story1707.xml

story1707.xml

born-digital

story

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2002-09-03

Sep.11th. 2001



(Recollections and reflections, written between 19th and 25th September, largely)







A week and a day on from that Tuesday I saw a look of such devastation on the face of one of our fellow teachers- an American. From New Jersey, probably not far from Frank Sinatra?fs hometown. He can be serious about some things, like work, but what I saw tonight was a seriousness beyond the realm of work concerns. And when I asked him I wasn?ft surprised to hear him tell me how he wished he was there, in America, not here in Japan. To be there with family of course, but I suspect, to be there among other Americans, to make and feel common cause and grievance. Others had said the same- how much they wanted to be there, to do something rather than just observe from afar. I wasn?ft far behind them- I feel a kind of yearning to be in New York right now. Having visited there in ?f78, when I was about 14, New York became part of my psyche and my universe. Being Irish helps, perhaps. For me, New York was a place where I could find?cwell?cjazz, for one thing. In Times Square, the never-threatening massive surround of buildings gave onto a wealth of street-level sights and sounds. I found the streetside intimacy of two black musicians playing a dark and poignant music on an upright bass and a harmonium (of all instruments! –liberated from the music room in my Belfast school). I stood transfixed for ten minutes, gave money, and went into the nearest record shop and bought a cassette of Charles Mingus-The Atlantic Years. Over the three days we were there (my parents and I), I also purchased Jaco Pastorius?f debut album, and a record by my favourite musician John McLaughlin. I bought Guitar Player Magazine, which ran an interview with him from a shop, which, I was informed, made his guitar. This was a million miles from Belfast! New York to me was jazz- and pizzazz. And I was in awe of its giant buildings. I couldn?ft get enough of them. For me, The Empire State was by far and away the jewel in the crown. I think I really wanted to go up that one, but it been overtaken by another just a few years previous and, well, if we were going to go a big building in Manhattan, we might as well make it the tallest.



The World Trade Center, I felt, lacked the Gershwinian 50?fs feel of The Empire –but it did have a height advantage. The superfast elevator speeded us up to the upper floors, and, taking one look at the interior of the cafeteria we arrived at I felt my disappointment confirmed, a little. The bar-counter was garishly illuminated with, looking back, what was a very 70?fs kitsch design. This, I felt, was not my jazzy 50?fs-frozen New York, but some new and plasticized proto-New York. I think there?fs a photograph of me, with that in the background, looking remarkably non-plussed. Of course, at the age of 14, there?fs an enormous variety of things you can summon your non-plussed look for. What changed things, however, was a trip to the roof.



Not only was the vastness of the world below and beyond so immediately impressive, the other tower was there with us- tantalizingly close, and yet an abyss away. Other real estate suspended in these lofty heights with us. My eye roved over the features of the other roof, and then, sickeningly, slipped its gaze off the monolithic shape, down the fluted other wall, down the opaque windows, hurtling the abyss downward further still and the rest was out of view. I could feel my body crumbling, my backside bunch up, and my stomach crunch into itself, at the notion of how high we were. How vulnerable.



I could see light aircraft flying out over the water, beyond The Statue of Liberty, below us.



I made a kind of return visit there, just this week. I found a homepage which had virtual tours of sights in New York. By clicking on the digital photograph and dragging I could move around, and see up and down and all around. I could be up there again, in that high, scary, beautiful place?cwhich no longer existed. With these virtual views, either from down below or up on the roof, I could revisit, and tempt my senses with the reality of it. Of course, it only served to heighten the true reality behind the image. The violent, obscene destruction of it, and the sudden and cruel ending of the lives of so many thousands.



