9/11

At work, as today's fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has drawn near, we've had plenty of stories about what's changed, what hasn't and what it all means.

Maybe I'm not engaged enough. Maybe I have war-on-terror exhaustion. Maybe being in Oklahoma at the time of the Murrah bombing makes 9/11 feel a little like someone else's tragedy. Maybe I hit the five-year benchmark for the OKC tragedy and realized it was just like the fourth anniversary and the sixth anniversary.

I'm not sure, but at some point, the coverage all blurs into a giant gray mass. And for me, that point had hit Saturday night as I grabbed a seat on the MAX after wrapping up another shift. I'd absorbed all I could on the subject.

Then, in the sliver of space between the wall and the seat in front of me, I saw this slip of paper:



A fitting thought for today, no?

This being Portland, it is probably someone's public art project. But however that note got there, and whatever led me to pick that seat, on that train, and to look down in that space and see it at that time, well, I'll take it.

Because, in a way, that sentiment slices through the talking heads, the politics, the madness of it all like little else. In this crazed world, we have to savor those little moments of clarity and beauty whenever and wherever they arise, be it in Oklahoma, Portland, or, next week, Morocco.

Being an editor, though, I'd suggest the present tense:

"We should live like we are skyscrapers."