The Vulnerable Days (by John Hulme... a personal reaction to the World Trade Centre attack on 9/11) I remember I was due to go in to college on September 11th, 2001. I was due to enrol for the second year of my masters degree - and I remember wondering whether the world would still be there when I finished the half-hour train journey to Liverpool. Already, reality had somehow shifted into a new and disturbing phase. "You just don't mess with America!" said one of my fellow students. It was pretty much the sentiment we all shared... a nameless terror of what would come next. I wanted to be able to make a difference - to be able to hold my hand and my spirit up in the air so that people would see the beacon and consider where the world was going. There was, of course, only one thing I could do. I am a writer, after all. There are things I am pleased to have written - there are sentences which have made a difference to other souls. There have been victories for John's words. But as I look back at what I wrote that day, the words seem to wobble before my eyes: "One point which has been made a few times this afternoon is that events in the USA today have proved everyone is vulnerable. I can't easily argue with that. There aren't any barriers that can't somehow be breached by some well-executed attack or another... whether by bullet, blade, missile or hijacked jet. At some level, we're all vulnerable at some time or other... whether to attack or just to fear itself. I certainly saw a lot of that this afternoon, as people tried to consider the ramifications of what has just happened. "But it's a funny thing about vulnerability. I have felt scared and vulnerable more times than I can remember, but I know it's part of who I am. All the best parts of me, the parts that make other people's spirits soar, the parts that allow me to do my best work, all come from the same sensitivity that makes me vulnerable. "Being vulnerable is actually what makes me strong, and always has been (even when I don't feel it). There is nothing strong or brave about being a fortress - only emptiness, coldness, detatchment... By being vulnerable, we allow ourselves to feel - and there is nothing braver in this world than that. "There are people in this world who would tell us that such sentiments are bourgeois, phoney - the ideological luxuries of pampered elitism. They will tell us that we have no right to claim such feelings, that we only do so through the pain of others... and that one set of suffering ultimately justifies another set of senseless murders if it makes us all sit up and discard the most precious of our values. "I don't claim to believe we live in a perfect world, but I do believe that some values are too precious to lose, and that these are the values we need to hold on to when the world seems to be crumbling around us. It may be that the eyes of the dragon see us as weak or foolish for retaining them, but dragons come and go, and their destructive fires can never build anything as precious as a soul with the ability to feel, no matter how deeply-fuelled the flame might be." ( - John Hulme, September 11th, 2001) There have been many articles and editorials and documentaries over the past few months - dissecting the international situation, calling the developed nations to account for their stance on Third World Debt, on International arms dealing... I look back at the words I wrote on the day the towers fell. Simple words, in the face of such issues. They don't cover any of the complications... the grey areas... the places where one man's prosperity became inextricably linked to a thousand people's hunger, where one man's free world fed the bullets to a thousand mis-quoted martyrs. I know that the truth of this world is often a lot dirtier than one set of values can easily cope with, and I am smart enough to know that much of that truth is probably still beyond me. But you know something? I'm not sure that matters. Reading this piece through now, it still makes sense to me. I stand by my vulnerable values, in this world of failed strengths. Meet John The Writer For more of John's writting CLICK HERE