C I P R I A N I

I have been slowly making my way through American Experience: New York: A Documentary Film by Ric Burns. That doesn’t completely explain my lack of activity here lately, but it’s a part of it. I’ve been fortunate enough to be busy, but I need to get back into things here.

I won’t be long tonight. I’m still reeling a bit from the few minutes I just watched. The final hours of the movie were actually added after the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001 and that’s where I find myself now. On the eve of Veterans Day.

I left off at an early point in the final “episode” of the documentary this evening, just the first fifteen minutes of a three hour episode that I’ll probably wind up finishing in pieces over the next few days. They are just starting to talk about the building of the Twin Towers but those moments when they turn to dust loom…

I think about those moments shortly after they fell and specifically two guys I met in a bar shortly after it happened. They had just enlisted, a close friend of theirs was in one of the towers. I may have mentioned this in an earlier entry a few years back. But I’m thinking about it again tonight.

I can’t picture the guy’s face or even recall his name. I can vaguely recall the guy’s girlfriend, Raquel. I remember seeing her a few weeks later, after her boyfriend was deployed. She was a nervous wreck, but as far as she knew he was doing alright. They were either getting married right before he left or he had just proposed. The more I think about it, I think I remember an engagement ring. And though I only talked to her fiancee for a few fleeting moments, I still felt the need to ask her to send him “my best”. Which if we really look at it, couldn’t be more frivolous. Think about it. There might be something more feeble than drinking in a bar on a Friday night while you are completely aware that someone you barely know, along with a bunch of other strangers, is fighting in a far off land to protect your freedom, but off-hand I can’t think of anything.

I think about my grandfathers who served, my in-laws, my friends, acquaintances, people I’ve been lucky enough to know or even meet just briefly. Even the ones I haven’t actually met, like those Servicemen and women that I’ve passed so many times in airports. And on the streets.

And then I think of the tombstones at Arlington…

I can only be grateful, and maybe I should just be silent for a few moments, respectfully.