Nine-Eleven...

This is not a political posting.

The ten-year anniversary of Nine-Eleven is in two days. Since I'm working all weekend, I probably won't have time to write, yet I felt compelled to write...something.

Now is as good a time as any.

Random thoughts:

My ex-wife and I were renting a room at my boss' house, and he woek me up on the morning of 11 September 2001, right after the first place crashed into the Tower. I thought it was an accident--a thought which lasted only moments. The instant we saw the second plane hit, I knew it was deliberate, that someone somewhere had arranged for this to happen.

We spent the rest of the day, basically in our pajamas, watching the news on his big-screen TV.

Shortly after Nine-Eleven, on www.wetcanvas.com, someone posted (in the Debates forum) that she "no longer felt safe". I replied that "you have never been safe". I stll agree with my (admittedly rather cynical) comment; I still believe that we have to overlook/forget/blank out a great many facts in order to "feel" safe.

And, it is only a feeling. One probably "feels" safe right until something happens that lets one know--in no uncertain terms--that one was not nearly as safe as one felt--and the new feeling of "not being safe" probably lasts (I guess, if one is lucky!) a great deal longer than the danger itself...

I've thought many times about creating a work of art based around Nine-Eleven. The closest I came to actually creating something, was a painting I started (but abandoned) my seniour year at KCAI (2007). It was a painting of Condoleeza Rice holding the head of Osama bin Laden (based on Carvaggio's David with the Head of Goliath.) I titled it, If Only. I'm glad that bin Laden is dead, and angry that it took so long to find him. Unlike some folks, I don't view bin Laden's death as an assasination, nor as punishment or retaliation--certainly not as murder--but simply as security; IMO the US simply could not risk letting him live to plan any more attacks. He'd lived and recruited and planned for far too long as it was already (again, IMO.)

I think in many ways, Nine-Eleven was simply too (big? Complicated? Real?) for anyone (who survived it) to truly understand it.

I certainly don't have any plans to make any art in the future that deals with it, certainly not directly.

I'll be at work Sunday, wearing my father's "Remember 9-11" pin. I'll probably listen to Mozart's Requiem at some point over the next three days--

--and keep working on the new paintings.

Have a good weekend.