Float, fly and flee

Sept 11th’s 21st anniversary.

19 hijackers. Turning Boeings into bombs. 3000 deaths.

We’re all shocked to the core. Even today in looking back.

How could people be that cruel? How could people be that courageous and selfless (to die for others to live).

On that day, on flight (UA-93) we learned all about humanity and history.

That it is a mix of good and bad, of twists and turns.

Like the weather. Climate Change. People change. History evolves.

Yesterday, someone was a 73-year-old Prince. Today, King.

You can float down a lazy river in TX, or river-raft to the unknown (with a banjo soundtrack as Burt Reynolds & friends in Deliverance), and time will take you there (unintended destiny) even with the best-laid plan.

21 years ago, the only plane on the sky late that day was Air Force One. No one knew what was going on. Hence, bunkering and hunkering down. Peter Jennings was still alive then , with rolled-up sleeves, tossing from one live camera to the next (PA, Pentagon and NYC).

Eyes glued to the set. Television, not Twitter, ruled.

Fiction? or real? We all were in total shock. Those imagery were so surreal yet real. Lives were at stake. People stopped on the 41st floor of WTC stairs to help carry a lady in her wheelchair down to ground floor (CBS-News). Firefighters and first responders rushed up to their certain deaths. Brooks Brothers store across the way all covered in dust.

We were proud of being fellow human beings (TX barbecue, anyone? until we dig up any survivor). We were horrified by those hijackers – their grievances on live TV (I need to insert my own pet peeve: I wish those Thai pirates barbaric acts of raping, robbing and killing Boat People on South China Seas were on live TV 45 years ago). Finally, their leader’s head was cut off, files retrieved. Splinter groups have been re-branded and re-grouped to fight ad-hoc battles in Syria.

It costs a lot for those folks in Guadalupe, TX river to float. For Californians to have A/C while outside temperatures are above 100 degrees. It costs lives and continued defense of freedom and free living 21 years after the fateful day.

Preventable? Might be. Future versions of that script, rehashed for next generations, since it’s always been a Cain and an Abel, at each other’s throat.

That’s why history has always been a look in the rearview mirror.

Of regrets, of reviews and retrospect. Let’s forget OBL, and remember Todd Beamer/friends. Even when one of them was a gay guy from SF. Heroes are heroes, heterosexual (and Christian) or homosexual. As long as they stood up and sacrificed for us all to live in, often times, complacency and comfort.

Thank you, guys. R.I.P. Your selfless acts are inscribed in my book, never to be forgotten – more so on this day of 9/11. That day, my friend and I were watching TV, ABC-news, which still was anchored by Peter Jennings. His subsequent cancer death was partly due to a smoke he shouldn’t have touched.

Smoke gets in our eyes that day.