99. 11 SEPT. "WHAT WERE YOU DOING WHEN. . .?" di un'Americana a Venezia

Un’Americana a Venezia con la consueta originalità e sensibilità rivive in maniera personale l’11 settembre 2001. Si trovava a Venezia quando ha assistito in diretta televisiva ai tragici eventi di quella data che hanno cambiato la nostra storia, o meglio hanno determinato in noi il crescere di un sentimento di precarietà e di vulnerabilità.  Ognuno ha partecipato a quell'evento in maniera personale. Un’Americana a Venezia racconta i sentimenti che hanno permeato il  vissuto di quel giorno.  (Roberto R.)

I have been asked by the creator of this fun and far-reaching blog to say a few words in English.  Although this blog is a place where art and spirituality are highlighted, I feel an obligation, as un’americana a Venezia, to say something about the 10^th-Year Anniversary of 9-11.  This weekend, countless millions of individuals all over the globe will end up recalling what they were doing when they first heard and/or saw the insane news that airplanes were crashing on purpose, causing unknown numbers of people to die atrocious deaths.  Many will relive their first impressions.  Some may even remember thinking, as their minds tried to absorb the madness, “Things will never be the same again.”  Indeed, they haven’t been, have they?  That day in September, when I first found out, it was afternoon here.  I was making a crostata di fichi with fresh fruit from the tree in the garden.  The weather was beautiful in Venice, what the locals would call un gioello, a jewel, exactly as it was back home that morning.  School had not yet gone back into session.  Kids were taking advantage of their last days of freedom outdoors.  It was nearing the end of summer, and so the azure sky and sunshine seemed all the more glorious. I had just rolled the dough and was making heart-shaped cut-outs to place on top of the warm fig jam when the phone rang.  An Italian friend who was listening to the radio in his car called to ask if I was watching TV.  I said no, I was making fig pie.  “Go and turn it on,” he said with a note of urgency.  “Something terrible is happening in America.”  Seconds later, I was watching CNN on satellite TV, watching the World Trade Center under attack.  I can’t even remember which point things had reached when I tuned in--one tower or both.  All I remember thinking, if I was thinking at all, was that something that crazy couldn’t possibly be happening for real.  Off and on, I watched.  At some point, I invited a neighbour to come and watch it with me for a while.  It was hard to take all alone.  Later that same day, I called an American friend who was visiting her husband’s family on one of the larger islands off Venice.  She could barely talk; she was weeping too much.  “All those people!” she kept saying.  My dear friend’s first sentiments were right on, because the events of that horrible day, and all the days to follow, weren’t really about crashing buildings and airplanes.  They were about normal people being bullied by the crazies and the malevolent.  History is always about people.  None of us who lived through the events of that day is as innocent as we were before.  We were reminded once again, by yet another fiery page in history, of what the human mind is capable.  As a species, we were greatly held up that day by such failings as rash intolerance, equal to ignorance, mixed with infinite arrogance and prepotency.   Since that day ten years ago, who knows how many humans have been born into this world, innocent of that horror?  They are our hope for the future.  May their future be less violent.  I would like to finish with the last line of a favourite poem, “Each in His Own Tongue,” by William Herbert Carruth:  “And millions who, humble and nameless/ The straight, hard pathway plod,--/Some call it Consecration/And others call it God.”  May the unsuspecting innocent continue to rest in heavenly peace.  Amen.      UN’AMERICANA A VENEZIA