Look, I'm an American writer. I grew up back East taking school trips to NYC after fundraising all year long by selling candy bars, magazine subscriptions, and candles. The choir I was in sang at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Some of my best friends have lived in NYC at one time or another. During my more recent visits there, I found that living on the West coast had infected me a bit-- I move slower than most of NYC now, and my sense of time is more like island time than city time. But NYC is still a powerful symbol in the mythology of my life. When my friends make good there, I celebrate. When I see St. Patrick's I remember walking the aisles there.
So in the wake of September 11th, something was violently and suddenly take from me in a symbolic way and a real way. That sudden violence was committed against the families who lost love ones. Against the world of peaceful people who could never imagine doing or seeing or even remotely dreaming up such a horrid act. And the sudden violence, the death, the grief, the shock, all of it brought back waves of my own grief over losing my son two and a half years ago. I was sick with the knowing of all that those bereaved families now face. I was angry with the people who decided it was okay to take innocent people down with them. And all my cynic-tendencies kicked in, so that I began saying things like, "What did we expect when the US has treated the rest of the world like second classers?" and "Great, an eye for an eye and history continues to repeat itself!" and "Nothing matters anymore."
And then I woke out of the shock.
The looming questions after I woke up were: What now? What do I do now to heal this pain and loss? How do I reconnect with something authentic and peaceful again? How can I find my center, sturdy ground again? Of course for me, the answers always lie in poetry and writing.
Quickly, it became apparent to me that those answers came for lots of people in the form of poetry and writing. We began seeing vigils all over the world where people left flowers, candles, AND poetry, notes, letters. People were
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