9/11 Stuff & Thoughts

Ceremony, vigils, guitars strumming, petitions, and demonstrations mixed with tears and loud voices. That's the 9/11 memorial day for you and about all that I saw and witnessed, some close up, but mostly from afar. Passing by on my way out of the city and to the E train subway, there was a demonstration across the street next to the hole. I caught a quick glance at one of the signs: "the end is near!" And another: "the truth is out there.". Immediately my memories juxtaposed me between the X-Files and Contact. I believe that's not necessarily the connection they were all trying to invoke, but it definitely threw my thoughts of 9/11 a-kilter.

I'm feeling like I don't really want to remember all that. I knew people in the buildings and even though none of them died in the terror, I don't want to recall yet the horror in my sister's voice over the phone recounting what she saw on TV as the buildings burned and fell.

So, now working across the street from the hole, it comes to mind every day, and if I let it sink in, I would shed a tear each and every day - not just today. Even though my apartment's not in the city, I wasn't brought up here, and just recently got a job downtown, in my heart and now I feel I've been a New Yorker for a long time.

"Click"

I was writing a friend, peterpandanyc, in response to a reply to his post that I deleted because I didn't like the way it sounded when I read it to myself. He said in his note, "I would have liked to be there with a friend like you, although I think I would have had trouble talking." I felt the same way, even though our experiences and way of dealing with the memories are different. My email:

I haven't cried about 9/11 with anyone in a while, and the first person beyond my sister with whom I really shared anything like that emotion for 9/11 was with Matt (most recently) and with a cab driver in Chicago soon after the incident who unknowingly and unwittingly evoked a floodgate of emotion by a simply question, "Is it still smoking?". Having found out that a friend (peterpandanyc) was down here, standing together in our thoughts and memories would have been very interesting. But, needless to say, I was gone from the area walking fast and shutting my eyes because I didn't want to face the trauma of the memories again so close to the site.

As I mentioned in my first post today, I look at the hole every day. There is not a day that goes by that I don't look around and wonder what it must have been like to work around the buildings daily and in this area only to have experienced the site demolished so few years ago. I do talk about it with people at work who were here at the time and it's traumatic for them still as well - like going through a war as a civilian. I can't imagine what it must have felt like being here on that day and in the weeks/months following. It took me a while to come down here to Ground Zero for the first time. 9/11 not only left a hole in the ground and shocked bones in their new graves, but also a deeply rooted hole in my heart filled with sadness, grief, dispair, and a sense of abandonment of my innocence when the world around me had been a safe place and was still my oyster. Even though I didn't live or work in the city at that moment, my life changed instantly and drastically that one specific day and I remember unhappily the "click" sound that change made in my soul.