Worlds
3/11/02
Hi all,
This day marks the six-month since the attack on the WTC. It is a bit like the Kennedy asassination in which everyone recalls where they were when they first learned of the attack. As for me, I was sitting on A’s porch in Philadelphia writing my Morning Pages when she called me inside. She had heard about the attack on the radio and had already turned on the television by the time I came in. I stood there transfixed as the second plane hit the building. A few minutes later A asked me if I thought I should call Matt. That question pulled me out of my daze and I began the frantic ritual of continually redialing the phone as I heard the predictable busy signal.
It all seems so long ago now – even though it was only a few months back. So much has happened. Already I, like so many others, am adjusting to the “new realities”. To say that the world will never be the same seems trite. The world is never the same ever. No more or less so now. What is “the world” anyway? How is the world different from the earth? The answer, as usual, may come from the word itself. The Old English is “weorold”, but at its root is “wi-ro”, which means man. And this root is itself a derivative of “we-ie”, which means vital force.
The “world” is a human construct to hold within it our limited understanding of what it means to be alive. “The world” is really “my world”. It has very little to do with anything out there. My world changed dramatically that day, but the change itself was not new; it’s just that the drama was remarkable, and the tragedy unspeakable.
Each if us is a world unto ourselves. Maybe that is what I was feeling last night as I watched the 9/11 documentary on television. The crashing sounds of the bodies as they rained down from the top floors of the building and pounded thunderously onto the lobby roof or onto the sidewalk – that is what stays with me. These were the sounds of whole worlds coming to an end, entire universes teeming with memories and aspirations, profound loves and petty judgments. All ending with a sudden and final force, a powerful punctuation that said: I was here. I mattered. I am now no longer. This vital force is no more.
When a world ends in its own time it can be a cause for celebration, like a giant star that goes super-nova having used up its allotted energy. Such a life shines brightly in our memories as a life well lived, as a world well made, and well used. It is only when worlds are ripped away violently and prematurely that I feel the earth shudder as if the falling bodies bruise and wound her with each violent impact. Yet the earth endures. Ever the mother, she absorbs those bodies into herself and creates whole new worlds in due time.
I feel such a heavy sadness when I think of all the suffering that comes from these violent outcroppings that desecrate “our world”. Now as before, there will be more wounds and suffering for generations until the anguish recedes into story and myth. In the passing of time it is always that way - the way The Iliad is not about anybody; no one really is wounded or dies. It is now a story, the original living, breathing actors in that story no longer breathe, no longer bleed. All memory and story, only still alive because it is story so well told.
But until this all recedes into story there will be much suffering. And our responses to what has happened will no doubt continue to end more worlds prematurely as well. Even today the earth absorbs more blows to her own body, as bombs rain down on other worlds. All the while, it is as if bodies rain down on my own world as well.
Edd