REMEMBERING 9/11

We were at work, just working along when I think J., the Antillean woman whose finance work comes in stops and goes and who sometimes spends time in between watching TV in the meeting room, called other people in. News travelled around the building that something was up, so one after the other went to the TV room, I was as always a little late cause I wanted to finish something. And then we just stood there, flabbergasted, mouths open. Couldnt believe it. None of the usual hallway discussions then, yet, just everyone grouped around and just ... startled. Silent. When the second plane hit there was some nervous laughing, as at something that just momentarily baffles the mind, overload. Then much speculation, discussion after all, about who? what? how? .... how much to come, still?

But primarily just perplexed bafflement, I remember. It was only on day 2 or 3, reading the accounts of survivors in the newspaper, little portraits of those who died, that I suddenly cried, just couldnt help it, so many random innocent people dead, so many ordinary folks suddenly lost their husband, wife. And in such a focused, knife-edge honed-in spectacular attack that there was no time, no opportunity for the mind to numb out or instinctively filter out, like one finds oneself doing with the incremental news from nasty wars.

No way to look around it, though many, exasperatingly, started doing so at work on day two, three, conspiracy theories, rationalisations that "you've got to remember what America did, too", etc. Felt this utter reluctance from some colleagues to just acknowledge that this one time, Americans were victims. There was a correlation in that with where people were from and ideology, but no one-on-one correspondence. Two Moroccan colleagues were immediately defensive and distrustful, a Turkish one swept their budding conspiracy theories aside. I was disgusted by that defensiveness, that reluctance, I remember.

There was also a minute of silence in The Netherlands. People kept to it, I remember looking down from the office window (we were downtown), and seeing people stand still on the sidewalk, and wait.

or maybe even because they were told to get the hell outta dodge?

If you don't have $20 to fill up a car you don't have, how the hell are you suppose to leave? Where were they suppose to go? You are blaming people who only wanted to save the only things they had; their home and what little possessions they owned.

I

No, that's not what he meant. He was talking about woiyo's dismay at the victims' lack of good old pioneering rebuilding spirit. Hard to rebuild a city that's not safe for human habitation.

yup.

happy monday ducks. so ya headed for a southeast, central or southwest hot city ?

having spent a long period of time in just that situation, i assure you you're preaching to the choir on this one, bella.

Southeast, DTOM, thanks for asking. It's an exciting time I tell ya.

And then that damn plane crashed in uptown!!!

Was it the Bronx????


It was waaaaaaaaaay uptown.


Aaaaargh.


I do not think any of us can look at a plane again in the same way.

One crashed in queens.

I was standing in a parking lot,trrying to teach some people how to back up a truck.
My wife called me and told me to turn the car radio.
My whole class gathered around to hear the news.

Within 2 hours,I got the call to mobilize and report to the reserve center for activation.