Kitty pics and a touch of memorial

Well, here we are, on The Date. I can't let it pass without saying something, it would feel wrong. But I won't say too much.

For those who don't want to/can't read more 9-11-a-tude, here are my usual weekend kitty pics. They're as nice a way as any to spend a moment on a sad anniversary, methinks. And then I'll put my 9-11 bit after that, so it's easily skippable.

Working From Home

or

Views From My Cubicle

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The one show I watched after 9-11, of which some part always stayed with me, was a PBS program called Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero. I kept a transcript of it on my computer. It was the ending that moved me, where the participants talked about the people who jumped out of the windows. I think those images haunt many of us. I was going through a series of 9-11 photos on a news site this week, and when I hit one of those falling body photos, it made me jump--you don't get used to it.

So here are the last 4 statements from that program, talking about two people who held hands before they jumped. I don't post them here to convince people to believe in God. As I remarked to a Betty posting this week, I believe in God because I want to, it's just a choice. When I see an act like that, of people staring into the abyss but being there for each other, I do see God in that. But I don't think one needs to see God, to be just as profoundly moved. Cause it's not God per se that moves me, it's the love in that act. People connecting. That's what's exquisitely beautiful. (I just happen to think love and God are the same thing. I'm crazy like that!)

JOEL MEYEROWITZ: One of the most impossible and memorable images of that day were people leaping out of the windows, being forced out by the fire behind them, driving them, herding them out the windows. And to see that image of two people - co-workers, strangers - I had no idea, but that not knowing made it all the more poignant for - reaching out for somebody's hand to take your last step, that you would end your life in the hands of a stranger, plummeting thousands of feet to your death.

MARGOT ADLER, NPR Correspondent: I think that the power of that image is it doesn't give an answer. It takes us in two opposing directions. On the one hand, we are all alone at the end. Life is fleeting. There's no one to help us when we face the abyss. And there wasn't. No one came for them. And on the other hand, they reached for each other. They said that in that moment when they're facing the absolute ultimate, there are other human beings to reach out, to be there, to help them, to help us.

IAN McEWAN, Author: To me, it just seemed the bleakest possible image of the whole thing. Actually, I couldn't find a scrap of hope in it. What I saw was utter desperation, jumping to certain death rather than dying in pain and fire. It spoke to me of sheer panic, humans brought to the sort of furthest edge of despair. I found no hope in that at all. If there is a God, he's a very indifferent God.

BRIAN DOYLE: A couple leaped from the south tower, hand in hand. They reached for each other and their hands met, and they jumped. I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and the harrowed families of the dead and the screaming souls of the murderers, but I keep coming back to his hand in her hand, nestled in each other with such extraordinary, ordinary, naked love. It's the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It's everything we're capable of against horror and loss and tragedy.

It's what makes me believe that we're not fools to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them, like seeds that open only under great fire, to believe that who we are persists past what we were, to believe, against evil evidenced hourly, that love is why we are here.

Tom Waits - Never Let Go

I'll lose everything

But I'll never let go of your hand

             

3 items of interest?

* In re the partying that went off after Osama's death was announced, this New York Times article does a great job of articulating it--a sort of generation gap of those growing up in the shadow of 9-11. It's a short read and perfectly echoes comments I read elsewhere on the net, as well as the reaction of one young American man I ran into that day.

In the world of the so-called millennial generation, said Neil Howe, a writer and historian who is often credited with defining that term for the generation, “Evil is evil, good is good. There are no antiheroes, there is no gray area. This is a Harry Potter vignette, and Voldemort is dead.” 

“In a Harry Potter world,” he said, “their mission is to save the world for the rest of society. This is their taking pride in what their generation is able to do.” 

* Though it's lovely, Martin Luther King Jr did not say : "I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy." See here.
 

* As I know there's a lot of witchliness amongst the Betties (as there is amongst my cats), as well as love of vampires and The Mysterious, you might like to know that the Musical Queen of Mystical Stevie Nicks has released a new album. It's not at all new sounding or cutting edge, but very true to her Old Self, and a good album in that sense. If you've ever been a Nickling in the past, you might like it.

Nothing human is alien to me... not even dancing on the White House lawn

I spent Sunday evening with my closest friends, and then came home to ant battles, and rejoicing over Obama's roasting of Trump, and only late did I learn about Osama.

Everywhere I read, from facebook to my American friends' blogs, there's either disgust over the celebrating, or unapologetic celebrating, or angst over whether it's okay to feel relieved or glad about his death. I think all of those reactions fall within the realm of "okay."* These aren't everyday occurrences, we don't have a ready shorthand of How to React.

The only thing that bothered me was the few people who seemed really intolerant of those who were celebrating.

Last week I watched an interview with Maya Angelou and she quoted the ancient playwright Terence who said: "I am a man, I consider nothing that is human alien to me." Angelou takes this to mean--we should be able to step into the shoes of any human being, no matter how alien, or monstrous. Like this exchange in Harold and Maude:

Harold - You sure have a way with people.
Maude - Well they're my species!

I think compassion is needed on all sides during this sort of thing. Compassion of course for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq who've been messed about by western powers for decades, which led to some very f***ed up situations, which contributed to 9-11. Terrorism didn't appear in a vacuum.

But I think we can take a few minutes and try to understand why or how a person could celebrate the death of someone who bombed their country and killed civilians. It wasn't my country, and I'm not celebrating, but I don't have to walk very far to put myself in those particular shoes. I have that much empathetic imagination.

Here's one of my favorite Bruce Cockburn songs: "Put It In Your Heart." At the time of 9-11 he was watching a televangelist say something horrid about gays being at fault for it. Cockburn thought "You piece of sh*t!" but then he realized that thinking of the televangelist as less than human was what Bin Laden thought of the Americans he killed, and therefore... not a helpful pattern of thinking. So then he wrote this song.


To me the song means: When you have an ugly thought, put that thought in your heart. The heart knows how to process that stuff. Probably works for conflicted thoughts too, and confusing thoughts, hard thoughts, narrow thoughts, and disgusted thoughts. Take them out of your bile for awhile (in the liver?) and let them float about in the chambers of your heart, where they have the best chance of being transformed.




As I stare into the flames
filled up with feelings I can't name
Images of life appear --
regret and anger, love and fear
Dark things drift across the screen
of mine behind whose veil are seen
love's ferocious eyes, and clear
the words come flying to my ear

    Go on -- put it in your heart --
    Put it in your heart

Terrible deeds done in the name
of tunnel vision and fear of change
surely are expressions of
a soul that's turned its back on love
All the sirens all the tongues
The song of air in every lung
Heaven's perfect alchemy
put me with you and you with me

    Come on -- put that in your heart
    Come on, put it in your heart

All the sirens all the tongues
The song of air in every lung
Heaven's perfect alchemy
Put me with you and you with me

    Come on, put it in your heart
    Come on, put it in your heart


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* On the other hand, attacking Muslim people and businesses is the one reaction to Osama's death that is NOT okay. I do draw the line there!