For some, it would have been sudden. Perhaps an aural indication of something beyond the realm of the office interior, like a buzzing, growing suddenly in intensity. Some, no doubt, had time to turn around and look, to see the aircraft approaching. Was the visual enough, or rational enough, to convince the brain of its reality? A matter of seconds. The more you stared, the more it sank in. A matter of seconds. Not so for those on board the plane. Theirs was an ordeal lasting nearly an hour. Gripped by the violence of what the experience must have been I scared myself just the other night, lying in bed in the dark. I put myself on the plane and observed how I would react. Predictably, for a child of Hollywood, and my own indefatigable optimism, I have an inner-hero, a resource that merely waits within me, but of which I have no doubt will emerge on cue at times of need.?@?@But five days after the attacks, the self that I put aboard the plane was closer to what other instincts have told me along the course of my existence, that I may indeed be much less heroic or brave than I would hope. It was the violence that did it. Confronted with the realization of just how violent, brutal and impervious to humanity the hijackers must have been, I found myself becoming paralysed with fear. I felt my strength drain, felt my abject being implode, and my limbs lose all power. And that which I had become almost yearned for destruction as a release from this hell. This hell was the complete and utter breakdown of all my instincts to survive, and the complete betrayal of my identity. It scared me, terribly. I slept a kind of miserable sleep, emotionally exhausted. In the morning I looked back- perhaps after meeting with my kids or my wife, and, somehow, I knew that that me was not the real me. That, confronted with these bastards, I would do everything in my power to kill them. That I would ignore my fear, or translate the energy of it into a kind of battle-mode anger. I felt the comfort of this return to my inner-hero, however realistic it was.



Of course, I told myself, to get to that point, the point where you can summon a fear-eclipsing anger, you have to have to be either someway confident of your chances, or just incensed and unwilling to go down on your knees. Regarding the first, if you believe there?fs a possibility that you may survive if you do nothing, then doing nothing will be very tempting for most. Until that Tuesday, this would have been most people?fs reaction to a hijacking. The idea that someone might hijack an airplane merely to convert it into a deadly missile seemed too inhuman to be real. Perhaps every passenger hoped these hijackers would be just like all other hijackers in the history of the world and have their demands and their threats but wouldn?ft necessarily kill anyone. Perhaps the hijackers gave that impression, although, of course, their actions may have been extremely violent on board, killing a passenger or flight attendant. The reason why the one flight which didn?ft hit its intended target was because the passengers learned of the hijackers intent via telephone. They realized the plane was only good to the hijackers as a missile, that there would be no demands and threats, so those who decided to act had indeed reached that point where the fear had to be eclipsed and if success meant death, at least it was not the death the hijackers had intended. I surmise then that the passengers of the flights which crashed into the World Trade Center Towers were very probably unaware of their destination, at least until it was too late.



At the most, they had only a minute to realize.



It took me more than a minute to realize what was happening. Tuesday had been the day of typhoon no.15 in Japan and, starting late at work, I?fd watched it in all its glory, through the window, and on the TV, earlier that morning with the kids. The morning was a little stressful, actually –a combination of not being able to go out, Ken crying, and Leo resisting all entreaties to do something, like draw pictures, instead of lying about watching TV or asking me to turn it on. Things improved with a ?gtrip?h to the nearby secondhand bookshop. Interestingly, I picked up, for the pittance of a hundred yen, the CD of the soundtrack for ?gTitanic?h, and when we got back to the house, Leo suddenly became absorbed in the idea of ?gTitanic?h. It?fs not the first time. Titanic is up there with ancient Egyptians as fascinating for Leo. He said that listening to this music made him want to cry ?ga little?h, he added quickly, ?gmaybe?h. So I couldn?ft resist his entreaties for me to put on the movie, which I have on tape. I showed him the iceberg scene and a few others, but I refused to let him see anything too scary, like the destruction of the ship itself. ?gWhen you?fre older?h, I said. Little did I know that the very next day he?fd be watching real scenes of destruction involving, invisibly to his eyes at least, the death of many, many more souls than died in 1912?fs disaster. The next day I told Leo, ?gThis news is bigger than Titanic.?h To him, perhaps, they were only images. There was no dramatic music to accompany them.



?gIt?fs like a movie,?h everyone said. Well, the hijackers, or those behind them, were certainly thinking like Hollywood directors. Until Tuesday, it had almost become a genre in itself: the destruction of New York on screen. Independence Day. Godzilla. Deep Impact. Armageddon. AI. And I?fve just read they?fre not going to release an up-dated version of H.G.Wells?f Time Machine, at least not before they modify it somewhat, because ?gthere?fs a scene in which fragments of the Moon fall on New York City.?h Always spectacular and always thrilling, and you always leave the cinema knowing full-well that New York is of course completely untouched and perfect. Not only perfect, but beautiful. Bold beauty. The same bold beauty, totally distinct and totally itself, which attracted the filmmakers, and the hijackers, too. They might see the World Trade Center as a symbol of capitalism, but New Yorkers would see it as a symbol of their city?fs brash, enormous pride.



