The Real New York After 9/11

I was scrolling through Twitter and came across the below thread:

Now, this is not to take attention away from 9/11 victims and those affected by loss. This thread interested me because I came across an earlier tweet where someone mentioned the infamous “Mess with one of us, you mess with all of us” scene from Spider-Man (2002).

Scenes like this are supposed to represent how united America, and New Yorkers in particular, were following 9/11. While this Spider-Man scene (and another in the Andrew Garfield reboot) might be a bit on the nose, the notion of a truly united NY is very uplifting, but also very romanticized.

The stories of innocent Muslims in New York, and brown people as a whole, paint a very different picture and it is good to see a dose of reality get injected into the mainstream “we are the children” narrative that is spun every time September 11 comes around.

I don’t assume these specific stories are true. The statistics on spikes in hate crimes on brown people following 9/11 are all the evidence I need.

The Funeral

Sorry for the delay with this blog post. I have added apartment hunting to my to-do list so I’ve been busier than normal. This is in addition to work, the gym, guitar and writing my second book.

Before you get worried: the below piece is fiction.

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Her pictures were hung all over the church,

In her best dresses, with her best makeup,

 

I stood on the podium,

I was supposed to talk about how great my sister was,

How sad I was that she was gone,

How empty my life was without her,

Yet I couldn’t,

 

My sister was nothing more than a person I had the misfortune of sharing blood with,

She was rude, insecure, ungrateful and manipulative,

There is nothing to mourn with her passing,

She wasn’t murdered,

She didn’t commit suicide,

She just passed away in her sleep,

 

Why do we feel the need to not only downplay someone’s faults when they die,

But also try to paint them as a perfect human being,

Not a single speaker talked about her issues,

Saying that she had problems, but that she was still family,

They all tried to make her look like Mother Teresa,

She is far from it,

She was more than flawed,

She wasn’t even decent,

She was my sister,

She is dead,

And I’m celebrating.