Flotsam

Five years ago I had just moved back to Minnesota from New York. I was taking what was intended as a semester-long sabbatical from Sarah Mawr. It would turn out to be a five-year academic hiatus, during which I would start a magazine, be hospitalized for mental illness, quit smoking, have an ill-advised fling, publish an essay, attend a hobo convention, make and lose friends, miscarry two pregnancies, freelance as an event planner, write instructional copy about pacemakers, adopt five cats and witness the deaths of two, survive a bout of unrequited love, live in five apartments, and meet the man I intend to marry.

Most details of my life have changed in the past five years. But not everything.

In a bizarre, see-how-we’ve-come-full-circle coincidence, five years ago I had an internship at the publishing company where I now work full time. I spent about fifteen minutes of each day writing marketing copy and the rest of my eight hours on the phone to my friends at Sarah Mawr. I had not a single friend in Minnesota, despite having grown up ten miles from my new St. Paul apartment. In an attempt to meet people and keep myself writing I enrolled in a nonfiction workshop held at the University. The first class was scheduled for Tuesday, September 11th.

But of course, I spent most of that Tuesday trying vainly to reach my friends in New York through glutted cell phone signals, crying, and feeling impotent. I imagine my ensuing week was the near equivalent of most outside the immediately affected zones: There was a lot of CNN. There was a sudden tendency to tear up at the National Anthem, and an increased tolerance for flag-bearing garments worn by others. There was much speculation about what I could do to help—give blood? Learn Arabic and join the CIA?

Watching the familiar scene of plane into building night after night, I kept thinking there must be some use for my meager talents. There must be something writers could do. Eventually, I hit upon an idea:
“Writers could go places,” I said aloud to my brother as the idea took shape, “New York, or Afghanistan, or wherever. We could go there and write about it, so that other people know what’s going on.” I was glowing in the reflected light of my own brilliance.
“You could…report,” my brother said.
“Yes!” I exclaimed, “Exactly.”
“Congratulations,” he said, “You just invented journalism.”

The two things I felt most clearly after the September 11th attacks were the aforementioned sense of impotence, and a fury at what I saw as a cheapening of the tragedy by the news media. I am not sure that this was entirely justified—after all, they had to cover the story. But I wanted silence. I wanted people to stop blunting the horror of the day with their painfully inadequate words.

My nonfiction workshop would meet the following week. My professor sent an email requesting that we write something for the class. We could address the events of the 11th, but were not required to do so.
When the time came to read our pieces aloud, one by one my classmates read essays about what they had been doing when the first tower fell, about our changed world, about explaining terrorism to their children. I found I was the only member of the workshop who had chosen not to write about the attacks. I felt embarrassed, certain my classmates were wondering whether I burned flags in my spare time.

I would like to think that my reasons for avoiding the subject were noble, but they were not. I didn’t write about 9/11 because I knew I couldn’t make it funny, and because I had nothing new to say. I wrote about something else because I have a difficult time writing about difficult things. Because I find emotions a tad embarrassing, and have a pathological fear of being cheesy. Because I am uncomfortable with the vulnerability that comes with saying something plainly, with my tongue nowhere near my cheek.

And this is the thing that hasn’t changed much in five years. I very nearly posted nothing at all today, because it felt disrespectful to write about my weekend of sex and crabcakes on a day when, five years ago, people’s fathers, mothers, and children died. More accurately, I very nearly posted nothing at all because there was no way I was going to open myself up to the minefield of cliché that a serious post about September 11th might be.
I wish I were the kind of writer who could convey unflinchingly her sorrow and fear about our national tragedy. But all I can do is reiterate what others have said—how sad it was and is. How terribly sad.