Eleven Years...

Eleven years ago today, we were packing to leave the beach.

Princess and I, and two of our friends, had just spent a lovely post-Labor Day week at my grandfather's beach cottage in Delaware, and our vacation was over, and we spent the morning packing up to return to our "normal" lives.  (I didn't know it at the time, but that was the last time I would ever set foot in that cottage on the beach, where I had spent part of every summer of my entire life up to that point.)  When we were finally ready to leave, and packing up the car, I turned my cell phone back on for the first time since I'd arrived a week earlier.  About a minute later, I found I had a dozen voicemails from my father, all from that morning.  I decided to see what all the fuss was about, and heard recording after recording of my father telling me that the United States was under attack, to turn on the TV, and whatever I do, not to come home.

We hadn't turned on the TV once the entire week.  When we finally turned it on that morning, we were all horrified, and dumbstruck.  And as we stood there, watching the towers burning, I remember thinking to myself, with odd clarity, That son-of-a-bitch is going to use this as an excuse to invade Iraq.  My hand to gods, that exact thought crossed my mind, followed immediately by, No - no way - that's ridiculous - even he wouldn't do something that horrible.

We decided to stay another day, because no one was quite sure what was going on at that point, and it just felt a lot safer out there in that sleepy town on the seashore, then back home, next-door to D.C.  That was one of the most surreal days of my life.  We were glued to the TV all day, watching what looked like Hell Come To The U.S.  But where we were, it was a beautiful, just absolutely gorgeous late-Summer day.  It could not have been more peaceful, or serene.  It produced a strange sort of cognitive dissonance that permeated the entire day for all of us.  Nothing we did felt right - if it fit with the scene around us, it didn't fit with the way we felt about what we knew was going on at home; and if it fit with how we felt about the attacks, then it seemed really out-of-place with where we were at the time and what we were experiencing just then.

Not knowing what else to do, we partied that night like it was the end of the world.  We did shots and got wasted and played Truth-or-Dare until we were all drunk and naked.  (Trust me, it was a lot more fun at the time than it sounds now.)

And the next day, we went back home to a world that had completely changed, in ways we would have a hard time understanding or coming to terms with for many years.  I still haven't completely come to terms with a lot of it.


Addendum:  I didn't want to make my post today about this, because I didn't want to be perceived as disrespectful.  But I feel like I have to say it, for several reasons.  It's just been on my mind a lot lately, and I don't want to bottle it up and pretend it isn't there.  And yes, some people might perceive it as disrespectful, but I don't agree with that opinion, and if I start basing my decisions about what to say or believe off of what other people might think about it, then I'm lost.  In my opinion, today is the most appropriate time to address it; the only appropriate time to address it, really.  It would seem oddly out of place on any other day, and waiting until next year will not have changed anything one way or the other, and by then I might have forgotten it, and lost the opportunity to express these feelings for good.

Let me preface this further by saying, I am not a conspiracy theorist.  I do believe that conspiracies can and do occur, but I am also a skeptic by nature, and 99% of the conspiracy theories I hear are clearly, demonstrably, ridiculous.  However, that said, there is something about the official story of what happened that day that has just never sat right with me.  I know a lot of people are going to consider me an ignorant, monstrous anti-patriot for saying this, but that doesn't change the way it appears to me.

I have never believed the story of United 93.

I am truly, truly sorry if that bothers you in any way.  I don't want to upset anyone, and that certainly has nothing to do with why I'm writing this here.  But it also doesn't do anything to change my perception of the situation, either.

It just always struck me as too neat, too tidy, too... American.  It's like something out of a storybook, or a fairytale.  Or a Hollywood movie.  It's just too perfect to be real.  The fact that they just happened to be lucky enough to crash in an uninhabited area.  The fact that the one plane that didn't hit its target just happened to be the last one, and just happened to be the one headed for the White House.  The fact that on that day, of all days, for this story that is fairly dripping with patriotism and Americans-Are-The-Greatest glory to come out, from the government, has just been a little hard for me to swallow.  From the first time I heard it, it has felt exactly like the "your dog went to live on a farm upstate" story a father would tell to his child.

