Remember, Remember the Eleventh of September
I wouldn’t be able to tell you what I did on the 10th of September or the 12th of September, 2001. The eleventh day, however, the one five years ago to the day, is seared in memory. At the time, I lived in a small studio apartment on the first floor of a building on Lothian Road, which was an old, winding one way street in the section of Boston referred to as Brighton. There was lead in the paint and asbestos in the walls. Human engineering was seemingly reaching from all directions and trying to kill me.
It was an absolutely gorgeous late-summer-almost-autumn morning in Boston, Massachusetts. I was 21 years old and enjoying my senior year of college. At 8:50 a.m., I turned on the television, while getting dressed for class, and Matt Lauer told me that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center Towers some 8 minutes prior. There was a small fire, but no one seemed particularly alarmed. It was apparently an accident. By this time, they had gotten up a live feed of the first tower burning. All of a sudden, another plane streaks across the screen and into the second tower, at which point we extinguish any thought that accident played any role in these happenings. Two fires.
I immediately picked up the phone to call my dad, who was working on the upper west side of Manhattan. When I told him what was happening on TV, it was news to him. He told me that it was business as usual on his end of the island and that it was nothing to worry about. Relieved, I hung up the phone.
Speculation began about terrorists and news soon came over the wire about the Pentagon. Three fires. Matt Lauer told me that our country was under attack. If a terrorist organization was involved, not a single one was stepping up to claim responsibility. This fact would fuel speculation in the forthcoming days and in years to come.
September 11, 2001 is our generation’s flash-bulb memory. Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing. For the generation before, it was the day John F. Kennedy was shot. As was the case after the JFK shooting, there is growing conspiracy theorizing surrounding the tragic events. The feature film “V for Vendetta” and the internet production “Loose Change 911” suggest and allege, respectively, government knowledge and/or involvement in the attacks. The validity of their claims is beyond the scope of this post, but retrospect has certainly taught us the pitfalls of fervent, unreflective patriotism which always seems to commingle with terror.
No one played baseball for a week. People were still trying to pull bodies out of the steel and recreation of any kind would have seemed trite. But after awhile, someone realized that we – and the city in particular – needed distraction. On the 21st of September, the New York Mets returned to their city and donned their home whites for the first time in three weeks. They welcomed home the hated Atlanta Braves, who sat a nearly insurmountable 5 ½ games ahead in first place. My favorite players traded in their standard “NY” hats for caps that read “NYPD” or “FDNY” in homage to the city’s fallen heroes.
The game was tied 1-1 heading into the eighth inning. Mets’ pitcher Armando Benitez gave up an RBI double to Brian Jordan and the Braves jumped ahead 2-1. In the Mets’ half of the eighth inning, Edgardo Alfonso worked a walk, meaning that one of the greatest Mets of all time – Mike Piazza – would approach the plate as the potential go-ahead run. Right on cue, Piazza launched a ball deep into the night sky for a home run, bringing home the tying and winning runs.
Why am I talking about baseball? The 9/11 Commission Report says that of the 600 people trapped at or above the impact on the South Tower, only 18 managed to escape. In the North Tower, 1,366 people were trapped at or above impact. All of them were killed. Of the 2,700 bodies found at the site, only 1,600 could be identified. 400 rescue workers died trying to save people from the burning towers. For weeks afterwards, volunteers were sifting through the rubble unable to find any signs of life. This was the atmosphere in New York in the weeks following 9/11. When Piazza hit that ball in front of 41,235 people in Queens, it was the first time that post-9/11 New Yorkers were able to jump up and down and cheer for anything. For a brief moment, we were all just kids watching a baseball game and everything else faded into the background. The people of New York took momentary respite from all they had been dealing with and thus began the healing. Strange as it may sound, I believe that it was with that swing and the ensuing cheers that New Yorker reclaimed their city. It was the stubborn, tough, funny-sounding New Yorkers letting the world know that life would go on.
On the eleventh, I sat in my apartment a long way from home and watched on TV as the buildings which had cast a long shadow on my suburban childhood folded themselves into a heap of molten rubble. Tomorrow would be a lot like the day before in many respects: politicians of every persuasion would scheme to gain power; media people would resume selling their speculation; the hawks would clamor for retribution, while the doves would envision a world with more hugs; business men would seek financial advantage; commercials would return to the airways and we would transition back to consuming all kinds of things we didn’t need; people would once again honk their car horns and gossip about one another; people would ask their gods to take their side in the fight. But, on this, the eleventh day of September, 2001, everything was different. Everything. For one perfect New England morning, everything was still. There was a haunting quiet. As I watched that small window into the world, some 36” inches tall and luminous, I couldn’t help but marvel at the very depths to which a human can stoop; these depths which were, before my very eyes, doused in jet fuel and engulfed in flame. And here’s the poetry. On that same television screen, in juxtaposition to the fires, I beheld the very heights to which the human spirit can ascend, his arms carrying his brother, both covered in cinder.
