The Rhythm of History: One Perspective of the 9/11 Attacks

By Josh Carmel

In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln made reference to those “mystic chords of memory,” the intangible set of connections stretching “from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land.” His words— even 150 years removed— still hold special meaning, and the sense of unflagging hope that they convey has inspired every schoolhouse scholar and pop-cultural phenom, from James McPherson to Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, with the belief that time will reveal the “better angels of our nature.”

It is in that belief— partly—that we remember the events of September 11, 2001, a practice in the hope that the lives taken exactly ten years to the day will not go unexamined and unnoticed. In truth, we’ve left no stone unturned in the edification of memory, in the recasting of those terrains and landscapes which paint the mind, and though questions still abound and grief lingers freshly on the surface, memory has been a crutch to the heartsick and ailing. It is in the attempt to reinvigorate and recall the lives of loved ones, friends and family alike, that we wade through the events of that day and look more closely at the past.

I have been told by teachers that the events of September 11^th will serve as a fundamental identifier for my generation, and already there are children born who— ten years ago—were not present to witness it firsthand. That is not to say that those born after the event do not share firsthand in the upset or sadness which grips the nation, for they are also a part of it. It is simply the realization that people are getting older, and that with them so too the chasm of time increases.

I, myself, remember well what happened that day. I was 11, and my brothers and I were on the way home from school. While we were chatting in the back of the bus, the only real domain for fifth graders, Matt had made the comment that the Twin Towers were attacked. Thinking that he was referring to the previous attempt, and that the school would have informed us if something like that had happened again, I made a move to correct him. The point became moot, however, when we slid to a stop in front of my street and exited the bus. At the foot of my block, my mother’s car was waiting. As that was not an odd occurrence, we thought nothing of it and entered the vehicle. After dropping off a neighbor, my mother stopped the car and turned to face us. It was then that she said, in a very high, clear voice, words that I will never forgot.

“Guys, the United States was attacked today.”

What did that mean? I distinctly remember, in the uneven recesses of my 11 year-old brain, thinking, “Well, what does that mean?” Although we had grown up on a steady diet of American superiority in grade school, I can’t say that we were particularly inured to the possibility of attack. In reality, it wasn’t on our minds. We neither thought that we had to be prepared for such a statement, nor did we think it would ever happen. Perhaps, that‘s the way it is supposed to happen for children, and, maybe, even for adults as well? It takes the perfect calamity—an unusually potent aggregation of events— to startle someone and, in unnerving the senses, compel one to realize that such things have happened before and may even happen again. My 12^th grade history teacher knew that, and would often note that “history doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes.”

Needless to say, my brothers and I found ourselves huddled around a television, working silently through our confusion, as countless others were also doing, and attempting to make sense of the radical formula presented to us. Our town lost people in the attacks, of that much we were certain. Close friend and stranger alike, it was an event that hit very close to home, and it is only now that I dwell upon my teacher’s oft-quoted mantra.  What is the rhythm of a disaster? Between its rhyme-scheme emerges not merely those events, but the people, the flesh-and-blood men and women, who contribute to its shape and size.

It is in those people, from sundry towns and cultures, that we look for Lincoln’s “better angels.” It is for them that we fuse together and trump up either the far-flung or intensely personal “mystic chords of memory,” that we not only relive but continue to live. There is no need, perhaps even no way, to make heads or tails of grief. I knew that when I was 11, and I know that now that I am 21. I think it is something that everyone knows, in one way or another. There is only the desire to remember, or, more likely than not, simply never to forget. Never to lose context. Never to lose the spirit of our loved ones. Never.