story20540.xml

story20540.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2006-09-11

this is what i have up on my site on www.rossirant.com
for the 5 years anniversary

September 11th 2006


911 2006
With the anniversary of 911 quickly approaching, I find myself doing, what I have done every year since September 11th 2001; take inventory of myself and inventory of the world around me since that terrible morning.
For me…well I still jump when I hear a crash, still feel my heart crawl into my throat when a jet flies lower then usual, still, (admittedly) get nervous when I see a group of Middle-eastern men in a huddle talking, still find myself tying up loose ends every time Im getting ready to fly, still fight back tears when I stand on my roof and look out at where the towers had been, still remember the weird smell, still think of the endless dust of ground zero whenever I walk in falling snow, still remember the woman who said she saw me walking home late one day from ground zero and did not say hello to me because she thought I looked like the living dead, a zombie trudging down the Bowery and I thought all that love I tried to pour into the dead eyed broken faces and it never occurred to me that I was like that too for a little while, still look at firemen and feel so much love and compassion and gratitude that I think I will burst at the seams, still look at President Bush and feel anger that he turned universal well wishers into haters of America, still wonder why the hell Osama runs free while nearly 3,000 innocents are under ground, still have anger, still have asthma and still, still, still, feel eternally grateful that I was granted the chance to go down there and be a part of the most wondrous, brave, selfless and love-full rescue and relief mission that I had ever imagined.
I no longer take life for granted, I no longer think I have all the time in the world to see my loved ones, no longer believe that fame and glory and success are as important as health and life and laughter, no longer think that mass murder is a distant stranger, that angels only exist in heaven, that strangers cant in an instant love you more then friends, that strangers cant in an instant destroy thousands of worlds, I no longer wake up in the morning and feel that I have endless mornings to loll around in, but instead hop out of bead determined to make this day count, I am no longer innocent.
The world
No longer seems to want to work it out, talk it out, hash it out, negotiate it out, it wants instead to blow up its innocents, to teach children how to turn themselves into bombs, to teach educated adults to hate entire religions and races, to turn religion whether it be right wing Christian, fundamentalist Moslem or extreme Judaism into a right to kill anyone who opposes, the world seems to have forgotten its world wars, its Nazis, its genocides, its crusades and rivers of blood in the name of god, the world is probably angry because slowly but steadily with our machines and our smoke and our nukes we are breaking its heart.
And so…this downtown New Yorker, this American, this Jew, this woman, this out loud and proud gay mama, would like to plant a seed..a little seed, a tiny, itty, bitty seed that all of you take and put into your pocket and hold to your heart and warm and nourish and help grow into a strong root and then a proud tree projecting from your hearts out into the world, this tree of love, this tree of peace, this tree of kindness, of remembrance, of new beginnings.. it is time my friends, my family, my readers my wondrous strangers, my new faces and old ones, it is time to change the world.