It occurs to me that I am America. I am talking to myself again.
This will not be a war between nations, nor a war between people. This will be a war between two concepts: America and Terror.
Yes, America is a nation, but today, as I stood through three minutes of silence [1] at the Daley Center, I realized just how much that nation is little more than the tangible form of a concept also named America. How the ancient Greeks had cities such as Athens, that was meant to be, in social structure and citizenry, the living embodiment of Pallas Athena, goddess of war and wisdom. At the moment, we are the scions of the deity America. At this moment, we both have our individual Gods and the god we created in the form of a homeland. And at this moment, we all work in tandem to move the body, the heart, the defiant fist forward.
And we fight the Terror from without and within; the agents of the beast that destroyed thousands, and the insidious aftershocks that force us inside our homes, that lead us to think that we will never be safe again. We fight it all with ignorance of the word “surrender”. It is not an option. It is not a reality. Pain is reality, surrender is not.
On this day above all days, I am proud to be an American.
[1] With the exceptions of a nearby church bell that kept ringing, reassuringly, and a woman’s cellular phone. [2]
[2] And how embarassing must that be?
Creative Control 