almost a decade ago.

Because I feel like I lived through enough of 9/11 (through my TV, like all of us) I never bothered to read up on it. Every time I do I get emotional- not because it's so sad, which it is, but because it is so unfathomable to me. I will never be able to wrap my mind around it-- maybe I'm getting closer, but I'm still so far removed and that hurts me. Anyway, I've read this and that over the past few years, and for some reason it surprised me that most people, out of all of the horrendous sights that day, cite "the falling man" as the most branded on their minds. Apparently it's become as if this image is our own strange memorial to all of those who died that day. Most of us, especially on the West Coast didn't know them, but their death stood for something that we still can't even wrap our minds around. I can't, anyway.

They released two graphic novels about 9/11 to raise money for related charities, and all of the big names in graphic novels contributed. I read both of them, but I would like to buy them one day. There's a comic in one of them, starkly drawn, about a typical average joe character who is discussing the event with his friends and how sad it is, and he's thinking to himself that he just doesn't feel it, he feels like because of the media that he's just too detached, he doesn't get why and he feels terrible. He gets in his car and he's driving home at night and "Let It Be" comes on the radio and he has to pull over because he starts weeping. He says something like, of course it would take something that's so a part of the media generation to help me understand the generation's greatest tragedy. And then the author put down a number of the song lyrics. Just thinking about that comic makes me tearful.

As many as 200 people jumped to their deaths that day. in AMERICA. that just doesn't happen. i still don't believe it.