this day comes again, mournfully as always

why does it always catch me by surprise (and by the throat)?

Turns out that I am a broken record. In thinking about posting today I was going to start something like “As recently as this past weekend, I thought that this would be the year in which I finally spend a September 11 like a September 10, or any other day in September. Uhhh …. NO.” It started feeling just like a 9/11 last night and got worse today, perhaps because I drove a friend to LaGuardia this morning and so went up and down the BQE starting opposite lower Manhattan at precisely (you can’t make this stuff up, folks) 8:46 AM.

Then when I looked through the Manhattan Loft Guy archives to just post some past links (rather than composing something more raw at length), I came across this from last year (which sounds like the year before that, and the yeare before that …):

I am grateful that the media orgy from last year’s [2011, obviously] 10 Year Anniversary has not been repeated, but I am in the same place as I was then:

I thought this year would be different. That I would be able to read stories and look at video and images from ten years ago, and even to (finally) write something about my own experience of That Day (on That Day, and since).

But I am not, and this year turns out to be no different, except that it is much worse, with the saturation of stories and images on all media all the time. Exponentially more ‘coverage’; exponentially more heads talking.

The links to past Manhattan Loft Guy posts on this date, from [2012’s] post:

2010: same day, another year (from a mother who lost a daughter and a not-yet grand-daughter) [fixed the link 9.13]

2009: 8 years, still fresh  (one of my least favorite people channels one of my most favorite)

2008: September 11, again (New York names, as of 2008)

2007: (see 2005)

2006: September 11 / 343 firefighters (“How many cities in this country even have 343 firefighters??”)

and 2006: September 11 / read the names (all the names, as of 2006; “It turns out that I am most definitely not able to post much of anything today, and still unable to read (let alone watch) what passes for media coverage of the fifth anniversary.” and “As this is a blog about Manhattan real estate, please reflect as you read the names on the many places around the globe these New Yorkers came from (or their families came from in an earlier generation). A terribly sad, terribly potent cross-section of the global village that is Manhattan.”)

2005: (how did I not write that day? probably as in my first 2006 post, above)

Peace out.

Peace out, indeed.

Here’s what I can add this year: this nice story about the Tribute In Light from Jamie Manson, one of my favorite writers on the National Catholic Reporter. Looking forward to that tonight….

© Sandy Mattingly 2013