Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Ground Zero for me lies far, far away, in both geography and thought, and it wasn’t until someone raised the topic during lunch that I remembered the significance of today. I felt like a bad citizen and an even worse New Yorker for forgetting, especially in the wake of poignant photographs of people locked in tribute, with heads bowed for loved ones lost.

When the towers fell, I was eking out the last few days of summer break, probably playing video games. I remember the news cycle churning ferociously, the same footage on loop, and the specter of returning back to Chicago on a plane. I remember, too, the early, fumbling attempts at heightened airport security. Then, days later, “anthrax” became the buzzword, and the postal system–once so staid, so boring–took a sinister turn. All around, there was a frank reappraisal of institutions.

But all this is a distant memory. In some ways, I feel like a dog, stuck in time with minimal recollection of the past. Instead, it’s about the crisis at hand, which in this case means the economy. Heck, that’s been the case for the last few years. Most recently, though, I’ve been wrestling with this feeling of being trapped, and from almost every angle, the answer seems to point to either skill acquisition or sociability. And if that’s where my compass is pointing, then that’s where I must go.