Writer's Block: 9/11
Sep. 20th, 2008 01:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wwcitizen[Error: unknown template qotd]
Sadly, I have waited and waited to answer this Writer's Block for 9/11. It's sad on two fronts: 1) On 9/11 this year, we didn't have the TV on while I was playing with my 1.5 year-old nephew at the beach and didn't realize that it was 9/11/2008 and 2) things in that area of town haven't progressed as noticeably as they should have by now. Politics, red-tape, a plethora of billionaires wanting "their share of the new construction", and baffling delays have staidly kept away the future.
I was driving to work that day listening to the news on WXPN (from Philadelphia). Even still, when I begin to talk or write about that day 7 years ago, my eyes tear. My sister's screams on the phone about the towers falling still rip into my mind; the earth shook in my heart that day and the world changed in that moment. I sensed my Weltanschauung falling apart over the phone line and in my tears outside my Princeton office building.
I didn't go into NYC for about 2 months afterwards; I didn't want the destruction to be real. I rented all the movies I could that contained the towers to see them again in all their glory and the pristine NY skyline as it was; as it should have still been.
My first flight out of the area was around Halloween to Minneapolis, where there were threats of a terrorist attack on the Mall of America. I specifically went to that mall in reckless defiance to the threats. Less than 2 weeks after that trip, I was in Chicago. The cab driver asked me where I was from and then whether I knew someone who had worked in the towers; I had to answer, "Yes, quite a few people. They're all alive, thank God." I pretended to take a call so I could cry out the window because I couldn't continue talking about it.
Change can happen over time without realization of its coming. 9/11 was an instant, drastic, painful change. And I even feel so small talking about it because it's so big.
Sadly, I have waited and waited to answer this Writer's Block for 9/11. It's sad on two fronts: 1) On 9/11 this year, we didn't have the TV on while I was playing with my 1.5 year-old nephew at the beach and didn't realize that it was 9/11/2008 and 2) things in that area of town haven't progressed as noticeably as they should have by now. Politics, red-tape, a plethora of billionaires wanting "their share of the new construction", and baffling delays have staidly kept away the future.
I was driving to work that day listening to the news on WXPN (from Philadelphia). Even still, when I begin to talk or write about that day 7 years ago, my eyes tear. My sister's screams on the phone about the towers falling still rip into my mind; the earth shook in my heart that day and the world changed in that moment. I sensed my Weltanschauung falling apart over the phone line and in my tears outside my Princeton office building.
I didn't go into NYC for about 2 months afterwards; I didn't want the destruction to be real. I rented all the movies I could that contained the towers to see them again in all their glory and the pristine NY skyline as it was; as it should have still been.
My first flight out of the area was around Halloween to Minneapolis, where there were threats of a terrorist attack on the Mall of America. I specifically went to that mall in reckless defiance to the threats. Less than 2 weeks after that trip, I was in Chicago. The cab driver asked me where I was from and then whether I knew someone who had worked in the towers; I had to answer, "Yes, quite a few people. They're all alive, thank God." I pretended to take a call so I could cry out the window because I couldn't continue talking about it.
Change can happen over time without realization of its coming. 9/11 was an instant, drastic, painful change. And I even feel so small talking about it because it's so big.