I tend to follow the "Occam's Razor" style-guide when it comes to conspiracy theories:  the simplest explanation is the most likely.  That's one of the many reasons why I've never believed that 9/11 was an "inside job" (even though it would've felt so good to blame Cheney and Rumsfeld for it); the idea that the federal government could organize a conspiracy on that massive a scale is simply ludicrous, and laughably so.

But the idea that they might shoot down a passenger plane that they believed was on a suicide mission to crash into the White House, especially after three other planes had already hit their targets, and without knowing how many more there might be?  And that if they did, in fact, shoot down that plane, that they might, on such a tragic day, tell us an up-lifting story of everyday American heroism, rather than the truth - that the United States government had been forced to kill some of its own citizens, in order to prevent the murder of far more?  Those really just don't seem that far-fetched to me.  In fact, they seem kind of plausible.

And the more I've been thinking about it lately, the more I've come to realize, that if that is what happened, I wouldn't even blame them for it.

Even if the U.S. shot down United 93, they wouldn't be responsible for those people's deaths.  The terrorists who hijacked that plane, and pointed it at the White House are the ones responsible.  There is simply no argument about that.  I mean, honestly, what else should the government have done?  Let the plane destroy the White House, just so that those Americans on that plane could live another hour?  Is there anyone who could truly argue that there was some safe way to quickly bring that plane down without injuring anyone?  If the government had the means and opportunity to take down that plane - and I don't think there is any reasonable argument to be made that they didn't - then, if I'm honest with myself, I don't see what other choice they had.

And you know what?  I wouldn't even blame them for lying to us about it.  Those men and women on that plane are everyday American heroes, no matter how they died.  Just like every single person who died in New York or D.C. that day is a hero.  Don't they deserve to be remembered as heroes?  Don't they deserve better than to be remembered as innocent victims caught in the crossfire between their government and a handful of sick assholes?

Yes, you could make the argument that the lie was self-serving to the ones who told it.  And I don't necessarily think you'd be wrong.  But I think it's just as true that the lie honors the memories of those men and women in a just way; in a way fitting of Americans who gave their lives, willingly or not, so that others could live.

The official story of United 93 might be a mythology, but they deserve that, and much more.  A beautiful mythology to honor their deaths is, literally, the least we can do.

Brightsiding...

I'd wanted to write something about Spring, today being Eostre, the Vernal Equinox.

But I'm not feeling it.

What I am feeling today, is frustrated.  And I'm still going with the flow, so here we go...

Today's just been one of those days.  Everything that can go wrong, seemingly is.  My smartphone just up and died last Friday night.  The replacement arrived yesterday, but I couldn't make it back to the store before they closed.  Was going to pick it up tonight instead, but as soon as I got into the office this morning, I was reminded that I volunteered for a CPR class this evening after work, so I won't be able to make it back to the store in time again, which means I'll be without a phone for another day.  My browser crashed my computer, costing me 45 minutes of my day that I desperately needed in order to get some of my work done trying to fix it.  Run to the bathroom real quick, there's an Out-of-Order sign on the door.  Run upstairs to use that bathroom instead, and the door slams back on a wound-too-tightly hinge, and the door handle nails me right in the middle of my forearm.  Go to get coffee, and the pot is empty, and no one has started another one brewing.  And I could keep going, but I'll stop there.

With each and every one of these little annoyances thrown in my way, I am reminded of ManniMoonYin's Universal Tautology #3:  "Look on the bright side.  Make the most of it.  Choose joy, and you will be joyous."

I'm trying.  I really am.  As soon as I realize that I'm pissed off or upset about some minor injustice committed against me by the universe, I say to myself, "Ok, what's the brightside here?"  And then I try to think of the situation in those terms, instead of in terms of getting fucked by fate.

Another day without my phone?  Brightside - learning life-saving techinques in a CPR class.  Bathroom out of order?  Brightside - get to walk a little farther, and up a flight of stairs, burning a few extra calories.  Door handle cracks me on the arm?  Brightside - the pain helps to toughen me up and gain endurance.  Have to brew another pot of coffee?  Brightside - get to spend a few minutes just standing still, relaxing, listening to the slow gurgle of the machine as it brews.   And, of course, each and every one of those difficulties also carries the implicit Brightside of giving me another opportunity to practice looking on the brightside.

