We wouldn’t need to scramble in these kinds of situations if the pre-existing conditions were better for all involved, unfortunately, but that’s a different argument for a different time. Instead, I’d like to present something I started to write nearly 10 years ago as a memoir of sorts about the emotions I had around 9/11. Given the subject, the theme’s a little more “yay America!” when it comes to lauding recovery efforts, though the events of the past few weeks definitely show once again that humanity itself is pretty resilient. (This excellent piece on NPR’s “The Story” the other night proves that.)

This piece was also never finished. I apparently started getting into the nuances of patriotism vs. dissent, but didn’t complete the thought. So I’m just sticking to the relatively schmoopy parts here.

***

In the summer of 2001, I had a girl’s weekend with my best friend. We went on a road trip to Lake Tahoe, stayed in my cousin’s cabin for a night and went to see the Counting Crows perform at Caesar’s Palace on the South Shore. Looking back, I can remember a few moments that took away from the reverie of the trip, including the tricky navigation of the curves of Highway 89 along the lake’s western shore on a moonless night.

But what most made an impression was a comment by the opening act, Glen Phillips of Toad The Wet Sprocket. Of course, I can’t remember the context of what he said, only that it was part of the typical musician’s ad-lib before a song. He commented on the fall of the once-infallible Rome, and said something along the lines of “Who knows how long this American empire is going to last?” It sent shivers up my spine. At that point in time, the idea of our society falling seemed as fantastical as those apocalyptic visions illustrated in films such as The Terminator or Independence Day. My mind just wouldn’t go there.

Little did I know that several months later, that comment would come screaming back to me as I saw footage of the World Trade Center collapsing on my little dorm-room-sized TV. I was lucky enough not to see it live. I was in my Shakespeare class at the time, and as I headed back home with a dining hall lunch in my hand, I knew something was wrong. Everyone I passed was talking on cell phone with shock written all over their faces, and a parked transportation van was blaring a radio news report with the keywords of “terrorism” and “hijack” coming across the waves. That definitely perked up my ears.

After returning home, I turned to that touchstone of college communication—AOL Instant Messenger. (In those days, getting in touch with friends across the country or down the hall stemmed from that one piece of software.) My roommate’s away message conveyed the country’s gut reaction in a very succinct way: “Fuck the terrorists.” I fumbled for my Internet home page—not thinking to flip on the TV—and finally understood the enormity of what was happening when I couldn’t even get onto ABC News’ Web site.

Like everyone else, I cried and shook upon seeing these foreign images on my screen. I called my father on the West Coast and begged him not to go to work, thinking like Chicken Little that the sky was falling. It took me a few hours for my muddled brain to come back to Phillips’ statement and realize something. This was a terrorist attack of epic proportions. It took an organized and concentrated effort. It was intelligent enough to target the nation’s air system when and where it was at its weakest—a weekday morning, and at a small outpost airport. Yet with all of the energy this group expended to demonstrate its hatred of America, the country didn’t roll over and cry uncle.

The systems in place weren’t expecting something of this proportion to happen, but they stayed in place. The skies were cleared of all aircraft in a matter of hours. Emergency personnel did what they needed to do and saved numerous lives. Lines outside blood donation centers stretched for blocks. We may not have been expecting an aggravation of that magnitude, and while the intended purpose had been to shake us to our roots and plant the seed for our eventual destruction, we rose to the occasion. I’ve never been prouder of us than when I realized that our physical and emotional structure had remained intact.

After graduating from college, I largely fell out of the habit of writing reviews. But in 2007, I saw The Bourne Ultimatum, which is now one of my favorite movies. It got my brain racing, and I had to write the following. It’s longer and a little more involved than a typical DTH review would have been (I can thank the media studies degree for that), but here it is anyway—in all of its G. Dub glory.

(And I gave it four and a half feet.)

***

When Robert Ludlum first wrote the novels that immortalized the exploits of embattled spy Jason Bourne, his title character roamed a world wrought with Cold War fears and conflict in Vietnam. The Bourne Identity, the first movie that placed Matt Damon in the role, came on the heels of a new era—post 9/11 terrorism fears. And, as we all know, it’s been a rollercoaster ride of suspicious-looking neighbors, confiscated gels and liquids, and wiretapped phone calls ever since then.

So, in a way, The Bourne Ultimatum is exactly the kind of film that Americans need to see right now—and the kind that they don’t need to see at all.

Picking up right where The Bourne Supremacy, the second film in the series, left off, Damon returns as the amnesiac Bourne, the highly trained government assassin who is still trying to piece together his past. He hobbles injured around Moscow after Supremacy’s bravura car chase scene, while a team of CIA sleuths back in the U.S. tries to track him down before he can sabotage their top-secret program even further.

That team includes Joan Allen, wonderfully reprising her role as the sympathetic Pamela Landy, and new-to-the-series David Strathairn, who plays against type as the flinty Noah Vosen, a deputy director determined to bring an end to Bourne’s travels no matter the cost. The twosome track Bourne from London to Madrid to Tangier before his desire to know who he was drives him to New York, where Landy and Vosen are waiting for him.

