Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketIt’s 9/11.

I vividly recall seeing one of the towers collapse live on CNN this day in 2001. I remember sinking to my knees in shock and horror.

“I can’t believe what just happened,” I said.

My daughter came up behind me. “What’s wrong, Mommy?”

My hand was over my mouth. I told her the truth: “A lot of people just died.”

I’m not a native of New York City. I can’t imagine what someone who lives in the city—who had a loved one die or was running from debris or just watching terrified from the periphery—felt that day or how they’ve managed to cope in the aftermath. I guess most of them did what we all have to when life tuns out harsher than we could’ve dreamed: develop a thicker skin and try to move on.

Even though I’m not a native of NYC, I am a New York state resident. I remember the most ominous looking sky the day after the attacks, with positively stark, gray, fat clouds rolling overhead. I remember thinking they were overfilled with remnants of the terrible day-pieces of city and other people’s lives descending on my hometown like a traveling cemetery, demanding that all of us pay our respects. They affected me, those clouds and the unnatural storm that preceded them. They made me anxious, and they made me hear the ticking of the clock more loudly than ever before. I began taking my dreams a lot more seriously. I looked at the faded fortune cookie slip I’d kept for years, the one that said, You are a lover of words. Someday you will write a book, and I thought, “Someday is now.”

Yes, the day became the catalyst for something good in my life–I got serious about pursuing my dreams on a different level. But I also respect the deeper message of that day and the death-shroud cloud: It’s so important to squeeze as much as we can from the hours.

I was asked once to write an essay about art—about why art is important following loss. What I wrote seems to fit this day, so here it is:

Life is not always kind to us individually, or to our families, our towns, our country or our world. But it’s important not to let cheerlessness grow within us uncountered, because it can choke out hope. Art is a great remedy for this kind of bewildered, lost feeling, because when we’re in the midst of art we’re reminded that life has purpose and that purpose is often joyful. It doesn’t matter if you’re creating art or admiring someone else’s, or whether the art itself appears in a deft brushstroke or a poignant melody or an apt phrase or a lingering touch between two dancers. What matters is art’s ability to take us outside of our own experience for a while to remind us that there is meaning beyond despair. Art is able to do this like nothing else because it stems from passion, and passion is–at least for me–nearly the very opposite of hopelessness.

I guess this is what motivated me to write after 9/11 and what brings me back to my wip, regardless of what might be happening around me. Passion. Hope. Find it, then use it well and use it often.

Write on, all.

Photo Credit: Flickr, by Dragonfly

Therese Walsh co-founded Writer Unboxed in 2006. Her debut novel, The Last Will of Moira Leahy, sold to Random House in a two-book deal in 2008, was named one of January Magazine’s Best Books of 2009, and was a Target Breakout Book in 2010. She's never been published with a lit magazine, but LOST's Carlton Cuse liked her haiku best on Twitter, and that made her pretty happy.
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