, having to get out, and having the car searched, guards looking under the car with mirrors on poles, for all the world like shrunken DDR dentists.

What I forgot was how I used to cope with horror: how to let it upset, distress and worry me, but how not to let it paralyze: how to learn to deal with the distress without letting fear take control. In short, how not to let the Bush league use the situation to their advantage.

Now, the US never had the "advantage" that the UK had: they had had only a few major incidents over the decades: Pearl Harbor, the Oklahoma bombing, perhaps the first World Trade Center bombing: these were not enough to inure the people, to let them learn that in spite of fear, life can go on: that one can be vigilant without being racist: etc.

But every time I start thinking this way, feeling vaguely superior because I know intellectually that fear need not paralyze me, I remember that it did paralyze me for days, weeks after the attacks.

And also, I remember that the UK is now essentially a land without privacy, and I am not happy about that. Although I hope that in the long run a land without privacy will eventually lead to a culture and a civilization which is more permissive of no-harm transgressions, I am not sure how long this will take, and whether the cost to pay now is too high.

I do want to emphasize: I don't want to minimize the tragedy of 9/11. But at the same time, I don't want to allow the tragedy to be taken over by anyone for their own political purposes.

Yours, in rumination. Like a cow.
N.