by Daniel Mortensen
We stood in awe of it, terrified, shaken to our very core. It didn’t seem real, it was impossible, and yet there it was, unparalleled in its appalling majesty. We wanted desperately to flee from this place and forget – but nothing could avert our glance. Smoke filled our nostrils and ash blew into our eyes. This sight was seared into our memory forever. It wasn’t a nightmare, but we wished desperately that it was. We could do nothing but blink our eyes in the dust and confusion.
“What happened here?” someone at the edge of the crowd asked an old man. The speaker was young and dressed plainly; a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, soot-laced and windswept.
The old man was dressed business casual, in a shirt and tie that had been pressed and clean no less than an age ago. The dust in the air had done its part to gray his receding hair as much as time, that same solemn procession that had marched lines in his face.
“I don’t think anyone really knows,” he shrugged with shoulders slumped, and began wandering with the rest of us around this indescribable atrocity, trying to make sense of the world.
We ourselves had some vague ideas from all the explosions, gunfire, flag-draped coffins, protests, and presidential addresses that had flooded our streets and vision. It came to us –gradually—that there was a war going on.
We knew that much.
Soldiers left their homes behind and televisions told us so, but what the war meant was a universe--not oceans--away. We blinked.
It was cause independent of effect; effect independent of meaning. Yet, everywhere we turned, we were transported again to a far away land, where we were fighting. Where, what, and whom we were fighting seemed less important than the fighting itself. The fight resisted explanation; it dodged definition of any kind as though avoiding lightly-tossed bullets.
Collective terror! --as exponential planes crashed into exponential towers in exponential instant replay. If you asked us, each one of us could tell you where we were when it happened, when we heard or saw the news. None of us tell you where we were for subsequent viewings: the event came to be less than real, and so did our reaction to it.
What we felt and still feel –that it was a terrible tragedy—remained the same, but what it meant to us has become largely lost. We weren’t sure if we were desensitized or indifferent from the beginning, but the effect was largely the same.
What did we know?
Far too little from special investigations. We had hope for comprehension once, back when words like “panel” and “commission” meant more than the soundbites would lead us to believe. Now the explanations we so desperately sought seemed only to confuse us more. A sea of dots connected and intertwined like a hideous macramé.
Tragedy?
“It could happen anywhere!”
So we prepared plastic wrap and evacuation plans. We blinked.
“Don’t forget our heroes!”
So we made films about them. We blinked.
It is our postmodern war, a series of baffling battlefields strung together across ticker tape, where fact and fiction were mortal enemies.
We watched documentaries that confronted each other, but we were no closer to understanding. The fallen towers blended seamlessly with invasions. On the home-front we were bombarded by images: photographs of children wrapped in bloody sheets, the aftermath of car-bombs, briefcase bombs, improvised explosive devices; all around us were the dismembered bodies of ideas.
Families torn asunder at wedding parties by “smart” missiles, the craters and ragged pieces left of a celebration. There were helicopters gunning down the wounded from space unseen, in night-vision recollections filtered through the internet. The battle of Haditha was at our fingertips, and then we ate lunch. We blinked.
Every now and then there were little eulogies for the dead in the newspaper. We closed the papers and threw them away. We blinked.
And what of our attackers? There were photos of their aftermath: the casualties, the carnage, the death and doom, or perhaps a sudden rip of flame through a crowd. What epitaph is appropriate, when their life story lies memorialized in smoke?
These were things that really happened: events that really did come to pass once upon a time or not so long ago.
It used to be, as we remembered, that language was the barrier to understanding; it used to be that pictures had an advantage in numbers, each one speaking a thousand words. Now we cannot trust our eyes, our ears. We cannot derive meaning.
We blink.
And…there we are again:
We stand in awe of it, terrified, shaken to our very core. It doesn’t seem real, it is impossible, and yet there it is, unparalleled in its appalling majesty. We want desperately to flee from this place and forget, but nothing can avert our glance. Smoke fills our nostrils and ash flies into our unblinking eyes. This sight is seared into our memory forever. It isn’t a nightmare, but we wish desperately that it could be.