But it's not always that easy.  From past experience, I remember that some of the hardest moments to maintain UT #3 were when the brightside wasn't so obvious.  Like losing an hour's worth of working time dealing with a computer crash.  It's hard to figure out how to be happy about that.  And somehow, the fact that it's an excellent opportunity to practice brightsiding doesn't really make up for the amount of frustration and aggravation I feel.

Sometimes, the answer becomes clear after a while, if you're patient, and attentive.  As in this case, when I restarted my browser (which had caused the crash), and, miracle of Miracles, I somehow hadn't lost all of my tabs and settings!  The relief that I felt just then was a wonderful physical sensation, and I allowed myself to just sink into the delicious feeling of it, like a hit, or an afterglow.  It was fantastic.

Or, perhaps a better example would be my mother's death.  The pain was devastating at first, and it was years before I could see how it was actually a good thing to have happened.  As much as we didn't want to admit it at the time, and as much as we didn't listen to her when she told us, the truth was that she was crazy, and she was in a lot of pain, and she was devastating our family.  And she knew that.  And her suicide was, at least in part, the ultimate act of love.  She sacrificed herself to save our family.  And she did save our family.  All of the happiness and joy in life that we have experienced since her death we owe, at least in part, to her.

(Broswer just crashed my computer again as I was writing this.  Brightside - an opportunity to practice patience and acceptance.  I didn't do very well, but at least I had the opportunity to try.)

But the hardest times of all, are when I try, but simply fail to imagine any brightside at all.  I think and I stretch and I reach and I try my hardest to come up with something, anything that could serve as a potentially beneficial outcome to some unpleasant turn of events, but I just can't come up with anything.  Or nothing I come up with is good enough.  It's times like that, I have to learn to trust.

The Christians would call that "faith" - belief stemming from a will to believe, rather than knowledge or fact.  But I don't use that word for this, and not just because I want to avoid all the xtian baggage that comes with it.  It's also just not what I mean.  Because, believe it or not, I actually consider myself to be a skeptic.  I know that might seem contradictory and hard to believe, considering some of the whacked-out, mystical, some might even say superstitious things I believe.  But I would call myself a skeptical believer.

Yes, I believe in magick.  I believe that I (or, really, anyone, for that matter) can affect changes in consensus reality through non-local means.  But I don't believe that just because I want to believe it.  Yes, I wanted to believe that magick was real and possible and that I could learn to do it.  But I didn't know if that was true or not.  And so I spent years and years studying and practicing and testing and experimenting.  And it was only after repeated, verifiable success after repeated, verifiable success that I was finally able to accept that yes, magick is actually possible.

So, yes, I believe.  But only because I was able to prove it to myself beyond all shadows of my doubt.  Hence, I'm a "skeptical believer."

And so, when I get in these situations where I cannot imagine any brightside to my misfortune, it is not faith that I rely on, but trust.  I fall back on all my past experiences where I have felt the Way, the Flow, the Tao, and remember how in those mystical moments the path has appeared in front of me from out of nowhere, brick-by-brick at my feet.  I remember every instance of hindsight realization, where I find that though I didn't get what I wanted, I got exactly what I needed, even when I didn't know that I needed it.  I remember every time that I didn't know what to do, and so followed my instincts for lack of any other response, only to find that my instincts had led me to do exactly what needed to be done.  I remember all of these moments and I remember how these lessons have been reinforced through experience over and over and over and over again throughout my entire life, even before I'd ever heard of "The Tao" - and I trust in that feeling.  It has never failed me.  Not once.

And, honestly, in those moments when I'm lost in the pain or sadness of it all, it's not the trusting that's the hard part.  It's remembering to trust in the first place.  Because we're told our whole lives that these things aren't possible.  That you aren't supposed to believe in them.  And that, if you do, you're crazy, or broken, or sick, or in some other way wrong.

I guess in that way, I'm lucky.  Because I've never given a fuck what anyone else has to say about what's right, or what's wrong, or what's true.

And that is my Tao of Choosing Joy to be Joyful.