september 11th

I didn't want to write about this. But given how much I have written in this journal over the course of more than ten years, it would be strange not to do it. I woke up really early this morning, spent hours watering the yard because it is my one watering day this week under the new mandatory conservation rules. Standing in the backyard, trying to keep my crepe myrtle alive, I wondered at the impossibly similar, perfect blue sky. It is exactly like the one I remember ten years ago.

There is nothing I could say that isn't being said right now about what has happened in the past decade. Things changed. Boys I grew up with died in the wars that came from that day. It's crazy to think I didn't stop flying because of terrorism but because of the madness of security theater and the TSA. A couple years after this happened, there was an article somewhere. Maybe on Salon or Slate or something like that. I can't remember what it was titled or who wrote it or even very much of it. There was just this idea expressed, this haunting feeling that maybe the world actually ended that day and this is some purgatory we are living in now. That is often how I feel, when I think about the Before and the After.

the ache in my heart just doesn't stop

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/final-environmental-toll-yet-to-be-reckoned-for-1833827.html

"The scale is too large for me to put in my head," said a weary Mike Forstner, a Texas State University biologist. "A significant portion of the Lost Pines ecosystem has been destroyed."

However, from nature's point of view, there were some caveats.

Scientists say the unique Lost Pines forest in Bastrop County will regenerate, as it has countless times over thousands of years — but not within the lifetimes of many of the people who made it their home.

It just aches, to know that almost the entire Bastrop state park is gone. When I drive down Highway 71 next month, my favorite curving piece of the road with its soaring trees won't be there. I can't even think about how much that will hurt.