Media Dojo

Archive for May, 2011

That’s the cry of my daughter’s volleyball team when they rocket the ball into the other court unopposed.

What a difference a day makes.

Yesterday was weird, surreal. There was a lot of mental processing to do. But it wasn’t so much about the day of the attack but more so the year that followed it. When you’re faced with a direct threat, at least there is a distinct focus on what to do next. There’s also the luxury of being able to block out any notion of future given what’s in front of you.

Not so once the imminent danger passes. Then comes the anxiety of knowing you need to continue taking action but not knowing what will happen next. Given a good night’s sleep, I realized that yesterday consisted of me remembering the slow motion unease of late 2001-2002 living in NYC.

But this morning felt different. A massive piece of unfinished business from those days had finally been dealt with, right when I thought it never would. There’s a lot of challenge ahead. I don’t want to tempt karma by dancing over a man’s death.

Instead, I want to focus on the fact that it’s 2011, not 2001 anymore in the deepest recess of my mind. There’s a lot of challenge and hard work ahead for me and for this country. But to quote Jon Stewart:

We’re back, baby!

Time to swing the focus to cloud computing and media.

The strangest days often come after the historic event.

I actually remember September 12, 2001 better than the day before. On 9/11, my only driving force was to evacuate Manhattan to see my family on Staten Island. It took many hours and harrowing times working through the chaos of lower Manhattan until I could get on a boat and get away. But on 9/12 when school was cancelled and a host of dads took their kids to parks where the children played warily as we listened to the radios blaring out of cars, gathering in pods that ebbed and flowed, exchanging stories of escape or news of people we knew who were still missing; it was then that some of the reality began to sink in—along with a feeling that we had all been dropped into the middle of a vast body of water, with no clear shore to swim to.

On the night of September 12, I was in the kitchen washing dishes in the sink. I heard my wife giving a bath to my five year old and two year old upstairs. Water and bubbles swirled about my wrists. Breathing became shallow and my heart fluttered. I was scared to my core. It sounds hackneyed like out of a bad movie but I also started humming the Star Spangled Banner because I couldn’t sing. But even though I can’t carry a tune, I didn’t care. Just humming made me feel a bit more grounded, not as weightless and helpless as before. As I hummed, the tears I needed to shed finally came, large, wet and steady. In that moment over the kitchen sink, I mourned but also let some resolve bring back a little light.

For the rest of that week, and into the next, I hummed in private moments to remind myself that I had survived and so had the country. I still had no idea what would happen. I was still scared. But that silly little song, that musically pedestrian piece of America’s catechism, was the lucky rabbit’s foot that helped me and many other Americans put one human foot in front of the other.

Guiliani opened up lower Manhattan with restrictions to civilians the following week, Monday September 17. My business partners were stranded on the west coast as the planes still weren’t flying. We had a software company on 32nd Street close to the Empire State Building. I had to get there and be with other employees who were Belgian, Chinese, Korean, German, and US. I took a flag with me because regardless of our passports, we were all civilized people who were scared but were also prepared to give a 100% genuine New York “GO FUCK YOURSELF!” response to Bin Laden and the animals who had attacked us. We were scared but we weren’t cowed. We met on our rooftop and planted that flag.

It’s been a decade and my daughter is in high school. Many jobs and projects have come and gone. I’m older—still in decent shape —and maybe a sliver wiser. The country has changed. There will be no going back. But maybe we can move to a different area.

With a profound sense of gratitude that a chapter has closed combined with gratitude to the professionals who pursued this existential threat to our lives, I stood on my deck this morning in a chill Northwest morning rain to behold Penn Cove. The boats rose and fell with the water’s calm vowels. Gulls huddled on the rooftop of the Wharf building before starting their day. I could hear the water pipes sing downstairs, knowing that my daughter and son were getting ready for school.

I hummed—again off key. And I felt clean, soft rain on my face mixed with some warm salt from my eyes.

Relief.

Bless our country.