9/11

I wasn't there. I was in LA. I didn't lose a family member or close friend. I can't write anything intelligent about this. But still. . . .

On the west coast we should be woken early by shrill phone calls. We should wander out into the street, aimlessly, and talk to people we don't know and would normally never speak to. We should remember. We should tie up the phone lines with east coast calls and spend hours watching the news. We should laugh nervously when a little crop-duster plane flies low over a field, doing what it always does, and turn to the person next to us to see if, just for a second, they too imagined it much larger, flaming down from the sky.

Why isn't this a national day of mourning?