9/11 Changed My Life

As we fall into the mindless maelstrom of self obsessed shared traumatic introspection, a sort of onanistic wave of introspective patriotic self abuse, reliving the pain, passing on the shards of memory, a sort of genetic mutation in our collective nationalistic DNA...in the days leading up to the tenth anniversary of the Destruction of the World Trade Centers, inundated by Television Movies alternatively somber and sensationalistic...a truly jingoistic marketing opportunity, a way to refresh our hate, a way to endlessly relive the pain, savor that feeling...as we are bludgeoned endlessly by political factions trying to gain any kind of traction, to claim it as their own...
Sometimes I feel the way America has internalized and obsessed on 9/11 borders of pornography. It became the way we lost our innocence. We will never be quite so free again. We let it happen by surrendering to our insecurity. We fear fear itself.
In this blog, I never wrote the story of my personal experience on 9/11. I have written the story on other blogs and I have made a few references to to it here. In 2007, I wrote a post, A Kind Of Pornography.
Because, I was in lower Manhattan that day only a short distance away from the World Trade Centers.
I saw first tower smoking from the roof of my East Village apartment and spent the next few hours on a bike first in Union Square , then on Greenwich as the second plane hit.
The smell, the insane cloud of dust rushing up 6th Avenue as I tried to escape to Central Park on bike as the first tower collapsed...then having to relive it all over and over again every time I was near a television in America and then when I finally could rebook my flight to France...this will remain with me the rest of my life.
Of course I felt personally attacked. Of course I felt unfocused rage and anger, but I was determined to find the focus for my rage. If I am angry, I want to know why I am angry and make sure my anger is not wasted on the wrong target. Gradually the feelings coalesced into a need to understand what had happened and why a group of people could feel strongly enough to destroy themselves in that insane act.
I felt I had to learn about Islam. I realized I knew nothing except caricatures and generalized history.
The first anniversary of 9/11 found me working in a vineyard at my first vendange near Libourne, France at the Chateau Vieux Chevrol. I was the American, the outsider and I was working with a big mix of Dutch, French, Algerians and Moroccans. Most people were pretty curious about me and found my extremely bad french pretty amusing. The Moroccans for the most part were very warm towards me, but there were some Algerians who refused to speak to me and one who was out right hostile when he found out I was an American. A guy named Mustapha, who became my "victim". Because I refused to be his victim. When he spat at my feet, I laughed. When we ate together for lunch, I made a point to sit beside him and jabber away and joke in English and French. After 3 days, the people at the table made sure the seat next to him was waiting for me. I was cutting grapes the first year and I ended up working next to him with a number of other Algerian and Moroccans who joked with me. One afternoon, a woman who had been initially hostile to me, Xenab, asked me if I had seen the World Trade Centers collapse. I tried to tell them eyewitness account as well as I could, but I tried to explain that it made me want to learn about the rest of the world. It made want to reach out, rather than shrink away.
The next day, at lunch, I had an epiphany as Mustapha suddenly turned to me and told me, "You know, I can speak english very well." In fact, his english was better than his french. He was actually a very interesting intelligent and surprisingly cultured person. We were suddenly buddies. I had another friend that year. A Russian named Sergei, who spoke much better english than french. I found myself translating for him.
Now I work with the same group of Moroccans each year. I eat dinner at their homes. We can tell each other jokes and laugh. I have seen their kids grow up. Xeneb gives me Moroccan treats. I find myself understanding their religion more and more. I see the variations in the sects.
What is the point of this? I spent a lot of time learning the geopolitical forces that created the impetus for the Al Qaeda attack on New York. My anger is not wasted on an entire group of people, but finely focused on the real culprits. In fact, I have learned to appreciate the culture and the art of a large portion of the world that was shrouded in a self imposed veil of ignorance.
My advice? America, stop reliving the pain. Let the festering wound heal. Stop the infection of Racist hate, because you are only making yourself sicker. Much worse things have happened to people everywhere on the planet all through history and life goes on, relentlessly. Learn to Laugh at Yourselves Again.
So, the night after the World Trade Center Attack, there was a Friars Club Roast in Manhattan for Hugh Hefner. The room was dead. Nobody had the mojo. Nobody was laughing. Then the comedian Gilbert Gottfried came on and dared to tell a few jokes that mentioned the disaster...stunned silence...so then Gilbert launches into his version of the now legendary "Aristocrats" routine. The most utterly tasteless, long, purposely relentless obscene joke in the history of show business. You haven't heard it? Gottfrieds rendition of the joke became so legendary that an entire movie was made about other comedians telling their version of the joke. When he finished, the room exploded. It was an utterly cathartic moment. If you want, I'll post one of Gottfrieds renditions of the joke...every time he tells it, it's different. But here's Gottfriend trying to explain why he can't show the video of the actual performance....