And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes - a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

The Great Gatsby

September 11. The slow graceful arc of a plane as it turned to crash into a building. Burning towers sending streams of smoke over all of Manhattan. Driving home from work and seeing vacant skies above the airport, and knowing that an entire continent lay beneath skies emptied of all air traffic. I may be a diminished thing from the explorer Fitzgerald imagines beholding America for the first time, but I have experienced something commensurate with my capacity for wonder -- even if it was mostly on television and my wonder horrified.

This is an anniversary and it is Fitzgerald's elegaic tone that moves me to write tonight. Because in watching CNN's stream of its initial coverage, I am overwhelmed by how much I imagine was lost to our nation, something I can only speak in personal terms. I have remembered today how much I longed for the opportunity to act in a manner commensurate with the event. To love greater than hate. To build greater than was destroyed. To sacrifice. To join together.

September 11 changed much for me, but I'm still the same stubborn, unforgiving gal I always was. And on this fifth anniversary of the attacks, I find that one of the hardest things for me to do is forgive the administration that did not call my new self together with all the rest of us to a unified purpose.

I know we're all still out there, those of us who commuted gracefully and patiently to work and who were thoughtful of strangers and who took the time to show we loved our families deeply.

We were Republican and Democrat. We were hurting and it made us kind.

Hey y'all. I would like to keep the faith.