And in that very moment, more so than any other in my life to date, I felt intimately connected to humanity’s collective consciousness. I was acutely aware of the part of our nature responsible for the commission of such acts of violence, but also the part of our psyche which openly defies them. We were human beings. And, despite all illusion to the contrary, we were in this together: each of us profoundly and irrevocably human, shrouded, even five years later, in fire and ash.
It was an absolutely gorgeous late-summer-almost-autumn morning in Boston, Massachusetts. I was 21 years old and enjoying my senior year of college. At 8:50 a.m., I turned on the television, while getting dressed for class, and Matt Lauer told me that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center Towers some 8 minutes prior. There was a small fire, but no one seemed particularly alarmed. It was apparently an accident. By this time, they had gotten up a live feed of the first tower burning. All of a sudden, another plane streaks across the screen and into the second tower, at which point we extinguish any thought that accident played any role in these happenings. Two fires.
I immediately picked up the phone to call my dad, who was working on the upper west side of Manhattan. When I told him what was happening on TV, it was news to him. He told me that it was business as usual on his end of the island and that it was nothing to worry about. Relieved, I hung up the phone.
Speculation began about terrorists and news soon came over the wire about the Pentagon. Three fires. Matt Lauer told me that our country was under attack. If a terrorist organization was involved, not a single one was stepping up to claim responsibility. This fact would fuel speculation in the forthcoming days and in years to come.
September 11, 2001 is our generation’s flash-bulb memory. Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing. For the generation before, it was the day John F. Kennedy was shot. As was the case after the JFK shooting, there is growing conspiracy theorizing surrounding the tragic events. The feature film “V for Vendetta” and the internet production “Loose Change 911” suggest and allege, respectively, government knowledge and/or involvement in the attacks. The validity of their claims is beyond the scope of this post, but retrospect has certainly taught us the pitfalls of fervent, unreflective patriotism which always seems to commingle with terror.
No one played baseball for a week. People were still trying to pull bodies out of the steel and recreation of any kind would have seemed trite. But after awhile, someone realized that we – and the city in particular – needed distraction. On the 21st of September, the New York Mets returned to their city and donned their home whites for the first time in three weeks. They welcomed home the hated Atlanta Braves, who sat a nearly insurmountable 5 ½ games ahead in first place. My favorite players traded in their standard “NY” hats for caps that read “NYPD” or “FDNY” in homage to the city’s fallen heroes.
The game was tied 1-1 heading into the eighth inning. Mets’ pitcher Armando Benitez gave up an RBI double to Brian Jordan and the Braves jumped ahead 2-1. In the Mets’ half of the eighth inning, Edgardo Alfonso worked a walk, meaning that one of the greatest Mets of all time – Mike Piazza – would approach the plate as the potential go-ahead run. Right on cue, Piazza launched a ball deep into the night sky for a home run, bringing home the tying and winning runs.
Why am I talking about baseball? The 9/11 Commission Report says that of the 600 people trapped at or above the impact on the South Tower, only 18 managed to escape. In the North Tower, 1,366 people were trapped at or above impact. All of them were killed. Of the 2,700 bodies found at the site, only 1,600 could be identified. 400 rescue workers died trying to save people from the burning towers. For weeks afterwards, volunteers were sifting through the rubble unable to find any signs of life. This was the atmosphere in New York in the weeks following 9/11. When Piazza hit that ball in front of 41,235 people in Queens, it was the first time that post-9/11 New Yorkers were able to jump up and down and cheer for anything. For a brief moment, we were all just kids watching a baseball game and everything else faded into the background. The people of New York took momentary respite from all they had been dealing with and thus began the healing. Strange as it may sound, I believe that it was with that swing and the ensuing cheers that New Yorker reclaimed their city. It was the stubborn, tough, funny-sounding New Yorkers letting the world know that life would go on.
On the eleventh, I sat in my apartment a long way from home and watched on TV as the buildings which had cast a long shadow on my suburban childhood folded themselves into a heap of molten rubble. Tomorrow would be a lot like the day before in many respects: politicians of every persuasion would scheme to gain power; media people would resume selling their speculation; the hawks would clamor for retribution, while the doves would envision a world with more hugs; business men would seek financial advantage; commercials would return to the airways and we would transition back to consuming all kinds of things we didn’t need; people would once again honk their car horns and gossip about one another; people would ask their gods to take their side in the fight. But, on this, the eleventh day of September, 2001, everything was different. Everything. For one perfect New England morning, everything was still. There was a haunting quiet. As I watched that small window into the world, some 36” inches tall and luminous, I couldn’t help but marvel at the very depths to which a human can stoop; these depths which were, before my very eyes, doused in jet fuel and engulfed in flame. And here’s the poetry. On that same television screen, in juxtaposition to the fires, I beheld the very heights to which the human spirit can ascend, his arms carrying his brother, both covered in cinder.
And in that very moment, more so than any other in my life to date, I felt intimately connected to humanity’s collective consciousness. I was acutely aware of the part of our nature responsible for the commission of such acts of violence, but also the part of our psyche which openly defies them. We were human beings. And, despite all illusion to the contrary, we were in this together: each of us profoundly and irrevocably human, shrouded, even five years later, in fire and ash.
posted by Donkey Boy at Monday, September 11, 2006
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