I turned on the TV at 10pm to catch the news (aired in a choice of Japanese or English) and find out about the typhoon. What I saw, however, was a giant burning building, looking unreal. And then I saw an aircraft crash out of view behind it, which confused me, as much as it did the woman commentator. How can this be a recording of the ?gaccident?h when the building?fs already on fire? Meg was upstairs trying to make the kids sleep and initially resisted my request for her to come down- but I insisted. She?fd gone up the building long ago too, before we?fd ever met, and so we both felt a sense of some connection to the giant structure. The shock of destruction was soon supplanted, however, by the realization that this disaster was no accident, but the product of human intent. That human beings had actually reached a point where the wanton destruction of innocent, non-military people in vast numbers had been reached. Now, as I write that line, I feel the need to pause. It?fs not the first time innocents have been killed in such numbers, or greater. Look at The Crusades of the Middle Ages; the Conquistadores in South America; look at the Holocaust; the Japanese massacres in Nanking and other places; Rwanda; look at what the US did to Japan- the cities they bombed were not military compounds, but places where civilians lived. And died, suddenly, on a massive scale. The ?gmitigating?h factor of ?git was war?h, of course, puts it in its own category, distinct from what happened on Tuesday, but it was still heinous in its own way. Arguing that it was necessary to end the war, how necessary was it to drop a second? So, yes, humans had killed in massive numbers before. But what happened on Tuesday was, and remains, completely in its own category. And it happened live, on TV, for all the world to witness. It had shock value as spectacle even before we knew anything about the number of casualties. There was known to be about 50,000 people who worked in the World Trade Center on any given day. Could it really be, we asked eachother. And could people really have intended to do such a thing? And why? My mind filled with all these questions and attempts at answers. One of the first things that came to me concerned George Bush as President. Was it possible to conceive of an American President less interested in, or even aware of, the rest of the world than he? His policy of ?ghands-off diplomacy?h in the Middle East occurred to me with frightening forcefulness- if this was Arab violence, it was a rude tap on the shoulder to Bush, to say ?gYou can?ft ignore us.?h Bush, with his eye firmly on his navel, looking up only to imagine a miraculous shield protecting him and the US from the nasty big world out there, was probably the most shocked man in America on that Tuesday. Strange how, just that day, with my kids, we?fd watched the iceberg scene from ?gTitanic?h. Power, size, disregard for ?gout there?h, the US was cruising along nicely in thrall of these. Nobody could see it coming, least of all a government which seemed to care so little about the rest of the world. As the shock settled down and desire to make sense of it took hold, I could find myself choosing any number of potential causes, or a combination. Reading the newspaper helped, too- I needed to absorb as much as possible, because this was not merely an American thing, it was a global attack. One thing, however, was sure- the essence of the attack was hatred.



Terrorism, it might be argued, is a form of communication. It is a way, albeit an abominable and unjustified way, for people to draw attention to themselves and their grievances. So when a Hamas member walks into a disco full of young people and detonates the bomb strapped to his body, killing 20, he, or rather Hamas, is making a statement. It says: ?hWe have a grievance, a grievance which you Israelis are not addressing. And because you are not addressing our grievance in any shape, manner, or form, and are continuing to repress us and deprive us of what we believe to be ours, and of our dignity, we do this. We do this because you have not listened to our entreaties, and you ignore the voices of our people. Do not ignore us.?h It is a dirty, disgusting, debased, and debasing, language, the language of terrorism, but one born of desperation, and a degraded sense of humanity. I pick up the paper, read about the suicide bombing, express my heartfelt disgust and anger at the murder of innocents, and, then, accuse Israel, and America, of helping to create the environment which led to this.?@?@If both sides have intelligent leaders they read the language behind the horror and, after a period of necessary delay, they initiate or resume or restart dialogue. Often, one of the elements in this process is the amount of violence that has been used to push the situation to this point. In a very crude way, the crude way that politics has become in the Middle East, it comes down to numbers. If a handful of people have died the delay will be short- if it?fs twenty the delay may be very long, but it will be only a delay. Of course there?fs no ?gacceptable?h number of deaths in any conflict, but in people?fs minds perhaps there?fs a kind of unspoken agreement about how much too much is: a point of horror past which dialogue cannot endure. To do so would defeat the purpose. ?gTerrorism?h is the language of the desperate forcing the power-broker to dialogue. Call it political terrorism, because the end, if not the means, is political. If, last Tuesday, the hijackers had hit only the Pentagon, the use of a civilian aircraft and the death of its passengers would have been deplored, as indeed the destruction of the building and the deaths of those within, but it would have been in some way recognizable as an act of political terrorism. Attacking the World Trade Center, however, coupled with the use of civilian aircraft and their passengers as deadly missiles, went veritably beyond the pale, completely off the scale of what we know as terrorism. It was by no stretch of the imagination an act of political terrorism, in the sense in which others can be interpreted. There was no statement in these acts which might seek to push people to some sort of dialogue. The latest casualty-count stands at well over six thousand people missing or dead. It could have been much higher even. Innocent non-military civilians, running the gamut from billionaire executives to unskilled deliverymen, and of nationalities of over sixty countries. This act was meant to humble the superpower that is America. Carried out with inhuman spite, the end could never be dialogue, but just to express hatred, and to instill fear and hatred in the hearts of Americans.



