| | speak memory
Today it
is the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. This is
the day where I've always tried to not be in New York, because it was
too painful and I hated being reminded of it. This year I am the
farthest I've ever been, halfway around the world.
I don't necessarily think of myself as a survivor, because I was there
and I wasn't. I watched it happen from my apartment window with
my roommate and a friend, but I didn't understand what I was
seeing. How can you comprehend it?
I went to class after a woman first stopped me and my roommate to tell
us to look south. We must have been such an anomaly--two girls
chatting away merrily as we passed through Astor Square, oblivious to
the drama in plain sight if we had only turned our heads. I
didn't know what to do except to go to class. It's impossible to
understand--two planes gashing skyscrapers.
At first I even started to go towards the World Trade Center to see
what was going on, before turning back and thinking that I should call
my parents and let them know I was okay.
To this day I don't really understand what I saw.
I think of myself more as a witness. It's hard for me to
articulate why I feel so sad about that day. Luckily, I didn't
know anyone who died in the attacks, but of course I knew people who
did. You would think that five years later, I wouldn't feel so
sad about it, that I would have time to get used to it, but it isn't
like that.
I have my own memories of the World Trade Center, of the elementary
school in the Trade Center's shadows where I worked, of the TKTS booth
in 7 WTC, of the person who told me in my early days in New York that
the way to find north was to look for the Empire State Building and the
way to find south was to look for the Twin Towers. I never went
up to the top, because the World Trade Center towers were such an
ordinary part of the New York landscape. Like everyone else, I
thought the towers would always be there.
I wasn't so fearful then. I remember the person I was on that
day, because I envy her quite a bit for her sheer confidence in the
world. It was the beginning of my senior year, and it was a time
when I felt invincible. I was not much older than the students I
teach now.
Having been through one, I still have a lot of dreams about being in a
terrorist attack, or being kidnapped and held hostage. This is
the world we live in now, where these events aren't the stuff of
nightmare but sadly commonplace.
In my last year in New York, especially after the bombings in Madrid
and London, I would quietly freak out when the subway stalled along the
Brooklyn Bridge. Nowadays I have to mentally talk myself through
takeoffs and landing, if I haven't exhausted myself to sleep through
the whole ordeal first.
Anything can happen. You can look at that as a statement of hope or a statement of fear.
Today I mourn not only those who died in the attacks, but the world
before September 11, 2001. I mourn the world of September 10th, a
world where it was still possible to hope.
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| | Posted 9/11/2006 11:32 PM - 323 Views - 8 eProps - 4 comments
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