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I M P R E S S I O N S
Traveling to Higher Ground
After I watched it happen on TV, after I called everyone I knew in New York, after I made sure my parents knew I was fine, I hopped on my bike, and, along with my roommate, rode west down King Street. As future historians will observe, it was, ironically, a pristine day on the East Coast and I was pedaling my ass off, pouring every ounce of confused, nervous energy I had into reaching the western limits of Old Town Alexandria. Halfway down the street, my friend Liz calls from L.A., in tears, to make sure I’m alive and just like that she hangs up, because no one’s been able to get hold of Chris in New York yet and she better keep trying. We wheel past cars at red lights, their drivers listening to AM news radio accounts of the morning’s carnage. We pass groups of people who, on any other day, would be wondering where to have lunch. But today they are standing there, stunned, and unsure how to view the world. We push on as fast as we can to the highest point because all we want to do now is look with our own eyes. The hill makes us pay because the road is deceptively steep and twisty, and shaky legs and searing lungs yell at us and we yell back because, goddamnit, we have to get to higher ground to see what the hell happened. And then we are there, on the steps of the Masonic Temple, staring just a few miles north at a thick black cloud. Sweaty, dizzy, sucking wind and looking at … what? Nothing. Just a thick plume of smoke. A plume of charred dust that hasn’t burned long enough to reveal its meaning. That didn’t yet have casualty numbers or passenger manifests attached to it, or loose theories strung together to explain its existence.
At that moment, an F-16 on combat air patrol shoots across the sky, and I remember this one picture from Pearl Harbor, of sailors watching the attack from a distance, helpless. And I find myself thinking that those of us on top of this hill are in some way reliving that photo six decades later.
:: :: :: It’s as if some of our reaction to what we’ve seen in the past weeks is encoded in our social and cultural DNA. It’s reflexive, drawn from memories of awful moments from when we were younger. Informed by stories recounted by parents and grandparents who once told us where they were and what they did when they lived through an awful moment of history. That Tuesday morning, when the unthinkable happened, we had some sense of what to do, because others had done it before us. We gathered around TV’s and radios, huddling together with neighbors we didn’t know. We pinned up yellow ribbons and hung our American flags. Political parties put aside differences and spoke with one voice. The president reassured the nation. The New York City mayor reassured it even more. And whether we voted for them or not, we were ready to be led and grateful they were there. News stations broadcast live and did their level best to keep things together, and we watched, fixated with both the spectacle and the horror. Some people became heroes and participated in the little miracles of human strength that usually mark such moments. To some degree, each of us reprised certain roles and occupied stations held at different times by previous generations. Pearl Harbor has, understandably, been invoked repeatedly during the past week, though its effectiveness as a military and historical analogy is not absolute. But as a social and cultural point of reference, Dec. 7 can be a valuable compass, pointing out not what we should anticipate from the future, but what we need to expect from ourselves in the coming months, perhaps even years. As it was then, we are faced with monumental choices. Choices about what we consider too important to relinquish and what we’re willing to give up. Choices about what is considered “acceptable” on the battlefield. Choices about how we interpret our Constitution in a time of crisis. Choices about what defines an enemy and what constitutes an ally. Like before, the decisions we make in confronting these choices will determine the extent of this conflict and what the world will look like when it’s over. In our own time, Pearl Harbor is best known through a bad movie, a clich” with a foregone conclusion. Our victory in World War II has been mythologized to the point where it becomes difficult to conceive of any outcome other than victory, much less to imagine ourselves as not so big, so strong or so invincible.
We’ve spent the better part of 10 years as a fragmented, unfocused society, enjoying all the fruits and freedoms of a prosperous, untroubled age. Our affluence created an environment in which we were rarely forced to reflect on what is at the core of our character and identity as a people. Those carefree days of innocence are fully and completely over. :: :: :: I hadn’t been in the District since before the Pentagon was hit, so I’m ambivalent about driving its streets once again on Wednesday night. Military police and Humvees are everywhere and it looks and feels like we are at war. We are on our way to a candlelight vigil, organized the day after the plane struck the Pentagon. The shock hasn’t worn off yet, but Washington already feels mobilized, like it is leaning into the next step, whatever that may be. Walking toward the Reflecting Pool at the foot of the Capitol, I notice Tommy Thompson, secretary of Health and Human Services, standing on the corner, along with some of his staff. Just one more citizen here to show his support. I take a position on the north end of the Pool and realize that I am standing in almost the same place I stood during the inauguration in January, both a short and distant nine months ago. How divided and acrimonious a day it had been, with snipers on the roof, protesters in the street and sleet in the sky. Tonight is cool and dry and perfect, and the gaping fissures of that inaugural morning are nowhere to be found. This vigil was planned with a few e-mails, but there are hundreds of people gathered. Occasionally, someone starts singing the National Anthem or "God Bless America." Voices spring up from various points around the Pool, and everyone joins in. Everywhere you look, there are flags waving and tears flowing. A feeling of unity, stronger than I’ve ever experienced, perhaps stronger than I’d once thought we could muster, surrounds me. As the vigil winds down, many of us decide to climb the steps of the Capitol building — because it is still there and we still could. From the elevated position, I look west across a landscape of barricaded streets and illuminated monuments, and I think about the time my grandfather spent stationed here between 1943 and 1945, when this city was as focused as it is tonight. I think I understand, for the first time in my life, what this city must have looked like to him the last time things were as uncertain as they are at this moment. Enter the Pop Forum Scott Cullen is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer. Related Sites |