Hatred of America, certainly. Burning and intense. The question persists: why? Today, George Bush gave an address to Congress in which he tough-talked about all this and how ?gterrorism?h would be stamped out etc. etc.. I didn?ft find what he said necessarily all wrong. I felt he was giving eloquent expression to the nation?fs feelings, and doing so with a language that matched his office (he avoided saying he wanted bin Laden ?gdead or alive?h!). He spoke with a determination and a focus which I felt was justifiable and laudable. But on the question of why the terrorists hate America he was a little more than disingenuous. (To paraphrase) ?gThey hate our freedoms, our way of life, our values.?h In my book, a totally inadequate answer to the why question. He might have mentioned, for example, how, for ten years, since the Gulf War, America has starved Iraq with punishing oil embargoes, resulting in the deaths of so many hundreds of thousands of children. How they have routinely bombed it in the course of those ten years, with no regard for the civilians down below. He might have touched upon the fact that America has, particularly since Clinton stepped down, done nothing to ameliorate the politics of the Middle East, and indeed has tacitly and overtly condoned and supported Israel?fs suppression of the Palestinians. He could also possibly have referred to the fact that the U.S. government was happy to use the Afghani people and fighters to do what it hoped they would do, namely push back the Soviets – that they supported the very people they are now accusing of terrorism. That the U.S. armed and trained the forces in Afghanistan, and possibly even their latest Most Wanted Man, Osamu bin Laden. And if George Bush had really wanted, he just possibly may have made some tiny reference to the fact that ?gterrorism?h, in 99% of cases, is a phenomenon born of some grievance, some political mess which must be addressed as a political mess, beyond the realm of Gordian-knot-cutting military action. Eradicating ?gterrorism?h necessarily entails addressing the causes of the various groups involved in such activity. (The British Government certainly tried to destroy the IRA militarily without addressing the politics for long enough. It was a fruitless and ill-conceived enterprise.) How about even just a word from him on just how unequal the world is, that while such political, economic, and social inequality exists in the world, you will always have something we call ?gterrorism?h? Just one word, Mr Bush? Is it just bad guys and good guys?



This time, it has to be admitted, the ?gbad guys?h are actually very bad indeed. What they did was psychopathic on a massive scale. What they did was to instill fear in the world. The stage may have been America, but the reverberations are being felt in every country. No-one can feel safe. It is an act which perverts humanity. How they might claim to justify what they did in the name of their god is pure blasphemy. In their world, humans are unequal: there are believers and non-believers. The latter, for them, are lesser things, and so whatever they, the ?gbelievers?h inflict on them, is OK. Death. Injury. Maiming. Humiliation. Violence. Intimidation. All of these are OK to these supposed ?gidealogues?h. Inflicting pain on others is OK. Killing other people?fs dreams is OK. Ending the life of a four year old child is OK. I saw her picture on the TV. Her mother was Irish. I?fd read about this only two days after the event on the Internet. The mother?fs brother had been in the World Trade Center and had just escaped. Unbeknownst to him, his sister was one of the passengers on the second plane to crash into the WTC. Forty four year old, beautiful, a flamboyant looking woman, like some latter day Maureen O?fHara. Then they showed her daughter, who was with her on the plane. Four years old. She possessed the inherited good looks of her mother, but she had her own incredible cuteness. She was beautiful. What a life she would have had. There was a voice-over by the father, who was not on the flight, saying how, when out walking with his family, everyone would stop and say how adorable and pretty and cute their daughter was. I know how that feels because I have two adorable and cute kids myself. I looked at them after hearing that father?fs words and wondered how profound his grief must be.



