9-11 three years on. Time passes as fast as water through an empty sieve, it seems. I remember vivdly those moments when everything was a blur, chaotic, unpredictable, unknown. The candid words uttered at the lunch hall while I was still unsure about the magnitude of the things occuring just miles from school: "History is in the making". The shiver that ran up my arms as I heard the all too shocked voice of a reported on CBS radio. The utter disbelief as I turned on the television after being delayed on the subway. The moments spent staring at the horrific images printed on the NY Times. And yet, I realise that this can't go on, I can't go on recounting the details as though it happened yesterday. I guess I'm more of past-oriented person, one who relives the memories and brings it up at odd moments. And I'm going to have to move on. Even as it is, people still say that its ~years since 9/11 as though that fateful day were a shielded curtain between past and present, life and death, safety and insecurity. It probably was for a lot of people. But the past can only be kept there for the future to learn. We can't dwell on it.

That doesn't mean we can't put 9/11 into perspective. Each and every year there's going to be memorials, events to commemorate those who perished, books published about the odd Samaritan or the miracle tale. Can't anyone realise that 9/11 is just one indication of life's tragedies? How about the millions who die at the hands of famine, drought, war, disease and internal conflict? How many 9/11 memorials would suffice for them? Where did all the good-will donating money and blood go after the weeks that passed that New York morning? If only those words spoken by an English woman in front of Buckingham Palace could be applied to everyone: "We were all Americans on that day." It just comes to show that people unite when sympathy and pity demands it; otherwise, they're whatever they want to be: divided.

Written on Saturday, September 11 at 7:38 PM