I was catching up with my reading this morning and was reading an article about the new movie about September 11. It began by describing how the TV networks decided after a week to stop replaying the footage of the attacks on the TwinTowers. The writer of the article seemed to think that this has made Americans to somehow forget or bury the images, to have been unable to grieve or express their rage and horror at what happened. Now I am not living in the US, and that day has other special significance because of unrelated things going on in my life, but the images of the planes flying into the buildings is burned into my memory and I can barely think about it without tears welling up. Notice how I never had to say anything more than "September 11" and we were all on the same page? I don't understand how the author could think that just because there are now fierce arguments in NYC about the new buildings for Ground Zero (another one of those phrases we instantly identify) that people have somehow forgotten why there is a Ground Zero. I remember the months after the attacks and how gutwrenching it was. Although my husband bought a book of the firefighters' stories of that day, I still can't bear to read some of the material that came out of it. I can't speak for the entire population of the US, but personally I don't need to see the footage to trigger the emotions of that day. I also remember how, in the days that followed, in order to somehow channel our grief that many of us turned to our knitting. It was not only a soothing activity, but it somehow channelled some of our grief and horror out of our hearts and into the yarn, allowing us to cope with life. It didn't matter what we knit or how it turned out. I also remember that the re-birth of knitting as a popular hobby got a big boost around the same time and I don't think it was all the arrival of novelty yarns. September 11 is an emotional trigger for much of the population of the planet. It changed everything, from how we think about security to whether we can knit on airplanes to whom we trust and whom we are suspcious of, for good reason or bad. I won't be watching that movie now. Maybe in five or ten years.

My sister finds my blog simultaneously "boring" and too personal. She doesn't understand how I could share my persoanl feelings with just anybody who chooses to look at his page. I can't address the "boring" part because I think that is simply different personalities. The personal part is that the blog allows me to express some thoughts that I would express with any friend if we were sitting down for a cuppa. I haven't said anything in this blog that I wouldn't say to any person had we had a chance to sit and chat. The bits about my health are there for a specific reason, to describe what it's like to live with chronic illness and fibromyalgia specifically. If you don't care for my opinions you can always click away or leave a comment.