A Summary of My Thoughts on the 10-Year Anniversary of 9/11

I continue to work on my short-subject documentary on 9/11 and take time to personally reflect on the effect the day had on me, my family and friends. I take some time off before returning back to Colorado to do so. Please read this if you get a chance, it would mean alot to me.

I'll never forget 9/11 & the days after. How dust filled the streets, how missing posters covered every wall. How people cheered in the streets for firefighters & police officers. How despite all the unity, muslims were vilified. How the government exploited our city's sorrow to stir fear & win votes. But most of all, I will never forget what was lost. Not just the lives, but the structures. I loved being around the Twin Towers & looking at them from the Staten Island ferry. While not all my memories are of togetherness, some of racist hate and some of ignorance, I believe we should all try to remember the simple 'human loss side of things' (I can't think of a better way to put it) - those who just went to work that day and did not come back & those who went to work sacrificing their health and too often their lives to save others. May they never be forgotten, no matter how many years separate us from the tragedy.

In New York it is everywhere right now, a constant reminder from every newspaper, magazine, tv station and street eavesdropping that the mighty 10 year anniversary has arrived. Everyone has their personal connection, puny or huge, usually very fluctuating. For me, I think it is important to reconigize that no matter how you feel about the country now and how you feel about the political aftermath, 9/11 was an event of mass proportions, the deadliest day in U.S history. I feel like the human side is lost in the shuffle of our generation's frustrations with our bureaucratic two-party mess, the political theater that was made of 9/11 in such a cheesy fashion and our contentious & deadly conflicts in the Mid East. Today, I'm going to try my best to only think of 9/11 as a loss of human life on a large scale, and for that alone, leaving behind the ugly & cold partisanship to let ourselves think, we can unite in memorium.

Today and tonight or whenever it feels right , I ask that we each pay tribute, even if we can only do so internally, to the near 3,000 civilians who perished, the tens of thousands of family and friends who were left with trauma & emptiness, those who suffered from often suicide-enducing PTSD and those who were made sick by the toxic air. To these people, from all the nationalities, countries, genders and economic backgrounds they hailed. Let us never forget them.