Twenty-five years have passed since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a quarter-century in which things have been different here than they were before, more like they are there, and with many saying that it is a good thing that they are as they are now rather than as they were then. I do not know that I agree; I remember many of the calls for measures that, had they been in place, might or might not have hindered or halted the attacks, I remember many of the arguments against them, and they seem to me to be echoed quite closely in a lot of commentary that has slightly shifted topic but has never really stopped. I have to wonder if they oughtn’t’ve worked by this point, but I also have to wonder what I do not know, which I know exceeds what I do.

Once again, no picture

I have written about the anniversary before: here, here, and here. I still recognize that I regard it from a place of privilege, frightened as I was on the day it happened, and I still think it the duty of those who are thus privileged to mark the occasion, to reflect and remember what happened to others and maintain some sense of mourning for them. I still maintain that there is some sense in the event carrying less emphasis now than before, with so many other wrongs occurring in the world and crowding it out of daily consideration. Having, as noted before, spent my entire adult life in the context of 9/11 having happened, I have a sense of before even now, but that before is conflated with childhood, and so as I think back on things, I have trouble untangling what of that before is only the change of childhood ending and what is, in fact, a result of the terrorist attacks. But that’s just me, and that’s little enough.

So, once again, I mark the day, and I do what all who were not there must do: move ahead with the days that are mine. How fitting a tribute to those who have no more days, whose days were ended on that day, that can be, I do not know, but there is no other path open to me. All I can do is the best I can do, and I struggle enough with that as it is.

No ad, either.