Reflections on 9/11: Why America’s Unity Didn’t Last

The poet Guillaume Apollinaire coined the word surreal (“beyond reality”) in 1917 to describe irrational, illogical, and dreamlike art expressing the unconscious mind. We now use surreal to mean “strange; not seeming real; like a dream.” We often choose “surreal” to explain the incongruence of sudden trauma, like the loss of a loved one. Life no longer seems real; it feels like a dream or, often, a nightmare. There’s the sense that you’re going to wake up at some point. It feels, well, surreal.

“Surreal.” That’s all my mind could conjure on the morning of September 11, 2001. I was sitting in the waiting area of the old Moran Eye Center on Salt Lake City’s east bench. The entire wall across from me was a window, giving me a majestic view of the entire valley below. I was watching plane after plane glide from left to right and land at the Salt Lake International Airport. “So many planes.” Each one’s descent caused me to descend into greater anxiety and fear.

When I arrived to have the stitches removed from the corneal transplant in my right eye, everything already felt surreal. I had already heard the news of the second plane striking the World Trade Center and knew our nation was under attack. Just as I sat down in the waiting room, news broke of yet another plane hitting the Pentagon. “Surreal.” Then, the South Tower collapsed. I remember watching the inverse mushroom cloud engulf Lower Manhattan and thinking, “How is that even possible? There must be tens of thousands dead.”

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