Grief is something I learned about just a few brief months ago. The loss of Meg?fs mother left a gaping hole in the family. After the immediate shock and the trauma of her passing, and after we?fd observed many of the rites and ceremonials special to Japan, there was merely her absence to dwell upon. Not a feeling that necessarily pushed me to tears –the tears were part of the early shock and trauma. No, just a feeling of unconquerable silence, a simple, sad realization of reality. That realization had crept up on me previously as hopes for her recovery had slipped away, so I suppose the beginning of my grief had been the harsh countering of my hope, and that was difficult because the hope that I had built was strong. With that experience inside, the later feeling of unconquerable silence was one, which, no longer able to destroy my hope, was, in some way, an erosion of my innate optimism, my positivism. I tell myself it can never do that, of course, not really, because that would be a legacy counter to what was truly important –her life, not her death. That her life, not her death, was the reality which should affect all our survival and continuance. Her joy and her positivism could never die, as long as we carried it in us. I feel I want to say something like this to even some of the people who lost loved ones. To that father, and husband, for one.



There?fs a lot of grief in America right now. Yes, people die on massive scales in earthquakes and natural disasters, and the country in which it occurs is traumatized also, but this is different- someone actually inflicted this grief on purpose. This act was a body blow to America. And to their very American sense of pride, to their positivism, their optimism, and their confidence. America has a ?ghero culture?h –the need for heroes is an integral part of the collective American psyche. The charity concert set up soon after was called ?gTribute to Heroes?h, not to victims. In another country, we?fd be talking about victims, not heroes. Of course, there were many heroes that day. Members of the New York Fire Department, the Police, the Emergency Services, ordinary people who went back to grab someone and lead them down the stairs, the teachers at a nursery school who grabbed all their kiddies and, bunging them in shopping trolleys, got them all away from lower Manhattan as fast as they could. The firemen rushed into the buildings with no thought to their own personal safety. Over three hundred of them died. In the charity show, between each performance, a famous person, often famous for being a celluloid hero, would address the audience and tell of one person?fs brave act. For a non-American like me, while it was moving in many ways, I wondered why they felt the need to translate the tragedy so completely into a roll-call of heroes. Perhaps it was the need to have heroes, especially at this time of great loss. On September 11th, America watched in shock and helplessness the destruction of their cities. A sense of collective vulnerability and fear suddenly entered the American mind: it sat uneasily with the self-image of strength and pride and heroism. There was no Superman or Arnie Swarzenegger: no-one to help as the destruction, fear and panic unfolded. Hollywood movies suddenly (or not so suddenly) seem so childish now. I wonder how audiences will react to ?gsave-the-day?h blockbusters after this. (Or to violent movies. What was witnessed on that day was a kind of super-violence. The images, and the imaginings of what it must have been like for those on the planes or in the buildings, like those poor souls who chose to jump to their death rather than be consumed by flame, will live on in people?fs minds. Violent movies may not enjoy the same acceptance and popularity of before.) Yes, there were many heroes that day, from firemen to businessmen to nursery school teachers. Many, many heroes. But there were also many, many victims. Concentration on the hero element as opposed to the victim element bespeaks a psychology which may delay people?fs ability to terms with the reality of that day.



Now they?fre talking of the possibility of biological or chemical strikes. They?fve grounded all 3,500 crop dusters in the US as a precaution. One of the main hijackers was a frequent visitor to the mini-airport where the crop-dusters flew from, asking all sorts of questions about how much weight in chemicals they could carry etc.. People in New York are buying gas-masks! What is happening? What will happen? What will war entail? Right now these thoughts course through my mind and the minds of so many others on the planet. The newspaper has become an essential daily purchase, and every night we watch the TV for news and developments as the forces amass on all sides of Afghanistan. The population of that country is miserably poor, and largely innocent of any wrong-doing. They are the next victims, but their suffering began a long time ago, and they are unlikely to receive the sympathy and outpouring of grief which has been given to those who died in America.?@?@The Taliban and bin Laden are viciously unconcerned with such diurnalities as getting food to the people, improving facilities and working on an infrastructure. The former seem more more concerned with imposing a debased and debasing form of Islam upon the people. The burqua-clad women, deprived of all education and work, are an indicator of how backward and inegalitarian the Taliban are. And bin Laden, with his eyes firmly set on the destruction of the Western world, no doubt couldn?ft care less about the lives of ordinary Afghanis. Otherwise, why invite such danger upon the people of which he is supposedly a ?gguest?h? He needs to be told, by an Islamic scholar, how far he has strayed from what he claims to believe in. To claim what he does in the name of all Muslims is an attempt at manipulation of the masses. He is trying to confuse the concepts of politics with religion, cloaking his psychopathic hatred in a mantle of religious vision. He needs to be destroyed by words before all else, and before the eyes of all Muslims. To quote a recent article in The Independent, which attempts to clarify basic ideas about Islam:

