The entry I accidentally left blank 9/12/2011

Well.

Despite my great care, I somehow dropped the ball. And so one of the little test entries I create to try out fonts or formatting has survived and fallen behind the wavefront of new entries. It’s a little stub, a runt, whose legs were too short and it couldn’t keep up and so now I’ve got this little cranny in the middle of my diary.

I could delete it but then that bothers me, because then there’d be a gap in the numbers, never mind the gap in the numbers that happened because some one crashed the site without a backup and all I got was this stupid gap in the entry numbers that I’d so proudly managed and manipulated all this time.

But then, I think, how perfect. How perfect. Here is a space where a thought would have gone, and here, likewise, is a thought that has no space at the bleeding edge, where people will see.

Yesterday was the public chest-beating of the international media as we all looked back at the day the world changed profoundly. And part of me is horrified at the indulgence and the frustrating preying on my emotions, and part of me just… feels sad. So many people, so profoundly hurt. It’s a snowball effect of pain and suffering, and I’m finding that while people are good, something happens as the will of the people gets represented, and the people leading us seem so unequipped for what we have faced and will face.

I want to be great, and if I can’t achieve that as a person, then I’d love to see us achieve that as a people. The aftermath of the attack left us frightened and naked. And honestly what was revealed was magnificent. The people who ran into the burning buildings, the people who fought to regain control of the planes, and all of us, ordinary people, who have managed to cope, barely or well, with the aftermath. We were great.

We are great. I shouldn’t ignore that just to make my point. But now we’re loud and we’re opinionated. And maybe it’s fear that does this, but we’re not really talking to each other anymore. Now it’s a war for the hearts and minds of our own people.

And I’m not a child. I’m not a frightened baby, huddling at something I don’t understand. I’m a frightened man, faced with the real world. I wish people weren’t talking down to me. I wish people were talking to each other.

I wish we could stop talking positions and talk to each other again. Because I have great debates with the people around me and they don’t sound like the noise I get from tv.

And they don’t sound like the noise I get in my head when i think about the day. That’s what it feels like for me. A sound. Like that ringing noise you get when they’re trying to show you that the person in the movies is deafened by an explosion. Ringing. I can hear, I can see, I can function, but the tension is a tone. And thinking back to the day, I remember the tone, and I remember how fear made me feel angry, so that I spend the entire day just trying to unclench, and be professional.

I don’t like the current Canadian government, but I will give them credit for this: They’ve made the 11th of September a day of service. In honour of the tragedy, and to try to hold to the kind of human kindness that we saw that day as we wondered if the world was ending, silly selfish buggers that we were. That we are.

Of such things will our greatness be made, in the touch of our hands and the kindness in our hearts.

I know. It’s fluffy, and I make no warranty so far as me being coherent. But that’s why it’s good to have this here and not there.

in which our Hero digs a hole and fills it up