Have you forgiven?

It's unfortunate for myself (and the 5 people that follow this blog) that American Pilipino Pedagogy has kicked the "proverbial bucket" (if you will) for the last few months. I'm not sure if it was the dawn of Twitter that took the final "blow" or me being a Brigadoon Fag; however, in both cases I've been neglecting to express my inner thoughts and emotions for all to see… and no one to care.

With that said, I dust off the old defibrillator hoping to jump-start my muse. I need something to get the "creative juices" flowing again; and since none of my juices are flowing as of yet, like a topical comic, I turn to the news.

There seems to be an underlying question of the day, which is covered by the countless numbers of news sites and blogs I follow (yes, I read blogs… don't judge).

"Do you remember?"

Unfortunately, yes… I do.

I flew back to SFO Monday afternoon, Sept 10, 2001 from a long weekend in L.A. I was a super senior on the 5-year plan and needed to meet up with my counselor Tuesday morning. My alarm wakes me up so I grabbed my phone and see 8 miss calls; 1 from my professor and 7 from my ex. I checked my voicemail and my professor says that we have to reschedule because it's "hectic on campus". (bah, I could've had extra sleep). I stumble out of my 7-ft loft bed to get ready for class. I had the intension of calling my ex when I'm fully awake after I hit the shower.
With my eyes sealed shut from rheum I make my way past my brothers room as he says, "We're under attack!" Naturally, I dismiss all dialogue that precedes my morning enema.

As I'm in the middle of my 30-minute shower, I grab my procephalic lufah and continue to punas my nether regions. Like an SF MUNI train… it hit me –"We're under attack?!?" (This would make a good Major's Moded Story (MMS) of the day.)

I finish up the shower and put some clothes on to better situate myself with what happened. By the time I sat and watched the tube, both towers have already fallen. The ticker at the bottom of the screen read "America Under Attack!" For a second, I thought my brother was watching a Steven Seagal movie (who, in my opinion by far, ran out of fame well before 9-11). Even though I slept right through the attacks, there were plenty of replays and fraudulent images from the media to keep me up to speed.

I called my ex and he explains to me that he's been trying to call a dear friend of ours in NYC. He said our friend called early in the morning to tell/warn him that we're being attacked. Still halfway drunk from the night before, my ex hangs up the phone and hasn't heard from him since. Having just returned from LA, I remembered saying to my ex that I should drive down to LA so that we could be together through all this. Dependency was my foible. I spent pretty much the next few days watching the news until it was time to go to bed.

At the time I was a coordinator for one of the Filipino organizations on campus. I get a text the next day saying we have to caucus about what we're going to do as an organization in response to yesterday's events. As most organizations do, we met with our advisor to seek his advice.

He said something I'll never forget, "We must forgive; forgive the victims, forgive the terrorist, even forgive the families of the terrorists."

I must say I really wanted to punch a baby when I heard that. "Shame on you" I thought to myself after hearing what he had to say. "how can you say that given the circumstances?"
However, he articulated further and posed the questions, "What would it take for you to commit such an act?"

"If your family was suffering, wouldn't you do the same?"

"How much suffering would you put up with until you were driven to such extremes?"

To be honest, this made sense. As unpopular of a response as it may be, yes... I started to agree. For whatever reason terrorist do what they do, aside from pulling a jihad to meet x number of virgins in heaven, their actions are understandable... to a certain degree.

This may contradict one of my earlier entries from this year --God forgives; not me!-- however, I guess what we should be asking ourselves is not if we have "forgotten"; but after 8 years, have we "forgiven"?