?gThe Koran clearly states that ?eIf anyone murders an (innocent) person?cit will be as if he had murdered the whole of humanity?f. And Muhammad is recorded as saying that Muslim rules of engagement forbid attacks on ?enon-combatants, women, children, and men of religion?f; they outlaw attacks on the ?emeans of subsistence?f of those who ?eoffer no resistance?f.?h

Of course, I don?ft think I really need to be told that mass murder of people, innocent or otherwise, is contrary to any religion, but it?fs good to see the words in black and white in Islam?fs holy book. These are the words that need to be expressed at the highest level, by the greatest and most respected scholars, at this time especially, and then faxed to bin Laden, wherever he is. Indeed, while they?fre at it, they might want to fax off a message from another leading Muslim, a person who is a definite candidate for America?fs greatest living hero, Muhammad Ali. He spoke on the charity show:

?gI?fm a Muslim. I?fve been a Muslim for 30 years. I want the world to know the truth about Islam. I wouldn?ft be here to represent Islam if it were the way the terrorists made it look?cIslam is for peace.?h

Speaking in a voice trembling with emotion, coming from a body trembling from the effects of Parkinson?fs disease, what he said was quietly powerful and eloquent. He showed us not only the hurt that the attack itself had inflicted, but the terrible, awful doubt, fear, and hatred the attack may have unleashed- about Islam. These events have caused such division. ?gAnd?h, he ended, ?gif there was something I could do about it, I would.?h







I wrote the above between the 19th and the 25th of September. It?fs now nearly a month since the attacks. From what I?fve read and seen, as I well expected, I?fm truly ignorant of the whys and wherefores behind these terrible events, and a naïve political commentator at best. Especially about bin Laden. I now see how the motive may be more to do with the stationing of American troops in the country (since the Gulf War) which houses Islam?fs holiest sites, Mecca and Medina. That?fs just one thing. There are so many other aspects to this, which I had no idea about, but, then, I?fm probably not the only one. What I wrote was a kind of therapy for me, just to express what was going through my head in the immediate aftermath. Because, while I live far away, while I?fm not even American, I still felt in a state of overwhelming shock. (Why do I talk in the past tense?) I was assaulted by images, and words which were not my own, and had to make my own voice heard, at least to myself. This terrible tragedy shocked me greatly. And those around me, my family here, and my family in Ireland, friends, my Japanese students, too, one of whom was in tears the next day. The loss of life. The destruction of a beautiful city. And the beginning of a fear about ordinary life, and the future. After this, it seems anything is OK. That scares me. What disgusting event lies before us? What?fs next? I?fm asked if I agree with war. It seems too simple a question, as if there were an alternative, which might serve as a way of making the world a safer place. I certainly hope the perpetrators of this act are caught, at the very least. I hope also that if military action is carried out that it will not involve the deaths of innocent people. The situation is, after September 11th, that whether or not the States hits back, America, at least, has become vulnerable, and another terrorist attack, even more depressing for its inhumanity, is something we all have to expect, and hope and pray is prevented. I was talking to another fellow teacher, a Canadian, the other day, about how I was feeling. I introduced it by saying that when the seasons change I always feel somewhat off-kilter, and on the verge of a cold. Then I suggested that maybe this time it wasn?ft just the change of the season, that, I asked, ?hIs it just me, or do you feel kind of weird about all this, like something has changed, in a bad way??h She replied very easily to the question. ?gNo, it?fs not just you. Something has changed.?h Something has changed. The world just became a scarier place. Yesterday, at our kids?f Sports Day, they flew the flag at half-mast. Here in Japan, people know it, too. What happened in America happened to the world.







Martin Connolly, 7th October, 2001

Isehara, Japan



The following homepage contains the above essay, plus two others on events afterwards.
http://www.nextftp.com/binboop/