Twin Towers
	There are two images that have been with me for the past couple of days, hovering over me as constant reminders.  The first makes me think of the times in my life when I was truly afraid.  Not the type of fear that a child faces in the dark, and then dissipates with the flick of a switch.  I'm talking about real fear.  The fear you feel in the face of death.  When the doctor looks you dead in the eye and says, "I'm afraid to tell you this, but the disease is spreading.  You have only weeks to live."  I have faced this fear.   But on Tuesday my country was attacked, and the attack started with two hijacked planes which flew directly into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.  Minutes before the building collapsed, numbers of desperate people, clinging only to their briefcases and their memories, jumped from their offices a hundred stories high.   Image One:  Bodies plunging themselves to their death, grasping nothing but cloud and sky.   I am stuck in that moment of decision to leap to one's death.  I am caught in that moment of despair, of choosing between two deaths, one of closed concrete the other of open air.  It is a moment robust and overflowing with fear and desperation.  One that lasts much longer than it should.  I try to imagine being fully present in my newfound moment.  Everything internal becomes external.  Everything external dies.  How much longer will this take?  This moment is what fear is all about.  When I try to place myself in this rearranged chronology of things, I realize I do not know fear.  I never have.   The second image creeps within me and makes me think of the times in my life when I was most angry.  Like anyone else, I could choose many.  The second of identical twins, and the youngest of four children growing up on the edge of poverty, I have learned what it means to not have.  I've learned anger and resentment, and I've learned to hate in ways I never imagined.  My hatred became my survival, or so I thought.   Image Two: People in the streets rejoicing at the news of murdered Americans.   I have always known there to be hatred in this world, but I have never thought of it in levels of degree, as something measurable like ingredients in a poisonous recipe.  Until today.  There they were, dancing in streets, waving signs of peace and nodding their heads with a zealous hunger in their eyes, like beasts of prey devouring their daily catch, passing out candy in fits of celebration.  The image of these people teach me that there is a hatred in the world far greater than I ever imagined.  This hatred is so strong and so powerful that it actually has the ability to blind us into seeing joy in the suffering of other people.  It is a hatred born of evil, nothing less, and it causes me to realize I do not know hatred.  I never have.   And now I struggle with what to do next.  How do give these images, and the people associated with each, an equal amount of concern and attention?  To what extent do I grieve, and to what extent do I feel relieved?  And what other lessons will I learn, after thinking I had already done so?
		The entire contents of this website © 2005, John Medeiros