Remembering 9/11, but not on tv

I was walking from the door to my car when my mother stepped out of my sister's place and said something had happened in New York. She wasn't sure what. I got in my car and went to school. On the way, I heard the news that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers. I don't remember now what went through my head. Maybe I thought it was a terrible accident.

Everyone in the student union was crowded around the television sets watching. I went upstairs to the Women's Center where I often hung out. There was a tv there too and the Director of the Women's Center, a historian, was planted in front of it. I sat down next to her. I think there were others there. I do remember people coming in. They'd peek their heads into the center and the director would invite them in. I also remember thinking out loud, "This is an act of war". My professor nodded gravely.

In those days, I was working as a reporter for a local news station. It sounds strange, but I don't recall enjoying my work there as much as I did then. I spent a lot of time on the streets talking to people. I went to memorials, vigils, and interfaith services. There was a lot of peace in the chaos and there was a lot of strength. I still remember one woman saying to me, "We're Americans. We'll survive this and we'll be stronger."

Are we stronger? I don't know. We could be, but there are things that keep our collective psyche in pain and 9/11 specials are among them. Every television network will be running 9/11 specials, shows such as Voices from Inside the Towers, Portraits from Ground Zero, Twins from the Twin Towers, and 9/11: The Days After. These are shows that focus on the tragedy itself and they will be replaying the scenes of the airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers. Over and over. Do we really need to see that again and again?

There's a big difference between memorializing the tragedy and exploiting September 11. Ten years have proven that this is a wound that has not healed and it will not until every last one of us that lived through it is no longer on this planet to remember it. The media is just picking at that wound. It is adding nothing of value by endlessly and theatrically repeating the explosions, the collapses, the smoke, the falling bodies, the screams. It is no longer documenting and it is not honoring the lives lost that day and in the ten years subsequently during this war that never seems to end. It is not helping us heal or combat prejudices. A decade later there is outrage over the "Ground Zero mosque", which is neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero.

It's not for me. As a Pagan, I think about the power of ritual to speak to a part of the self, the Younger Self, as Starhawk calls it, and the power of immersion experiences that can transport and transform us. I don't want to be immersed in daylong ritual theater of destruction and death that has no creative hope at the end of it and no real examination of the aftermath beyond loss and grief. Think carefully about what you watch tomorrow.