Ten years ago today, I recall, I was in Citibank's datacentre in Paulista Avenue, São Paulo, Brazil, and around noon, 1 pm, we got the news about the attacks. We were all in the operating room watching the images, almost unbelievable, in a small TV set. We were sent back home that day, as Citibank, like all other American companies around the world, closed its doors fearing terrorist attacks... this would be the first sign of terrorism's victory over the free world!
The theme was so explored since that it seems nothing was left to be said. The change of paradigms, the split of the world, the end of individual freedom... there were many speculations, some real and some sensational, like everything else in the press. At the time I did not have a blog - a technology still blooming - but I remember the heated discussions over the subject... even an colleague, friend of a friend of mine, poet, believed to have written "the definitive poem" on the 911. Needless to say, only he and perhaps his girlfriend of the time found the poem great. An advertising people's thing...
Grudges aside, write about the 911 in 110911 seemed, at first, opportunism. Even more considering all the hoopla american media - and to some extent european as well - around the date: Ground Zero visit by President Obama and former president W. Bush, debates about Arabic-American situation, large media coverage - written, spoken and warched. It's just too much!
Reading an article this week, by Conor O'Clery, the Irish Times foreign correspondent who lived in Manhattan at the time, he said something about remember the little things... the little things! I already knew Manhattan and the Twin Towers from my first visit to New York in 1995. I revisited the Twin Towers again in 1998 and 1999, then I visit the remains of them in 2002, during a training course I was attending in New York, near to Ground Zero site... and be there with no towers was at least weird. Besides the obvious - the horror of the act and its consequences - those little things people who lived in the area miss the most, the immense shopping and service concourse, the numerous newsagents, cafes, from Starbucks to run family-run shops, with freshly baked bagels every morning, not to mention barbers, hairdressers, key-cutters, shoes-repair, deli's, restaurants... a piece of history for each daily frequenter of that World Trade Center... and me, I just experienced for few weeks during sparse visits!
So, buddy, during this 110911, instead of consuming all that super-produced material that media will push down your throats on TV, radio and newspapers, try to remember the little things... those apparently irrelevant, or meaningless, or insignificant, that in the end make a difference, simply by reminding you that you are alive to watch them!
