Photographing Mountains

The weather in Chicago is extremely crappy today. Funny how I remember the weather on that Tuesday being extremely beautiful. I remember thinking about how nice it was as I walked to my university center to try and donate blood, after watching news coverage all morning.

I wish I didn't somehow resent all the media coverage, and "memorial" events. I certainly agree that this anniversary needs to be recognized. But to me it feels somehow cheapened by headlines and media footage. It seems like maybe what we really need instead of online streaming repeates of the coverage from that day and corny news segments and miniserieses, is just a little quiet, a little respect. Though, of course the media and others are remembering this day the way they know how. It just doesn't work for me, it seems to cheapen it somehow. I don't know why.

But I guess that's because there is no real way to capture what happend that day in film or words, and the memorials all just seem too small to reflect the tragedy, sortof how a photograph of a mountain can never really capture that mountain. You take the photograph and you look at it on your digital screen and realize that it is just a cheap attempt to capture the vastness of that mountain. In real life the mountain is huge, humbling, it towers over you, but in the photo, it just looks like a scenic photo of a mountain. It almost seems like a shame to keep the picture. I guess that's what the memorial services and movies and other coverage seem like to me. It can never do justice to such a huge tragedy, and it almost seems a shame to try.

I will simply remember what my friends and I agreed that morning sitting in my living room watching CNN. I don't remember who said it, but I remember how it resonated, and still does.

"The world will never be the same again."