A day I'd rather be busy

I'm home with the flu, feebling around, supremely tired and achy and grumpy.

In case "to feeble" is not a verb in your vocabulary, it turns out that in English, we can turn anything we want into a verb. As a linguistics professor used to point out, when he was young, the word "party" was only used as a noun.

Oooh, can you tell I'm a massive crankypants? I was home yesterday too, just didn't feel like complaining about it. On day two, however, complain complain. Fortunately, I'm alone.

I blame the flu on the icky recycled air on the planes, although the fact that I ran around sleeping very little and having ridiculous amounts of fun over the weekend probably contributed. Fine. It's probably my fault entirely.

I'm awake enough to be awake, but feeling crummy enough to not be able to do anything. This is a definition of hell for someone who has a mind that doesn't stop.

So today, on our sixth September 11 in the post 9/11 world, on a day that I'd ordinarily be working and busy, I'm curled up in bed with my laptop. And between naps I'm reading online accounts from that day, reading about memorials and commemorative exhibits, looking at pictures, and crying.

I'm not a New Yorker, and I didn't actually live through it, so while I may feel immense amounts of grief, I can't, as many New Yorkers have said, fully get it. I believe that. I wasn't there. I didn't lose anyone in the attacks.

I remember watching the first plane hit the tower on TV and thinking it wasn't real, it couldn't actually be real. It must be a movie. And then it got worse and worse, and you learned it was indisputably real.

Once you'd watched the planes and the towers and the people over and over and over again, you'd think you'd become inured to it. But you don't. Or anyway, I never have.

Those words and pictures, those people, they stop my breath, close up my throat, squeeze my heart. They make me cry every time.