{"id":37,"date":"2014-09-11T13:27:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-11T17:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/?p=37"},"modified":"2015-01-28T13:11:38","modified_gmt":"2015-01-28T18:11:38","slug":"did-you-go-crazy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/bestwork\/did-you-go-crazy\/","title":{"rendered":"Did you go crazy, or did you report?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been meaning to transfer some of my better stories from <a href=\"http:\/\/hipdeep.blogspot.com\">my first, late, and unlamented blog<\/a>. My Facebook feed is spilling over with people&#8217;s remembrances of September Eleventh today, and I thought I might share mine.<\/p>\n<p>This was originally written for a contest at <a href=\"http:\/\/powells.com\">Powell&#8217;s<\/a> bookstore, in 2006 I think.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0GusYwbnEMg?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Lynn walked into our morning meeting in tears, and announced that a plane from Boston had flown into the World Trade Center. My stomach flipped as I thought of my friends who were moving out of Massachusetts that week. I didn\u2019t know their plans. I didn\u2019t know where they were. All I could do was run to my office in panic and try to find out. Today, even recalling the memory makes me ill.<\/p>\n<p>(It wasn\u2019t a rational fear; Michael and Ann share a fear of flying which borders on the pathological, and they were in Western Massachusetts anyway. In a psychic bond, their first thoughts were for my father, who at least does get on airplanes regularly without chemical sedation.)<\/p>\n<p>Everyone has a September Eleventh story, and I suppose mine is similar to most. For most of us, our fear of loss was actually greater than our loss. That is, after all, why they call it a \u201cterror attack.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Our stories don\u2019t often extend to the next few days, as America walked in our haze of grief and fear and senselessness. The media virtually suspended itself. My 160 cable channels seemed all to be set to CNN. After about two days, I\u2019d had all the news I could stand, and I had to turn away from the box.<\/p>\n<p>I couldn\u2019t begin to think about reading nonfiction, and fiction seemed to be either too heavy or too light to handle. But poetry\u2026 maybe poetry would have something to say.<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s how I came to read T.S. Eliot\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.columbia.edu\/itc\/history\/winter\/w3206\/edit\/tseliotlittlegidding.html\">Little Gidding<\/a> in September 2001. I opened that big Norton Anthology of English Literature which every once and future English major owns, and turned its onionskin paper, and looked for solace.<\/p>\n<p>Eliot wrote Little Gidding in 1942, while he watched the Nazis bombing the cities and civilians of Britain. It grabbed me like a branch grabs a drowning swimmer. This expatriate Missourian knew what I felt, had seen what I\u2019d seen and more, and needed to tell me something. And I desperately needed to hear it. Teachers talking about \u201ctimeless literature\u201d came into shining focus like never before.<\/p>\n<p>I needed two tries to read the second section, depicting the aftermath of a bombing raid, \u201cash on an old man\u2019s sleeve\u201d and a ghost in the twilight. Eliot\u2019s burnt roses could have fallen from Windows on the World. And yet, if I could not be distracted, at least I knew we were not alone.<\/p>\n<p>Eliot did have solace for me. Little Gidding says that life somehow must triumph. I thought of Eliot, reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.orderofjulian.org\/julian_of_norwich.html\">Julian of Norwich<\/a>, and passing that thousand-year-old crutch to me:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Sin is Behovely, but <\/em><br \/>\n<em>All shall be well, and<\/em><br \/>\n<em>All manner of thing shall be well.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>No one in America had said \u201call shall be well\u201d in days. But if Julian could believe it, and Eliot could believe it, perhaps I could as well.<\/p>\n<p>And in September of 2001, that voice coming through the page was enough. It was more real, and more comforting, than any voice coming from the box, even than any of the voices around me. Personal sadness has brought me back to Little Gidding many times in the following years, and every time, I feel that branch brush me in the rushing waters, and I grab hold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been meaning to transfer some of my better stories from my first, late, and unlamented blog. My Facebook feed is spilling over with people&#8217;s remembrances of September Eleventh today, and I thought I might share mine. This was originally written for a contest at Powell&#8217;s bookstore, in 2006 I think. &nbsp; Lynn walked into &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/bestwork\/did-you-go-crazy\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Did you go crazy, or did you report?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,15,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bestwork","category-biographical","category-text"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p53vXx-B","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62,"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}