September, 11
Sep. 12th, 2004 01:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
franceslievensThere's a nice "Where were you when the planes hit?"-thread over at the BC&S and the ASSB. The answers are so divers as the persons replying to them are different. The horror and disbelief is seen in all of them, unites people living so far apart.
On the other hand life goes on, expressed so accurately in a reply by katherine to Eszter's post about the influence of 9/11 on her dissertation, over on Crooked Timber. In the three years since the attack so much has changed. Katherine writes: "The hollow in the skyline is harder to find every time you drive over the bridge." I wouldn't know, I've never been to New York.
Far away in Brussels you start ignoring it all, days, weeks after it has happened. You're able to drive in front of the NATO and the US embassy again. Stern looking police men ignore you when you pass them on your bicycle. And then it hits you again, somewhere in the middle of everything. When looking at pictures P. made in New York he points you towards one he'll never be able to make again: "That was a door in the basement of the WTC." Or you hear the story of someone who wasn't allowed to bring his pocket knife on the plane, simply because he forgot he wasn't allowed to put it in his hand baggage. Every European top you grumble because the underground doesn't stop at Schuman and then you wonder if someone would ever have the guts to try and attack that top.
I still take the train, knowing that a couple of terrorists wouldn't need much to make a crater in the middle of my own city, where the trains run underground from Nord to Midi and back. But it doesn't bother me, it doesn't limit me. We live on. Every time they hit us we get up again and live on. That's the most important thing.
On the other hand life goes on, expressed so accurately in a reply by katherine to Eszter's post about the influence of 9/11 on her dissertation, over on Crooked Timber. In the three years since the attack so much has changed. Katherine writes: "The hollow in the skyline is harder to find every time you drive over the bridge." I wouldn't know, I've never been to New York.
Far away in Brussels you start ignoring it all, days, weeks after it has happened. You're able to drive in front of the NATO and the US embassy again. Stern looking police men ignore you when you pass them on your bicycle. And then it hits you again, somewhere in the middle of everything. When looking at pictures P. made in New York he points you towards one he'll never be able to make again: "That was a door in the basement of the WTC." Or you hear the story of someone who wasn't allowed to bring his pocket knife on the plane, simply because he forgot he wasn't allowed to put it in his hand baggage. Every European top you grumble because the underground doesn't stop at Schuman and then you wonder if someone would ever have the guts to try and attack that top.
I still take the train, knowing that a couple of terrorists wouldn't need much to make a crater in the middle of my own city, where the trains run underground from Nord to Midi and back. But it doesn't bother me, it doesn't limit me. We live on. Every time they hit us we get up again and live on. That's the most important thing.