It’s not a surprise that over the course of five years and three films, the franchise has wonderfully matured. The first film was entertaining yet unremarkable, but it was when director Paul Greengrass took the helm for Supremacy that Bourne’s complex story got a needed jolt thanks to jittery camera angles and bone-crunching fights that place you right in Bourne’s well-worn shoes. Greengrass takes it to the next level in Ultimatum without trying to outdo what’s already been done; while it’s tempting to roll your eyes when the newest set of flashbacks powers up and big CIA muckety-mucks start barking at their underlings to “FIND JASON BOURNE,” there’s a new sense of desperation flooding every scene. Instead of capping the film with a car chase similar to the jaw-dropper that ended Supremacy, Ultimatum runs its last chase with at least 20 minutes to go, instead ending with a scene on a Manhattan rooftop that satisfyingly brings the trilogy full circle. (I would recommend catching up with the previous two movies before seeing Ultimatum; not only will those who pay close attention get a nice reward, but there’s a definite sense of finality to this one.)

Ultimatum continues to make a name for itself in a number of ways: The locales are different, the score (by John Powell) incorporates familiar melodies from the earlier movies yet infuses them with new energy, and Damon proves once and for all that he has enough action-flick know-how to pair with his everyman appeal for an intriguingly real, nuanced character. While Bourne continues to walk away from horrendous car crashes and intense sparring matches, he does so with bloody scratches and a limp. When Bourne pairs up with Nicky Parsons (played by a fairly lifeless Julia Stiles), he doesn’t bed her like a James Bond-type character might; instead, he looks at her with eyes that are still searching for his dead girlfriend Marie, who was killed at the beginning of the second movie—an eternity in the testosterone-fueled world of the typical thriller.

And most importantly, he doesn’t kill indiscriminately. When escaping Moroccan authorities, he throws a can of spray paint onto a fire and pushes away those people standing nearby. Every life he takes is considered and mourned, even if he kills someone who was trained the same way he was—by conditioning to remove the slightest bit of human remorse. This is what makes Ultimatum hugely comforting—and at the same time, incredibly frightening.

To his credit, Strathairn fully inhabits a heartless role, but it’s difficult to see his character as anything other than a representation of the current administration. (With Greengrass including a flashback scene of Bourne undergoing a waterboarding procedure, it’s tough not to draw that conclusion.) Vosen issues kill orders for U.S. citizens and operatives on nothing more than mere suspicion, and when Landy dares to ask how far he’ll go, he bites back, “Until we win.”

We also catch wind of a report that Bourne resisted his initial training, which intended to beat the conscience out of him and evidently malfunctioned, resulting in the tortured hero we see today. But this plot point begs an important question: Why is conscience something worth killing? Who exactly are Bourne and his ilk being asked to kill that would require it gone? The overwhelming sense of reality in The Bourne Ultimatum makes this tough to ponder. It’s nice knowing that someone working in our name has one, but troubling that our government would consider it a handicap.

Of course, this isn’t to say that Ultimatum is meant as a political statement, or anything other than what it is: a hugely entertaining movie. A rooftop chase scene in Morocco dazzles the senses with unbelievable camera work and a heart-pounding soundtrack, and an early sequence at London’s busiest train station looks as though as it were filmed alongside regular commuters making their way home. Bourne instructs a British journalist (those nimby-pimby sorts) on how to make his way out of the terminal while ducking sweeping surveillance cameras and lurking thugs, and it’s hilarious watching Bourne use the same precise training he received against those who gave it to him as they scratch their heads in bewilderment. They can’t believe that one of their own has turned against them.

Which possibly proves that in the end, our greatest danger could really be ourselves.

We also lived in a school district where the tax base made sending us to public school an easy decision. But when it mattered, my parents anted up. I decided late in my high school career that 18 years in Californian suburbia was enough for me. So, I applied to out-of-state public schools, and even though we didn’t qualify for financial aid, my parents managed to pay for every cent of tuition, housing, books—you name it. Thus, my protective bubble followed me to college, where I had everything taken care of for me. If I was hungry, I just went to the dining hall and my student ID would grant me entrance to the buffet lines. Plane tickets would arrive in the mail just when I needed them. And when the foreign experience of East Coast weather threatened my campus with its hurricane watches and empty grocery stores, I just snuggled closer to the cinder blocks that comprised the 10 floors of my freshman dorm.

My California-flavored childhood meant the concept of snow and ice in everyday life was completely new for me. When classes were canceled for three days in the January of my freshman year, I frolicked in the powder like a 5-year-old. My friends took many pictures of me relishing my first experience as a snow angel, and we stole trays from the dining halls for sledding. We also worked as a unit to create a snow turtle—snowmen were apparently passé.

Fast-forward to four years later. As a hardened senior, I had parted ways with those friends and moved off-campus. It was the last full day of class in the fall semester, and as I stood waiting at the bus stop for my ride home, the frigid December sky began spitting down sleet. Forty-five minutes on a trudging bus replaced my normal swift commute, and I awoke at 5:30 the next morning to hear the tree branches outside my window cracking under the weight of the ice encasing them—and to see the time on my clock radio flicker out. The power was not restored for four days.

