Remembering

I’d scheduled another, light-hearted, would-be amusing blog today but then, seeing the date, I moved it to a later one. Not that I think remembrance should necessarily be a sombre thing. The events which took place 11 years ago were beyond imagining, beyond description. They were inspired by evil and seemed apocalyptic. But, without forgetting the horror and the need to work towards an understanding of the importance of our fellows, we should try to use the anniversary to celebrate the resilience of the human spirit, to be even more determined not to let tyranny of any sort dictate our responses, suppress our hopes or make our days bleaker.

The sort of murderous musings that fill this blog site are ingenious, varied, entertaining, funny, serious – and they’re all written by people who write crime novels and are therefore used to getting inside the minds of characters who perpetrate evil deeds, who by and large have little respect for the rights and lives of others. But those insights are structured, moulded into the form of stories. I’m not suggesting that sanitises them, but it makes them understandable, accessible. For the most part, we can fit them into a vision of the world which is familiar to us. We see that they’re not ‘normal’ but at least they have a place in our concept of ‘normality’.

I have a vivid imagination and like the challenges of creating credible characters who provoke responses (pro and anti) in the reader, but I don’t think I could sustain any credibility if I tried to include someone with the mindset of those who executed the 9/11 plan. Perhaps it’s because I personally have no religion, but I love and respect people, wherever they are and whatever they believe. We’re making a mess of the planet, some of us do unforgiveable things, inequality is rife, but the fact that we exist at all and that we survive all sorts of catastrophes and setbacks makes me proud of us.