My feelings on it all.

A preluding post script: My secret is now out - I can get a real attitude sometimes, especially about the following. I started out with the intention of a tribute and ended up chewing someone out who really rubbed my fur the wrong way today.

They'll never read this, but I've got to get it out. So here we go.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I don't dwell on it to a morbid degree. But I do make sure I go back to it on a regular basis. I return, revisit, open the wounds again so that they never manage to heal all the way. This is how I choose to incorporate it into my life - to always keep it with me. It hurts as much now as it did when it first happened. But I reopen and reopen, because that's how it should be. It should never callous over.

I watch the documentaries when they come on. I bought a few of the picture books that were published. I want a part of the day to stay in the present. I think we all should.

I still can't hold back my tears, to see the burning fuel and debris spilling out of the sides of the buildings. To see the most desperate jumping to their deaths below. To see the looks of shock and terror and disbelief on the dust-encrusted citizens of a city much at peace in its everyday routine only moments before. To see the mighty towers and all their contents sprinkled all over the city. To see the candlelight vigils. The faces of those in despair, searching, holding up photos, names, and contact information for loved ones missing. The rickety shards sticking up in askewed angles where tall majectic buildings once touched the feet of the angels. To look upon images of the smoldering Pentagon and the laceration carved into the Pennsylvania countryside by a runaway plane taken back by everyday folks turned heroes.

And most of all, to hear those who have already forgotten the impact of what they did to us all spout about how we deserved it, and how it serves corporate greed right. Shame on you. Those are your fellow citizens you're degrading. Someone's parent, spouse, child, sibling, friend. Good thing they weren't yours.

So we struck back. And listen up. It's not about money and oil and vendettas for Daddy. It's about offenses to humanity.

I found the film of that poor soul on the internet before it was wiped off out of decency and respect. I watched and listened to those rotten pieces of living shit saw his head off with little more than a steak knife as he screamed like a tortured animal for what seemed like forever. Not because I wanted to. Certainly not because I liked it. But because I wanted to brand it on my brain so I would always remember what they did, and why they deserve no mercy or respect for their way of life and their twisted actions in the name of their twisted god.

I studied the history of the mastermind and his ministry of hate - and of the tyrant and his sociopath sons and their reign of coldblooded torture and manipulation of his own people. And don't tell me for one second they aren't connected. I think everyone in America should learn what I found out, so that the bleeding heart we-should-mind-our-own-business drivel will be silenced. If they knew what I know, they wouldn't hesitate to back the thought process that whether they were directly involved in the events of that day or not, they are of the highest figureheads in the tentacles of terrorism, and the world could be nothing but better with all of these leaders from the seventh level of Hell out of it.

Hindsight is 20/20, and recourses can often be carried out in several alternative ways. But to have done nothing would be to say it's all right. That we don't care, not only about them as a people, but about our own. Live and let live? Screw that. They don't give a damn about you or your olive branches in return. They'll kill you too as soon as you'd blink.

There are times when a country must unite. Times of emergency. Times of tragedy. Times of war. Whether you are a Republican or Democrat, Libertarian, Green Party or whatever else, and whether you support the current cabinet or not, or support the war or not, should be beside the point right now. Decisions have been made, and now it's time to get things done that have been started. Showing that we do not display a unified front encourages strikes at the progressively gaping kinks in our armor.

I pray for our President and our country's leaders every day. That God will help guide them in the directions and decisions which will be wisest for our children's futures. And if you don't, where is your head? What are you even doing here? Please defect to the Middle East, or to France, or take your pick, I really don't care, and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Oh, you won't do that? Because America for all her faults is still the best place on Earth to live? You're damn right.

So act like it.

Take time to remember how truly horrifying the day was that we commemorate this weekend.

To let the wounds callous over - to not remember at every opportunity - is indeed to forget.

Remember. Always.