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 ONE
DAY IN AMERICA
11 September 2001
ITS BEEN INTRIGUING, America makes
so much of tragedy to its own. Living in San Francisco, which was
razed to the ground almost a century ago, you carry an almost pregnant
expectation of something terrible happening. Planning my return
to Aotearoa at the end of this year, I was half wondering, half
expectant of something awful happening. Yesterday, most palpably,
and most tragically, it did.
I
awoke to the shouts of my roommate Wesley saying they had blown
up the World Trade Center and that a plane had crashed into the
Pentagon. I got up, dazed and confused, and ran to watch the television
to see the twin towers, these great Temples of Capitalism, crumbling
to the ground. Wesley, who had lived much of his life in New York,
was in tears next to me. The sense of so much of what this meant
for the world's future washed over us.
Outside,
it was a perfect day, much as it was in New York City. A strangely
perfect day. After dosing myself with three cigarettes, and hugging
Wesley farewell, I set off on my bike for work. The homeless people
across the street were talking of the disaster. Further down the
street, people were hugging on the sidewalk. You could feel the
strangeness of the events unfolding.
You
can see the Bank of America tower, the city's largest building and
no doubt a potential target, clearly from the front door of where
I work, in the drug and crime ridden Mission District. It was still
standing. The sky was a wash of brilliant blue. The sky was empty;
every plane in the nation, down on the ground. The gray airplane
contrails, the everpresent cobwebs in the sky, missing.
The
mood in the office was somber. Emails from our head office in New
Jersey, the suburbs of the great Center, first noting the occurrence
of the event; then a sense from people there of the magnitude of
the situation. Phones, email, internet, temporarily crippled. Go
home, if you need too.
The
small group of us in the office, a dozen of us, shellshocked, rallied
around the television most of the day, the reality of it all slowly
sinking in. Such a thing to wake up to.
I
cycled home for lunch, sat in the garden in silence. The day dragged
on. Another building collapsing. The nagging notion that all four
planes were headed here, to California.
In
the afternoon, came a shocked email from one of the marketing directors
that all flights will be down until midday Wednesday. An outrage!
Such a bizarre sense of entitlement we Americans possess. We need
to realize, we can no longer take anything for granted.
In
the evening, my friend Oliver came over, and we got drunk in the
back garden, washing away the mess of the day, a strangely warm
and fogless evening. Pored across the special edition of the San
Francisco Chronicle, a sad history in the making.
After
phoning a friend and my family back home, I collapsed, asleep in
the early evening, as the light of the brilliant day faded away.
Strange dreaming of the school I grew up, Nuhaka School, where my
son Jordan attends to his education this very day. What world have
I brought him into, what future do we hold?
At
2 a.m. I awoke to the sound of planes overhead. Eerily close. Fighter
jets. We are at war. The future, clearly, is uncertain.
A
year and a half ago, I was at a rave, with my friend Kathy. January
of 2000. It was a new decade, a new century, a new millenium. So
much of the horror of the 20th Century we seemed to be putting behind
us. The crowd was convivial and friendly and overwhelmingly positive.
A bit of a burning man groupie crowd, held at Cell Space near where
I now work. The average age of attendees was early 30s; Kathy's
friends described it as the "geriatric rave". Cute.
I
was overwhelmed with happiness by the mood of the crowd, and deeply
positive toward what the future holds.
Despite
all the events of yesterday, my positivity remains.
I
look forward greatly to my return to Aotearoa, uncertain of how
it will all turn out; but now nowhere near as uncertain about what
the world's future holds.
America's
age of entitlement is over. We've suffered through nine months of
the Bush administration's fumblings and ignorance of the concerns
of the global community, and its come to this. A list:
- Americans take cheap and frequent air travel
for granted. Jet fuel prices are ridiculously low, with no account
for environmental impact, with passenger levels projected to double
in the next twenty years. An impossible situation. In Europe,
air travel is less common, and the rail network is dense and well
utilized. The time for high speed rail in the U.S. is now. Fact:
trains can be hijacked, but they cannot be steered in the sky
toward national landmarks.
- Security workers at U.S. airports are paid
minimum wage to do a job that gravely concerns national security.
An outrage, but nonetheless unsurprising given the lack of service
worker unionization in this nation. This is clearly a big labor
issue for the U.S., and one that all the opponents of the WTO/IMF/World
Bank need to get behind now.
- Say goodbye to big buildings and hello to more
and more sprawl and more and more office headquarters in bunkered
office parks in the suburbs. The inner cities staged a comeback
under Clinton; with the Bush administration, and the unfolding
of these events, look forward to sprawl, sprawl, and more sprawl.
Gated communities. Fortressed high schools. And personal, concealed,
weapons sanctioned by newly enacted state laws.
ONE DAY IN AMERICA
San Francisco, California (10.11.2001)
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