Five years

I’ve tried to write a post on 9/11 for the past two days and I couldn’t. Today, I kept CNN’s replay of the September 11, 2001 broadcast on the entire day. I thought that the emotional grip of these images would be lighter after five years. I was wrong.

On September 11, 2001 it was impossible to understand the impact of what was going on. Fragments of information were hitting us from all over and formed a fuzzy picture. I was at work, and after the CNN website got jammed, I got small pieces of news throughout the day. At night, the continue replay of the planes hitting the twin towers felt as a scene from an apocalyptic movie, not as a very real event that had just happened 106 miles from where I lived.

The day after, even in the awareness of the horrible tragedy, the entire world seemed to close around us and hug us tight.

Today, the facts are even too clear. We know how many people died, we can name some of them, we know some of their stories, we have seen their pictures. We know what happened after that day. No worldwide hugs are left. There is no mystery, no suspense. September 11 now appears as it is: just a terrible tragedy that is still unfolding in front of us and whose human sense escapes us.

Technorati Tags: September 11