Far Away...

This is one of those days when I want to go away. I don’t want to be here. I mean like on Earth. I just wish I could be somewhere else today.

I don’t have a “happy place” I go to when I meditate. I should probably get one. I hear they’re exciting.

I mean I have places in my head that I can go to feel better, but mostly I feel lost today. Have you heard that song, “You’re so Far Away…Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore? It would be so fine to see your face at my door…”

“And you’re just time away…” They say time makes things easier, I think it does. But tell that to someone who knows someone who is Missing. See there are all these people that never came home on September 11th, 2001. They just went away. Far away.

It was a long time ago, you know. And most people have moved quite far away from it. But every year I’m reminded that I didn’t go anywhere. I was saved. I don’t know why, but nothing happened to me when there were people dying all around me.

I was lucky.

Missing was a nice word for Dead for many months. Those people who were looking for a loved one, no one could look them in the eye and say, “Stop looking.”

So every year they read the names of everyone who passed away. My dad said, “It’s only in America that everyone’s life is worth something.” Sure there have been bigger tragedies in the world where more people have died.

However, the kind of reverence that we in the United States give to the dead, no one can replicate.

My name isn’t on that list, so I listen to all the other names.

I don’t recognize a single name I hear because I’m lucky. Not a single person I knew or loved was there. Although I know some people that were around the area and got lucky.

Living five miles away was considered far away. I had friends whose apartments were demolished and lived in hotels.

I could only manage to go to ground zero in April. I went with a very good friend of mine. As soon as we got off the train I was lost. So I stopped a woman and asked her, “Do you know where the World Trade Center is?”

She looked at my Middle Eastern looking face and friend who looks the same and said, “I don’t know what this is about but I don’t want to be a part of it.” And she walked in the opposite direction that she was walking in before.

My protest was to keep the picture of a black woman wearing white Muslim Headgear on my window sill. My protest was to keep the Sikh calendar up in my living room that showed a bunch of Sikh men with turbans in artistic form. When strangers came into our apartment they thought we were Muslim.

My protest was not to clarify anything. I’m from India; Pakistan is not that far away.

And anyways, I’m only six degrees of separation from some of those names I hear ringing in my ears today.

Friday’s Report Card:

Health: I didn’t lose any weight. Umm…it was Labor Day weekend and my dad’s birthday and I have no other valid excuse. SHAME ON ME. I worked out every other day, can do better.

Wealth: Did not send out enough resumes, thinking of posting resume on all job sites. Have steady followers of blog!!! Found a website advertising my blog!!!

Wisdom: Need to honor the past, not dwell on it. Need to forgive myself for past mistakes.