I have a staff meeting today.
Five years ago, in another building only a few blocks from here, I had a staff meeting on this day. Funny thing, it was on the 8th floor too. I had ordered food from Viga. But I won’t order food from Viga today.
Five years ago, a staff meeting got cancelled.
Five years ago Downtown Boston shut down. We weren’t evacuated we just left in a haze of confusion. I remember the gridlock traffic downtown. Nothing moving. Bumper to bumper. I remember the people standing on the street corners looking up at the sky. It felt apocalyptic. I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t alone all day. Phone calls were made, friends were visited and a media blitz of images first seared into my mind then overwhelmed all senses.
Five years ago today, my cousin had a baby, his name is Ryan.
Five years ago today the weather was perfect. The sky was clear and blue the temperature… about 80.
Today is cold. I’m not dressed for the weather.
Five years ago today… September 11th.
Today I thought I’d have Falafel King instead of Viga. This was viewed as insensitive. I just wanted falafel.
3 comments:
So strange... I was in Ascot and got a call from Zoe, who had gotten a call from Mark, asking me to turn on the tv because someone had told her a plane had crashed into NYC and she couldn't locate a tv...
It just struck me as odd that I would be a staff meeting similar to the one that day. Any given Tuesday.
It all flashed back so vividly, the images. The people jumping. The people who held hands and jumped. I remember that, I remember thinking about that last gesture of humanity, and grace, even love. I don't know who they were but I remember thinking it was good that they weren't alone. They made that last decision together. Maybe they were friends, coworkers, strangers, lovers. I don't know. But they held hands in their last moments on earth.
We don’t talk about the gory details of that day anymore. We suppress the images, we pretend something else, something cleaner, something more compact... But I remember that. I remember thinking about that about the way they fell.
I had recently watched a show on PBS about New York. About that factory fire, where the fire exits were locked and women were trapped on the 9th floors of a building. It might have been ten stories. I don’t know, but the factory caught fire and the women where trapped because one of the exits was locked. So they jumped.
On this program they read what local reporter had written at the time. About the fire about a noise… a somewhat rhythmic noise that he couldn’t figure out. You could hear a noise in the program as he read, and when it dawned on me what the noise was he put a name to it. It was the bodies… hitting the pavement. It just didn’t seem to stop.
So on 9/11 I had a grim story running through my head. And the images of the people jumping… burned into my mind. I remember seeing it on TV. Looking at distant shots and realizing people were jumping. And my heart ached. I though about being in a burning building 80 floors up…
But we don’t talk about the gruesome details anymore. And I’m sure I should let go of the images in my mind.
It’s just… I’m not afraid of terrorists. I’m not afraid of tall buildings, or plains or trains, or ball parks, concerts, crowds. I’m not afraid. I flew a month later, I wasn’t afraid. I was in new york weeks after 9/11. It was empty. I’d never seen New York without all of the people. People were off with their families. People were out getting some. So was I.
So I guess I don’t want to entirely push passed the horror. Because I feel like it denies the scale of things… the event itself. We forget so much.
I don’t know what my point is here… I guess just to remember. Memory is fleet and fading… And we sometimes forget how big something was how overwhelming. We didn’t work that day. We didn’t play. We gathered our friends together and held on to each other. Clung to each other, in a way I never have before.
No, it's true. British tv doesn't sugar coat and it doesn't lie. They actually zoomed in one one of the people jumping while they were filming the towers. I remember watching the second plane hit, and then the pentagone minutes after the plane hit, and then the one which was crashed away from it's target by all those souls on it who decided it was best to kill themselves without killing anyone else in the process. I cannot imagine. I remember one of the Xena online community was on that plane. The one which didn't hit its target. And it's all the Xena forums talked about for a long time.
The papers, the next morning, had a photo of those people jumping hand in hand. Really close up. You could almost see who they were, but not quite.
I think to ignore the horror of the event is to disrespect it. I think those who died on 9/11 - or in the massacres in Rowanda, or in Nazi concentration camps, or of the black death, or on a Roman cross - all these horrors in human history... to ignore the details is almost to pretend no one actually suffered.
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