9/11: The Weavers of Memory

[arisbe]

The fall of the World Trade Center was a crucial moment in American history, one which I missed because it was at the same time a crucial moment in my personal history -- I simply didn't share my countrymen's experience, watching the thing over and over on their televisions, talking it over and over on their telephones, nursing fantasies of grandiose revenge. My own experience I have written of elsewhere.

We do not often reflect that the attack was a crucial event in Afghan history, one which they remember as they remember much else, weaving it into carpets. Carpets you can see and buy at a weekend flea market in Brooklyn's Park Slope.

Perhaps some sunny Saturday I shall take a subway down there...

Comments

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Facinating!

[kali-ma.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... link doesn't work for me.

I painted a picture of the disaster as the Tarot trump "The Tower". It was eerily like the traditional image of the card. Some ancient seer's vision of the far off future?

Re:

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

"Sorry can't allow you access today" is what I get too. Well, tomorrow is another day! As somebody once said.

The thing was linked on MeFi, so the site probably exceeded its daily download quota.

I know what you mean by the Tower. Do you have yours online anywhere?

I allude to it in the beginning of my 9/11 poem (http://www.livejournal.com/users/arisbe/46420.html). of course the Angel I speak of comes from Temperance (I think) which is superimposed on it in a common Tree of Life diagram.

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[kali-ma.livejournal.com]

Yes, I went looking through your journal and saw the poem, also the link to your friend's (?) journal who was right there when it happened - horrifying. It was scary enough just being in Boston not knowing what was going to happen.
I have a picture of it on my computer, but (and I know I lose geek points for this) I haven't figured out how to show pics in my lj yet. I tried it from geocities and they won't let me - I tried it from snapfish which supposedly does and it didn't work. I don't have time now but later (when I'm home from work) I'll put it on my geocities page and give you the link. It isn't high art or anything though - I'm very much an amateur.

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[arisbe.livejournal.com]

Boston was scary that day. The hijackers had folown from there, there was police action at a hotel not far from my little girl's BU dorm, and a little later there was a series of anthrax scares in classroom buildings.

The uncanny thing about the card is the figures falling from the tower. though I know the standard interpretation is that they are saved, but at the cost of their status (headgear).

I know an (uncanonical) Orthodox Archbishop who uses dicactic icons based on the greater Trumps -- the Tower represents Pentecost. (Not the fellow on LJ, who is only a Bishop and fully canonical, though they say he does know an odd thing or two.)

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[kali-ma.livejournal.com]

I remember the police action. And the rumors, rumors everywhere that day. At first I refused to believe a plane had hit the Pentagon, I figured it was an overreacting news report. It just seemed like planes were falling out of the sky all over the place after a while, and I kept looking nervously out of my 7th floor office window. It is ridiculous I know, but now when a plane takes off from Logan and flies over the city I often have a hard time not ducking (as if that would do any good).
My bf is a bill collector. Someone sent one of his coworkers an envelope of white powder, which turned out to be a hoax, but it was scary and horrible anyway. (The moron in question sent it in with his BILL however, complete with all his information, so I assume he got arrested.)
Looking back at the Thoth deck I own, I too was very creeped out by the burning people falling from the building. Somehow that is the most horrible thing to me about the whole incident, as I am deathly afraid of both heights and the concept of setting myself on fire.
Pentecost... See, I would personally see the High Priestess card more as pentecost because of the concept of direct contact with spirit, but I'm sure he has some reasons for his choice. I want to create a tarot deck, I see it as a very long term project. I've read cards for over 14 years now.