8 years ago today I was watching the news in Austin while getting ready for work, and everything came to a stop. Tower one was on fire and I watched the second plane hit Tower 2. We spent the day at work not getting anything done. Dell had to have lost money that day. But our bosses brought in the TV's and we kept them tuned to the news channels. All of it, every horrible moment of the change in our country was there and we saw it. We lost friends, coworkers lost family members.
I think about it, and looking at the pictures and videos still makes me cry. Remembering hurts, and I will watch and remember then I will change the channel. Because doing this all day is just too much and numbs us to what happened. I want my memories sharp and painful, so that I don't forget or become complacent to what is still happening. I brought my children into this time and hope to teach them to be great people in this new world. My country, the one I grew up in and love is forever changed.

As the years pass I only become angrier. The answer to the gauntlet slap was not strong enough, not painful enough, not the reminder of what REAL hell is. Instead we turned the other cheek, showed an amount of mercy that was neither appreciated or expected. What has it gotten us? A false sense of security a breath away from panic. A tightening cage around our own people while the cage around the villains is loosening.

The answer was simple. Should have been simple. A swift response, 15 minutes to pray and a lifetime to claw out of the grave only to find a glass ceiling and air that will melt the flesh from bones.

Thank your gods we showed compassion, exercised mercy... many of us did not want to.

Deep down, I still want to see a sheet of glass in the desert

9/11/01
That morning, that day... and all the days after.

Glass. Just glass.

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Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


~~~Dylan Thomas Page