Journal Entry#2 - A week of 9.11 (Delicious Movement)
This is a weekly blog series for the class called "Delicious Movement." This is #2.
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Since we don’t do much of actions like “merging our front and back,” the “Front and Back” exercise gave me was refreshing and mysterious aftertastes. It was somewhat scary to lose directions of my body by merging the division between front and back and become to feel seamless. But this sense of scariness to lose the balance and direction of my body made me think that, in daily life, I entirely depend on the habits and directions that my body has internalized unconsciously over the years and feel comfortable to be obedient to them. However, with my intention to get away from the pre-sets of the front and back of my body in the exercise, I come to feel closer to my body and sensation. So, it was refreshing but also mysterious and scary. We also explore the space after the “Front and Back” exercise. It came out a little of a surprise for me. Though we just drifted around and searched the space we were in, and for me, it was my room where I grew up, the memories I had with the space hit me as I merged into space: mostly childhood memories. Since I usually do not look back on the memories (the life is always busy!), it was purely a surprise that I remembered my memories from my childhood. And I had pleasant feelings when I sulked in my memories and merged with the space I was in. Next, we lay down on the floor in our space and keep on becoming seamless. When I was lying on the ground, I felt more secure. I’m not sure yet why it was for me. Maybe, I felt supported when I’m lying on the ground. Or because the ground was the carpet and floor I grew up on. Anyway, as I felt more secure, my motions got more dynamic: my arms and feet were rolling and rolling. Lastly, we did the repetition exercise. The repetition exercise was difficult for me. I think it was because it requires a lot of patience to stick to the same motion for me, and I could not feel my repeating motions becoming mine. So, it was tough for me when Eiko proposed us to expand on to other motions. It came across as multitasking and I was a little confused with my body and my motions. The striking discussion in class for me was when we talked about anger. I thought that anger is a personal emotion. And it is, but when it was shared and expressed, it’s strong and can move and affect other person’s emotions. I felt also anger when I was reading the texts last week, especially about the pilots of the Bockscar. And when I came to know in class that Enola was named after the mother of the pilot, I thought it’s shaming and just infuriates me how people captured in the article and the writer himself could be ignorant of the sufferings and pains of people under the bombs.
I think this theme of ignorance or disregard perpetuates in the Op-Eds of Tuesday, and After. Many of the Op-Eds featured in Tuesday, and After, speak to, before 9.11, how citizens in New York or in the United States had been ignorant to the sufferings and pains caused on others in name of justice of their nation. For example, Denis Johnston says that “[i]magine the people who have already seen years like these turn into decades— imagine their brief lifetimes made up only of days like these we’re just seen in New York,” or Susan Sontag questions, “[h]ow many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq?” And I see that the connection from Hiroshima in the sense that ignorance is comfortable but dangerous. I think that ignorance is comfortable but dangerous because it’s comfortable till people are under the illusion that the world is peaceful and there is no pains and suffering that they are owing to, but it’s dangerous and malicious because it’s too late to notice that it is (some people even do not notice it) and two giant buildings had perished and a toll of death (might be of their friends, family, etc.) is counted up in front of them. I think that Eiko’s own writings, Slow Turn and Where Did I Turn The Wrong Turn, resonate this point as well. “The remorse and regret shivered” Eiko when she thought of the victims of 9.11 and the very possibility of deaths of herself, and her family, and her colleagues and friends. But, she also comes to reflect that she was part of the system that brought about 9.11, as a New Yorker looking at the towers falling with flames or “a chosen artist” having worked on the 92nd floor of North Tower or a person living in the society sustained by global trade…
The description of New York in Here is New York by E.B. White encourages me to think about the peculiarity of “New York” as a place 9.11 has happened. “New York is peculiarly constructed to absorb almost anything that comes along” and “Manhattan has been compelled to expand skyward because of the absence of any other direction in which to grow.” Those lines of description of New York by White resonate with my impressions of New York. When I came to Wesleyan for the first time, I spent three days in New York. And, I remembered vividly that I was overwhelmed by the skyscrapers surrounding me and their distance from me. The buildings grow out “the absence of any other direction” and in 9.11. the tallest buildings in Manhattan were targeted and destroyed. I come to think that the destruction of the twin towers, a member of the “no-direction” skyscrapers were originally destined. I believe there were pretension and ignorance of comfortable people who had disregarded the inhabitants on the ground in New York and the capitalistic system that created the twin towers that were destroyed. And it keeps reminding me of the article that featured the people on the Enola Gay, who completely lost their imagination and made a far distance and ignored the pains and sufferings of people under the bombs, described in what Mark Selden tells us. When I visited the memorial site of 9.11. during my stay in New York, I was first astonished by the empty space surrounded by the skyscrapers. But it did not look unnatural for me. I could not expand my strong personal connections to 9.11 since I was a three-year-old kid and knew it as a historical event. But, I tried to listen to the pains and groans of the dead when I was at the memorial and museum. I felt closer.
In the Op-Ed writings, I felt distance when some of the writers mentioned other places like Kabul and Afghanistan, or Holocaust, or European bombed cities in the previous wars or Hiroshima. I’m not sure if we should treat 9.11 the same as bombings or attacks in those cities. Are they or we allowed to think 9.11 in the same box as “people who have already seen years like these turn into decade?” Does mentioning Pearl Harbor help us to understand 9.11 or what we should think from 9.11? I am thinking that it would be much more helpful to reflect on the loss and suffering of people harmed by 9.11 itself and what led to 9.11 and what 9.11 brought us. But I will keep on thinking about...
