If you haven't listened to the link posted up ahead, you're not doing yourself any favors. The Speech as I have labeled it is something that spins my head around every time I hear it. It's certainly something that seemingly could change every bone in your body to the opposite spectrum of what you may consider reality.
This day, the day of days, is one that I will remember for the rest of my life. It's a seemingly normal day, with a bright sun, and a cool breeze. No more or less ordinary than any other day. Yet, as I sit here, the wheel of life is being turned by the hamster of destiny. I listen to the speech, over and over again until my lips sync it without hesitation. I was barely alive when the words said rang out, and yet they still are ringing true today.
Before we left to arrive in this country, our last holding place before getting into the alien space ship looking airplane we rode in, there was a beautifully painted mural. It wasn't breath-taking or astonishing by any work of the imagination, but it was American, and something I too almost looked over. It was a picture of the New York skyline, pre September 11th, along with some other FDNY helmets and other very normal things to be seen in a 9/11 mural. After a slight glance, I thought that I had realized all of what the mural was, and certainly knew what it was about.
We continued, in the terminal, to watch the movie that was being projected onto the wall, until it was our time to leave. I stayed behind the majority of the group, ensuring that everyone was where they were supposed to be, and we had everything. As the line formed towards the door, I marauded in the back. I took more note of the mural as I stood waiting. Suddenly it struck me, there was a roped off area just in front of the mural that I had overlooked. It's humble, yet powerful presence struck me in every way. In an instant, all my trepidations, my worries, my fears were answered with a simple piece of metal. I was taken back by the reddish metal sitting on a wooden stand, with an inscribed plate labeling it's worth.
From Tower II of the WTC.
The bolts into the metal that sat before me, the reasoning for all that we have done for the past year sat there in front of me. I reached out, touching it gingerly and instantly having my breath taken away. It's not the first time I've touched a piece of the Towers, but never so close to ensuring that we won't have to have murals and monuments to such catastrophes. At Fort Bragg, there is a large piece, far bigger than the one at Manas AFB. I run to it on occasion, stand in it's twisted and deformed shadow, and remember what it is I've chosen to do this. No matter how frustrating, how painful this job could be, it's so that there isn't a piece of metal with the souls of thousands cast upon it to touch.
It consumed me, and in the moment of contact and the precious one's to follow, I could've cried.
...you and I, have a rendezvous with destiny.
That was very well written, Jeff.
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