Avoiding the Words for fear of the Wounds

"After the tragic events of September 11th . . .." How many times have you heard that phrase? It's a cliché! How can something like that - a euphemism already - turn into a cliché? We can't even talk about it, face it head on.

"Post 9/11 . . .." OK, that one makes more sense. It's brief, punchy; it carries a lot of utilitarian value. After all, we can't always be staring into the horrible dark maw. We can't begin every mention of 9/11 with some godawful, weepy pre-amble, but it saddens me that we hafta talk around this thing. We can't afford to do anything but face this reality head on. As a doctor, wide-eyed, faces a horrible cancer before he slips the sharpened scalpel into skin and excises it, slippery, neat and horrid from the festering flesh.

And that applies to so much else that horrible in the world around us. We have to face the horror before we can surmount it. We can't just glide on blissfully by.