There has been a question that’s been rolling around in this head of mine for ions now.
I asked ‘said’ question to a fairly close friend of mine recently and was a wee bit startled by his answer.
It was the total opposite of mine.
Know that this friend of mine is an MD and a highly intelligent individual.
I would have thought that everyone would see it my way but that is obviously not the case.
While the question is illogical, hypothetical and a virtual unfeasibility,
I found it mind-numbing nonetheless.

If you came upon a celestial tollbooth in your life where you were told:
You need to give up either your sight or your hearing, which one do you choose to lose?

My answer was almost immediate which was no shock to me and possibly of little shock to you.
So as not to sway anyone this post will be in two parts, this one being the first.
What would you choose?
Sight or Sound/Hearing?

My answer will follow next week.
If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter there will be a link there soon.
Think about it people.
Give me your best shot.
I already have my answer locked and loaded . . .

~m

Peter Hanson made a cell phone call to his father at 09:00am on 9.11.01

“It’s getting bad, Dad. A stewardess was stabbed. They seem to have knives and Mace. They said they have a bomb. It’s getting very bad on the plane. Passengers are throwing up and getting sick. The plane is making jerky movements. I don’t think the pilot is flying the plane. I think we are going down. I think they intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly into a building. Don’t worry, Dad. If it happens, it’ll be very fast….Oh my God… oh my God, oh my God.”

[As the call abruptly ended, Hanson's father heard a woman screaming.]

In the past few weeks I have had numerous hits on my blog and
70%  of them have been related to the tragedy of  9/11.
It’s a part of our history that will be told from a million different perspectives and from a million different hearts.
A sunny, beautiful and blue sky forever September day that changed the face of the United States forever.
The tenth anniversary of anything as monumental as this will have 99% of people scouring the internet for information regarding one of our nations darkest of days.
On the 5th Anniversary of 9/11 a website was born, dedicated to the writing of tributes to all those taken by this senseless and avoidable tragedy.
I thank Dale Roe for taking on the challenge.

I have written 3 tributes for the site thus far:

Amy Jarret, a stewardess on UA Flight 175
Bobby Minara, a NYC firefighter that was to retire in two months
Steve ‘Jake’ Jacoby, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon.

I decided to write another tribute on this 10th anniversary;
for Peter Hanson, his wife Sue and their 2 ½ year old daughter Christine.
The conversation you read at the top of this post was from Peter Hanson’s cell phone, a message left minutes before Flight UA175 hit the south tower of the
World Trade Center, the plane we all saw live on national TV (and the flight Amy Jarret was on).
My thoughts now are what was going through the mind of Peter.
You are on an airplane that is headed for a destination unknown and you know it’s not a good place.
Consoling a 2 ½ year old is trying enough without knowing that you are about to die.
The plane they were on was descending at 5 to 10,000 feet per minute towards the end.
You can’t explain that to a child.
You probably wouldn’t want to.
My heart broke reading about the final moments of their all-too-short lives.
In my heart, I know they were all together and died in each other’s arms,
a beautiful prayer of sorts.
To the Hanson family, I can’t even begin to estimate the size of your sorrow.
My heart breaks for all of you with the upcoming 10th anniversary on Sunday.
In my mind, I see three candles lit and burning brightly, piercing the darkness.
Three souls together.
Three hearts finally at home, albeit a bit too soon.
God bless you Peter, Sue and  little Christine.
You are all with the angels now.
Of that I am sure.

Maybe it’s time to turn the mourning of 9/11 into the celebration of the people that once were.
Thoughts of death and dying every year on 9/11 is futile.
It gets us nowhere.
Let’s look at celebrating the vibrant lives of all those lost, the unexpected heroes, the ones that gave all that they had, the ones that took a stand on UA Flight 93, a proud moment for Americans everywhere.
September 11th will never be a happy date but I feel it’s one that needs a serious makeover.
It’s been 10 long years of grieving and the United States of America has accomplished so much since.
I say it’s time we show the world just how strong we really are, and can be.
God Bless this land that we love . . .

~m

Unconscionable
Apathy that’s palpable
As [St.] Anthony bleeds . . .

For the sake of a Needle . . .

~m

White houses showing iridescent blue fangs of frozen water that linger long
into the bleakness of a frosty January dusk,
that sets upon my windowpane ‘dead on arrival’
This bleak and frigid season chills me to the inner core,
the brittle bones,
the essence of my iced heart that’s adamantly out of touch with the emotional temperature of the season.

White, snow, mountains, drifts, deep thoughts of Fahrenheit and Celsius,
the twin sons of different mothers,
make the world a colder place depending on the shifting of the wind . . .

. . . chill, skid, the crunching of metal, slide, scrape, snowblow in an effort to jumpstart
an anti-freezing world that has no gloves anymore,
a world that has no answers, too many questions and one too many December’s
on a calendar that never freezes, is never late on a bill and continues on,
damn the frozen torpedoes and the godforsaken overpaid weatherman

White houses sport melting teeth of ice, dripping endlessly into the foundations of
a winter that was, that seemingly had no ending, no rhyme, no reason, no porpoise.
Flipper.
Flipping this middle finger.
Enough already.
Flip this world upside down to Spring, for Christ’s sake.
Sometime soon, and . . .
Make the white houses finally go away.

~m

7 words:
Coolness.
Alternative.
Period.
Amen.
Phoenix.
Headphones.
Required . . .

~m

I tend to go all indigo at this time of the year,
not for the laughs, and not for the seasonal tears,
I just go this funky shade of blue; no reason, no tears, no season, no fears . . . no.
And once again,
No.
It’s a seasonal dysfunction in need of correction,
a part of my life in need of direction,
in need of some indigo inflection and words that will never rhyme no matter what I do.
And I do.
Black. Obsidian. Shaft. Last.
Map of nowhere that I will ever be found.
It’s a yuletide cave of sorts; one that’s long, dark and godforsaken for seasonal reasons that will forever elude me.
Indigo . . .
is simply bluer than blue
Like Me.
Merry Me.
Merry, merry, me, where intricacies of the heart are a silent but beautiful holiday accident   . . .

~m

I stumbled upon this video and have become somewhat obsessed with it.
It was an entry in the 2010 Cannes Film festival.
I’ve  no idea how it made out but I will tell you that the genre it was submitted to was, ‘End of the World’.
This is good stuff, IMHO
Stygian, just like this dark little river . . .

~m