To say that my love affair with East Coast winters came to a sudden and bitter end is a bit of an understatement.

It wasn’t a question of boredom. Classes for the semester had already ended, so I just didn’t have the electronic procrastination tools I usually used to distract myself from studying. My roommate and I rediscovered the art of conversation and unearthed board games we hadn’t played since childhood. It was, however, a little difficult to manipulate dice with fingers wrapped in the fleece of our best mittens.

Those mittens were one of the only ways to deal with the greatest predicament of my young life. For the first day, enough heat was trapped in our second-floor flat to facilitate actual living, and there were enough perishables available to eat without needing to touch our dead refrigerator. But after that first night, when the temperatures dipped into the teens and the flannel surface of my pillowcase cooled mere seconds after I turned my head, the frigid air of the worst winter storm in North Carolina history began to creep through the windowpanes and under the doors, rendering my home practically inhabitable. The solution wasn’t as easy as hopping in a car and driving somewhere with heat and food—the entire state was in the exact same condition. Tree branches still littered the frosty roadways and blocked most escapes out of town, and Duke Power had millions of customers out of power across two states. We were just going to have to wait for our electrical benediction along with everyone else.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t know where I was going to sleep. The lack of heat made showering an icy proposition, and I couldn’t contact anyone—the blackout had disabled the local cell towers and we didn’t even have enough light to see the keypad on our landline phone. All thoughts of finals and Christmas presents and packing for my trip home flew out of my head in favor of how to layer multiple sweaters or use a lighter on candles without burning myself. I remember the joy when, a few days into the blackout, we found that our favorite pizza place had its power restored. We ordered a pie, went to pick it up and ate it in our dining room where the heat from the pizza created a steam lingering above the table that was the closest thing to warmth we’d felt in days. My mind was discombobulated—all I could think of was where I would find my next meal and where I could sleep that wouldn’t dangerously threaten my health.

Of course, I knew I could get out of the situation if it became absolutely necessary. I had a credit card and a car. I could have driven as long as was necessary to find a hotel with heat and room service, or gone to the airport and bought a plane ticket to the Caribbean. Luckily, that need disappeared relatively quickly. The first people to get their power back were my friends still living on campus. They took us in, providing floors and blankets for sleep and running water for warm showers. I don’t think I’ve ever taken a shower with such joy in my heart before.

Only after I got power back did I realize that I’d missed several review sessions for my upcoming finals. Thank goodness I was one of the fortunate—I’d heard some students living off-campus waited nearly two weeks for power and had to take their finals during that time. If my power hadn’t come back when it did, there’s no doubt in my mind that 16 weeks of lectures and note-taking and preparation couldn’t have done a thing to overcome my basic needs of food and shelter. This period was fleeting, but I’m still in awe at how naïve I was prior to seeing those little LED numbers flick off.

The situation reminded me of something my mother, a public schoolteacher, often talks about: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which categorizes how our brains operate. Physiological needs such as food and sleep are the keys, with safety concerns coming next. For most of us in the middle class (and the  Western world), these aren’t things we need to worry about. Instead, we occupy our lives worrying about how the new freeway extension will complicate our daily commutes or remarking on how we can’t live without our TiVos. For me, my upbringing was never about not having what I needed, and only when my very survival was staring me in the face did I see how spoiled I was.

Even though our society is extremely affluent in comparison to the rest of the world, we still live amongst peers who struggle with these basic needs, yet we judge them by privileged standards. A young person living in the inner city isn’t likely to graduate from high school and launch into college or a career. Politicians and ed-op columnists say he just needs to put forth superhuman effort to achieve those aspects of the American Dream. But when a person’s first priorities are dodging bullets and finding safe housing, schooling is not high on the list.

I only wish I could go back and inform my coddled high school self of how lucky I was. I do remember a fleeting moment back then—I was doing dishes in the kitchen of my parents’ house and I looked out the window to the street, lit haphazardly by the setting sun peeking through the trees. Standing on the sidewalk were a man and his pregnant wife. They had their arms around each other, and they were crying as they took in the split-level house with four bedrooms and three baths. At that moment, I felt an inkling of what it must have been like for my parents as they struggled to make ends meet in anticipation for a family. But that was as deep as my consideration went as I dried off my hands and went off to work on my calculus homework. When we don’t have to worry about the basic needs of life, we don’t consider them.

But if my temporary inability to think beyond food and shelter is a way of life for some people, and our expectation is for them to brush it off to pursue success, I shudder to think of how deluded those expectations can be—and how easily they can change when we’re in that same situation.

***

Last night, I was contemplating what writing I should post this week…and then the power went out in my apartment. Of course, living in Los Angeles, it was nothing more than a rainstorm. But it reminded me of this piece, which I wrote fairly soon after graduating from college. Reading it now brings into perspective the various people and points-of-view I’ve encountered since then, but even so, I think it demonstrates that the situation was a decent learning experience.