Remembering*

Some were victims

Some were heroes

They are gone

But not forgotten.


No...
Not forgotten.

"Only the dead have seen an end to war." - Plato

Edit - I wrote the following as a response to someone else's memorial post, and I decided I wanted to place it here, too:

The place where they once stood reminds me of the child who, struck in the face by the schoolyard bully, has lost his two front teeth. It's an obscene and violent emptiness that demands filling, demands something to remedy that wrongness, that absence of once-present substance.

Whenever I see the skyline, I feel that empty place keenly, and I don't even live there.

I keep hoping that from the ashes, the phoenix will rise; all these years later, it isn't triumph I see, but division, sorrow, anger, and confusion swirling in a quagmire of indecision, derision, and the constant tug-of-war of "remember" versus "forget".

Shade and Sweetwater,
K (who wept when they fell, and prayed as hard as ever she did that the people had gotten out - because anything else was too horrible to contemplate)

* I wrote this post last year...and it still holds true today. I'd like to add - whatever I may think of military actions, of wars and violence...I am grateful to all of the armed forces who fight for freedom's cause, who do a dirty job under equipped, under supported, under appreciated, and under constant fire from all sides. Come home safe and soon.

*Edit - go here to see thousands of beautiful, poignant, heartbreaking, and uplifting photographs of the WTC event, taken by people who were in the thick of it.