A day has come again that I’ve marked before (here and here in this webspace), and I confess that it’s somewhat snuck up on me. Twenty-three years on–and, for me, three degrees, a marriage, fatherhood, and a number of jobs and relocations–I recognize, when I think about it, the lasting harm that has been done and that continues to be done because what happened while I was sitting for a percussion techniques class in support of a dream long since set aside and in the minutes afterward happened. But I do not think on it often, which is almost certainly less than it deserves, and I had not been thinking about it until I looked at my calendar and saw a gray notation with a simple description.

Still not going to put up a picture for this.

I’m not sure whether or not I should offer an apology for it.

I acknowledge that I am in a position of privilege regarding the events of 11 September 2001 and the continuing effects therefrom. I didn’t lose anyone I know in the attacks or in the illnesses that have befallen those who first responded to them. I didn’t lose anyone I know in the decades of armed conflict that followed (and that continue, if with perhaps less intensity and certainly less media attention, even as I write this). I’ve known people who have been affected, certainly, and by more than simply living in the pervasive surveillance environment that emerged with perceived justification in the wake of the attacks and the jingoism inhaled with seemingly every breath, even if less and less of it is exhaled anymore, but the direct effects on me and on most of mine have been…minimal, I think. So much is not true for all, as I well understand, and I am not making mock of the losses that have been suffered; I am, however, explicitly disclaiming suffering such losses, myself, and noting my gratitude that I have thus far been exempted from them.

I have, at times, thought that my responsibility is therefore to mark the event, to take time on its anniversary to pause and reflect and remember what was lost. Something was taken from me on that day, even though I lost neither goods nor people; something was taken from us all, and it is difficult even for those who can, unfortunately, enumerate their losses to actually put into words what that something is. Futures have been foreclosed that might have been faced to better effect than the future of then in which we live now, but that’s true of all events. And while it is tempting to think that things were better before, it is a challenge to find a useful measure by which to make such an assessment (although it may well be that my reaching for such a thing is, itself, a result of the event; it is certainly a result of things enfolding that event and which yet linger in other places than my mind, but that discussion is definitely for another day). Might-have-beens are fictions, and while I believe in the value of fiction, I know I am not as adept in its creation as such things deserve to have their makers be.

I remain…uncertain how to regard this day. Even amid it, even if I take the time to pause and hear again the intonations of the thousands of names whose owners were lost that day, there is work I have to do–because for me, for many others, though not for all, life continues as it has continued. I can only hope that what I do helps to make it better.

I’m not putting up the ad today, either, though it might well be the most US thing I could do. It just doesn’t feel right at the moment.