This column originally appeared in the Salinas Californian newspaper in 2001.
I have yet to hear words that capture the full horror of watching those towers collapse. I saw them fall on TV. So did you.
The plane hitting the buildings––people said it was like a movie. Or like little boys pretending––the towers toy blocks, the planes little plastic forms. Even as I watched the live footage, it wasn’t real. But the towers collapsing––now that went beyond “not real”. It was unreal. It was past language. Past metaphor. It was the absence of words. Language can’t yet name that cloud of ash and steel. Watching the image again and again, a part of my brain was erased. What happened to you?
It’s an uneasy feeling to be without words to have language fail you. It’s like returning home and finding walls but no doorways. For awhile, September 11th felt like that.
Then there was a flood of words. “America under attack,” they said. “This changes everything.” “We will go after them.” “Those responsible will be hunted down.” “Make no mistake, this is an act of war.” “Retaliatory strikes.” “Operation Infinite Justice.” “Operation Enduring Freedom.” “Work for peace.”
Behind all those words is a monumental need to contain danger. But the words themselves create dangers of their own because as much as language helps us categorize and define our experience, it can also be used to convince us that dangerous things are good for us. War for example, which may sometimes be necessary but is never good. “’If you don’t control language, language will control you.’” A friend told me that once, quoting his mentor, the professor and poet Philip Levine.
It seems vital to me then, as both a teacher who cares about words and a citizen who cares about life and human connection to offer some strategies for dealing with language during this period when the struggle to name things has taken such a profound place in our lives. By doing so, perhaps we can slow down thought (our own and other’s ) and put ourselves in a position to analyze what’s being said, rather than just be led by it. Maybe, too, we can open up new spaces and do some defining of our own.
Step one, then, is to really listen. Since September 11th we have been inundated with news and terrifying scenarios. As difficult as it may be; attend to the words you are hearing even as you push yourself into awareness that you are taking words in.
Step two, break down what you are hearing into categories. Ask yourself: Is what’s being said an expression of emotion, speculation, opinion or fact?
For example: What do we now know and what are our educated guesses?
Thousands of people are now dead after two passenger planes crashed with purpose into the World Trade Center towers, one into the Pentagon and another in a Pennsylvania field.
Based on government sources, some of them unnamed, our news media speculates that those brutal acts were committed by terrorists and that the man who led those terrorists is called Osoma Bin Laden.
We know, we are told, that Bin Laden has a haven in Afghanistan. The Taliban, the unelected government of that country says he is there now.
Some of us are of the opinion that terrorists can be stopped and we can regain a sense of safety by bombing Afghanistan. Some of us are sure that will only lead to more suffering. Most of us, underneath it all, feel less secure and confident about our own small place in the world right now.
Some of us feel fear and rage toward an entire religion––Islam––and an entire region––the middle east, but most of know little about either. Some of us know that Christianity and Islam are so closely linked they share a common admiration for a central figure in each––Jesus––that both the Bible and the Koran tell us to seek peace and avoid revenge.
And yet all across our country––little acts of hate and big acts of murder and violence against people who are Arab, people who look Arab, people who seem like they might have something to do with our fuzzy idea of what and who an Arab is. Where I work, a Palestinian man was shoved and harassed by students. In Gilroy, an Afghani man was beaten. In a nearby farming town, I’m told, a pregnant middle eastern woman stays home because she’s unsure what depth of violence awaits her on the street.
So, how are we feeling? A sorrow that escapes simple language. Rage, worry and fear. But what’s at stake for us if we don’t start working toward naming these terrors ourselves with our own words is to be left with only the stunted language of those who say they already know what’s best for us.
Words have the power to define, and they are right now defining and narrowing the range of acceptable responses to what happened on September 11th. We need to open up our language, play with words, find new ways of saying things and create spaces for new responses that really will make us safe. Safe––a word which resonates so deeply in our psyches and so quickly recalls its opposite––childish fears of the bogey man and monsters that live in the attic and will grab at our ankles from under our beds.
I would like to believe that through language we will define a path that can liberate us from such fears, both those that are very real and those we imagine. So, listen, and then respond to what you’re hearing, because we need more voices to enter the exchange, voices like your own, to help find a way past fear to peace and safety.
Wield this tool––language––cautiously. What do you have to say, and how will you say it?