People used to greet each other with such niceties as "how are you?" or "whats up?". Now it's usually something like, "this country's going to hell." That is just what the guy who lives on the street where I park my car on the way to work said to me as I walked by. He then expressed some concern about our decreasing freedoms, specifically the increasingly stringent airport restrictions. I hadn't heard that they are now bringing up the police records of all people expecting to board planes. Is this true?

It wasn't lost on me that this was the day before a particularly grim anniversary.

The first person I talked to on the 11th was a woman on a bike, and she was crying. She had flagged me down to ask directions because she was lost. I reeled myself back in from the place that music takes me, and gave her directions. It turns out she was actually on the road she was looking for, but since some cities have the annoying habit of renaming roads every couple of miles, she didn't realize it. I'm not sure if this is worth crying over, but then again who knows what the rest of her story is? It got me to thinking that a lot of people would probably be crying today, or at least thinking very sober thoughts. And not because they are lost at 12:30 in the morning either. It's too bad that the aftermath of those planes hitting the World Trade Center had to include so much more death around the world. Yes, the ripples from that big ugly rock hitting our pond have spread out to form a tidal wave. We are less free. The world is less safe, both for Americans and for whoever is currently on our "to bomb" list. Can anybody tell me what any of this is going to solve? You can take those goddamn tattered flags off of your antennas now - the things they represent have been mixed up and muddied, just like many of the flags themselves. You would probably be pretty embarassed if somebody like me had to explain flag etiquette to you.

Also, how can one not notice that religions, which almost universally contain the concepts of peace and brotherhood, seem to create nothing but factions? We're all being pushed apart by our myths, which were initially created to help us interpret things we didn't understand, and are now simply being used in ways that I can't understand.

Exactly two years ago, a large number of people where on their way to their last day at work. It's the obliviousness that really gets me. I still sometimes think of the people who got pancaked during the '89 earthquake too, about how they were sitting in traffic on the way home... It just goes to show that anything can happen.

Don't put off doing the things you really want to do. Don't wait until later. Time is precious. Life is precious. Use what you've got before it's gone.

cds I listened to while remembering: V/A "Storm the Palace: Worms A.D. MCXVII", V/A "The Myths Collection Part One", V/A "The Myths Collection Part Two", Epizod "The Time Has Come", Yma Sumac "The Spell of Yma Sumac", and Paul Roland "Live in Germany 1995"