September 11
First of all, let me state up front that I LOATHE these kind of 5-year-retrospectives, as if 9-11 was Live Aid or something, and with everyone else posting about the disaster, it begins to feel like a morose circle jerk. After all, it’s not like the government (or the majority of the American people, if you believe the 2004 election returns) have learned anything: still driving our gas guzzlers, no one’s asked to sacrifice for the nation, nor has anyone (outside of our volunteer military) volunteered to help the nation (and looking at recruiting problems, no one plans to volunteer anytime soon). But hey who gives a shit in our lovely banana republic of Sitcomistan?
I slept late that morning, since I didn’t have to be at work until 10:30 or so. The phone rang, and I heard my housemate answer. “Hello? No, he’s still sleeping Mrs. Skwire. Yes, I’ll have him call.” I got out of bed and asked him what my mom wanted. “Nothing, ” he said, “just some planes crashed into the World Trade Center.” he said it nonchalantly, as if he was saying it looked like it might rain.
“What?” I turned on the television, and saw the second plane fly into the building. It was one of the most fucked up things I have ever seen, all in slow motion. Then there were video feeds from ground level, people running as the initial debris, and then the towers, fell to the ground. I watched people jumping from windows, diving headfirst to escape the explosions. I called my mom back. We agreed that the country had been attacked. I got dressed and walked over to the coffeeshop up the street. No one there had heard anything, so I went home and loaned them my TV for the day.
The rest of the day was spent on the phone to New York where I have a lot of friends. I think I permanently offended Murray Nash, by observing that in a sick way I was envious that he was right there on the site of history. I leanred late at night that my friend Chuck had gotten up late for work and decided not to go in.
My boss at the time was a sociopath, and I mean this to be taken literally. I could go on for reams about the way she treated her employees, but her response that day to the attacks is illustrative. “These attacks are horrible: my train was late, and I’m not goign to be able to get a flight to LA for next week’s conference.” Within 3 days I would be fired.
My friend Rupa was working at an elementary school in the city when the attacks occurred. Her boyfriend at the time worked at the WTC and escaped. Rupa didn’t know this at the time, and the school board was keeping everything quiet about the attacks so as not to disturb the students. All of a sudden Josh appeared in her classroom, covered from head to toe with white dust. He had run from the site, without stopping to her school, which was near Central Park. “Look what happened,” he kept crying, “look what happened.”
My friend Claiborne’s brother worked at the WTC, and was on his way to an early meeting. As he got out of the cab, he looked up instinctively at those two gleaming towers, and saw the first plane lough into the building. He threw money at the cabbie and began to run uptown. He tried to call his wife on his cellphone, but had no signal since the cell towers were on top of the WTC and were now inoperative. All the circuits on the payphones were overloaded as well: he wasn’t able to get in touch with his family (who by now thought he was dead) until 6:30 that evening.
There’s more, but too much for my brain to handle right now.
Honestly, it’s what happened after 9-11 that disturbs me more: the Bush Adminsitration’s success at harnessing American fears to set up a quasi-police state, as well as conditions for permanent war thanks to their PNAC fetish. Gitmo; illegal wiretapping; Iraq; the exploitation of partisan division here at home: these things worry me far more than Osama bin Laden.
September 12th, 2006 at 2:32 am
I think I permanently offended Murray Nash, by observing that in a sick way I was envious that he was right there on the site of history.
You might get a kick out of this http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2002/09/07/forbidden/index.html and this http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2002/09/11/forbidden_letters/index.html Salon: Forbidden thoughts about 9/11
Anyway, I know how you feel. I’m a bit of a bug on history, plus I’m in Caleefornia, so it didn’t affect us quite as personally as it did east-coasters. I was consciously aware that this was a Big. Fucking. Historical. Event. and I was determined to see and read and listen to everything, and remember it for posterity. Not just the events, but the reactions, even if they were “forbidden”, and how society was going to change because of it. I’ve always been frustrated with the baby boomers who can tell you exactly what they had for lunch the day JFK was shot, but when you ask them how they felt about LBJ’s policies compared to Kennedy’s, they just give you a blank look. No sense of context.