Landing gear found

Ground Zero, the memories of being there, watching people jump, the silence and yes a 2nd plane did hit, I WITNESSED it as did thousands of others after the 1st one hit at 8:45. I hope they raze both buildings surrounding that 18" alleyway and remove every bit of desecrated remains, planes or human. Fuck all your PC acquiescence, budgets and molly coddling fork tongued muslims, blaming the CIA and conspiracy theories, finish the job of finding and burying the dead properly.

Mothers of Sons

In some strange way, the words Mrs. Tsarnaev..."America took my sons from me" resonates deeply for me even as I live and mother my children here. I may be translating her words incorrectly, but what I hear is a grieving mother who lost her two boys to a culture of promiscuity, greed and violence.

In America we are imbued with gratitude for the great freedoms granted us, yet many people get lost in a whirlwind of PGV living and thinking that all they accumulate in property, money and partners defines who they are. Rarely do the responsibilities that jointly come with such freedom are held in equal balance. When one's moral compass is so defined, reality and a sense of being meaningful in such a world becomes subject to daily winds that buffet personal fortunes for better or worse.

Neither boy was a "loser" as suggested by their uncle who rushed to judgment in front of media microphones, quick to defend the Chechnyan people and perhaps his own family.  Both boys were hungering in search for their moral compass, the younger following his older brother, clearly his mentor.

I see my own children struggling as young adults with the realities of being adults in a world solely defined by Capitalism and scrambling to keep up so they can say "I too Am, I too count for something, I accomplished Something" and setting aside the religious life they born into. Unless one is supported by a community, enclosed and protected as a group in beliefs, being religious is no more than an inconvenience, often an embarrassment or an excuse to do less than those around who have no ties to bind them from living the PGV life.

I marvel at the talking heads asking the same idiotic questions that are politically correct, not wanting to besmirch Islam or Muslims in any wholesale manner. At the same time Muslims en masse remain quiet, either in silent acquiescence with the actions taken by the brothers or in fear of whatever position they take. If Muslim culture remains as it is in this modern world, a force advocating the rise of the Caliphate, destroying the infidels defined as most everyone not of their particular sect of Islam, then Islam must be defined as a manner of warfare and we are doomed to remain in constant watch of threats. The irony for me, is that the desire of Islam to rise and thrive is little different from the holiest of infidels for Muslims, the Jewish people. While Islam claims to be the fastest growing religion in the world, its membership consists not of devout believers but women coerced into conversion upon marriage, children being kidnapped outside their homelands to enforce their religious adherence and of the disenfranchised. It is too often the convert and the newly awaked re-vert who most want to show their devoutness to Islam that are willing to spend their lives blowing up others and themselves.

Tamerlan and Dzhokar were both disenfranchised. Disenfranchised like many young people in the world today who may choose drugs, suicide and self harm to leave their legacy on a world that seems deaf and senseless to their needs and pain. While I obviously do not advocate terrorism in any form, I feel for their mother, she knew their pain as only a mother can.

Sometimes, often for months as you have seen from my lack of posting, the pain of life is so profound I cannot even write. its enough to sit as my thoughts spin internally, rendering me as if paralyzed. Beyond depression, beyond other diagnoses that follow me together with other ghosts, I remain on alert constantly to fend off attacks...mental attacks that bring on acute anxiety and fear of both people and places outside my small apartment.

I've created a safe space for myself where I can see and touch almost everything within reach as I move within two rooms. The local news is filled with horror stories daily and only this past week the cars parked in back of my house were vandalized, windows smashed, police called and my apartment looks right out on this yard. The cats used to run around during the summer, but no more.

my older cat had a small stroke and his hind legs are so weak he cannot jump, is disinterested in anything requiring jumping because he's slipped and fallen a number of times. I bought him steps so he can climb into his bed...no, even though it might make sense for him to sleep on the ground he's a neurotic as I am and prefers a higher plane for resting.

My mental withdrawal seems to correspond to the increasing intensity of therapy. Whereas earlier years I justified my leaving crown heights to return to college to support my kids, my kids are now all adults and whatever justification I may have had back then is now null and void because they are suffering from not having  mother. As my own mother was absent emotionally and present physically, I was absent physically and until a decade ago, unavailable for emotional support. My youngest son is currently visiting and we spoke for the first time on the impact on him about my leaving.

he said he had been afraid for many years to discuss the subject with me because of not wanting to hurt me, but he felt like he never had a mother...period. No one liked the second wife former husband married and she was gone after 7 years of being unable to deal with the same man I tried to, so the kid experienced immense instability, abandonment, a father who was alternately abusive verbally, physically and mentally....sexually is something that has never been cleared up.

So the lifelong grief of my parents is now replayed as I come to understand what my own children are going through, but if nothing else they have bonded so tightly they are comfortable and loving with one another leaving me to remain to outsider except on rare occasions.