My wife was just complaining to me about all the canned inauthentic blathering that’s going on around this anniversary of 9/11/2001. I guess it’s inevitable that some people just crank out stuff that’s by the numbers, just because it’s the thing to do on this day. That’s how it goes. Just a job. She appreciates stuff that’s grounded in actual particular experience. So here 10 minutes of my memories from my particular experience living in NYC when the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center. My then girlfriend, now wife, lived pretty close. I saw the first building go down and it was like a hallucination, a dream. But we never woke up. Luckily, no one close to me died. Anyway, here are a few of my memories, more for me than for you, maybe for my grandkids, if I ever have any. OK, that’s not totally true. If you watch this and you’re moved to leave a comment, I’d like that. If not, at least making this helped me feel a little better. Peace.
Added later—My wife doesn’t want to watch this. Doesn’t want to relive it. I guess that day hit her a lot harder than it hit me.
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2 responses so far ↓
Carl Weaver // Sep 11, 2006 at 6:14 pm
Thanks, Jonny. Your description really touched me. I feel so lucky not to have been there.
Such a horrid thing to experience, I am sure. I was living near Albany at the time and Elise was in Worcester and she was supposed to take the bus out that night to visit but Greyhound stopped running. Then Amtrak stopped and it was very hard to find a way to be together. No bus, train, plane… She got one of the last rental cars available and came out to NY and I remember a sense of relief when she finally got there, like things would be okay for us.
On 9/11 around lunchtime I took my group at work on a walk through the woods outside our office. We needed to get outside and mostly walked in silence, a stray comment here and there. “How many do you think died?” my coworker asked. He was my age, and I can still remember how his brow twisted as he asked the question. I looked down the Hudson River and thought in terms of attendance at baseball games. That’s how I think of large numbers of people - by a time I was at a Durham Bulls game and the park had sold about 10,000 tickets. I remember how packed the people were, all the seats filled and the voices lifting as the game went on.
Of course, at the time we had no idea how many could have perished but I guessed about 10,000. Part of me wanted to be there to help folks, perhaps in a makeshift hospital, and I thought of jumping in the river, making my way down the Hudson, taking advantage of the unending current to carry me to where I could do something.
But something really broke my heart about the days after 9/11. It was the sense of powerlessness. I was hoping to go down to NYC to assist and they were turning folks away because of all the volunteers already there. The lines stayed long at the Red Cross blood centers but then they closed the doors because they didn’t need nearly as much as they had hoped. I would read and watch TV and couldn’t escape it but also couldn’t do anything tangible to help. To me, that was the worst. When my country and fellow humans needed me most, I couldn’t step up and offer a hand.
I think it is safe to say that possibly everyone in the Northeast was at most two degrees of separation away from someone who was lost or else directly affected by being there. It’s something like I hope we will never see again. I hope next time the whole country is brought together by something so emotionally charged we can all have positive memories from it and a greater sense of love for each other, instead of hatred, fear and anger. Those days seem so distant, so remote from the world we live in today, but I think hope is the key to making this happen.
Jonny Goldstein // Sep 11, 2006 at 7:26 pm
I appreciate your comment Carl. Yeah. I’m just happy
to live in a reality where stuff isn’t blowing up all the time, like for people in Southern Lebanon, Iraq, Zaire,Sudan, and all the other troubled places on the planet. 9/11 was was a horrible blow, but it was so localized in those few square blocks. I mean the rest of the city who didn’t have direct connections hurt or killed spent the week dining at outdoor cafes. And it’s not like bombs have been going off right and left since then, at least in this country. Anyhow, I feel awful for the people really hurt by the attacks, and I appreciate the relative peace I’m lucky enough to live in, at least for now.
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