Day: September 11, 2001

Of course, this was the ONE DAY that I left my camera at home. The site of the Towers from the street and from work was fiction, surrealism, completely impossible to really accept. If you’ve ever been to New York, you know that you can see the Towers from all over the place. They’re like a pair of compass needles for the whole city. My whole trip back to Brooklyn was punctuated by hundreds of views of the smoke rising from the rubble where I’d otherwise be seeing the Towers themselves.

Midtown was completely insane. From the office, I could see people swarming all over the streets, and people standing on the roofs of every building around, staring fixedly at the plume. Down on the street, it was mayhem. People were rushing everywhere, generally north. Tempers were flaring in the panic — especially in the fights over cabs. Paranoia was out of control. I passed an SUV on 3rd Avenue whose engine caught fire, and people were just flipping out when they saw the smoke. Every time an F16 flew overhead, every head around looked up — everyone is afraid of planes today. I joined a throng of people heading to the Queens-Midtown Tunnel after seeing cardboard signs go up saying the tunnel was open and every car around was taking people out of Manhattan. It really was an effective evacuation of the area. I caught a cab with a few other people, then walked home from Long Island City — a long, hot, weird journey filled with other refugees from a day that started out like any other.

I can’t turn away from the news. The jingoism is driving me crazy. This is an attack against US, for God’s sake, not democracy itself. Can the rhetoric, because no one’s good enough to get it right. I actually prefer watching Adolph Guiliani and Governor Pataki talk about it, because they’re shying away from the “threat to American ideals” bit (for the most part) and concentrating on the massive, massive rescue effort that is underway to control the chaos and the disaster in lower Manhattan.

When the dust settles (literally), I just know that Shrub is gonna do something stupid. Yes, we’re going to have to do something, but he’s not the person I want to call the shots right now. Even worse, he might come out of this as some kind of hero, just because he’s in office right now. Whatever peope are able to do to handle the situation, he’ll be able to claim credit for his leadership. Man, I bet they couldn’t get Colin Powell on the phone fast enough this morning.

I heard some guy on the street telling a cop that he just saw a plane hit the World Trade Center. He didn’t look like a crank, but the cops seemed as dumbfounded as I was confused about why they were listening to him. Until I looked up and saw the cloud of smoke in the sky. I went up to my office on the 20th floor of a midtown office building, where I could see the smoking top of the WTC through the window, while a TV showed a replay of the second plane colliding with one of the towers. They’ve shut down all the airport, bridges, tunnels, and downtown subways while they wait to see if the damage is done for now, or if the city is actually under attack by terrorists.

I’m trying to log on to various news sites for updates, but I think there are going to be lots of logjams on the new feeds today.

My brother was in the WTC when the bomb went off there in 1993, and he heard this massive boom and turned around to see hundreds of people starting to run his way. Before he was even able to figure out what was going on, he had to turn and run before he got trampled.

Day to day, we forget to worry about things like this, but every once in a while we’re reminded that it’s damn dangerous to live in a major city with so many powerful symbols. We’re a big, sitting duck in many ways.

But I’m OK, in case you’re worrying, Mom.