all over again
Sep. 11th, 2002 07:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threeplusfireIn a few minutes they will stop the Tower clock, and everywhere across this country I suppose there will be frozen moments. Me, I am sitting in the apartment with the shades drawn closed because I'm not sure I can face the sun just yet.
When I was younger, I wanted to live through some generation-defining moment, that I could speak about the way my mother does now and then about Kent State or the Kennedy assasination. Human, I suppose. This longing to feel connected to others no matter what, in faith or blood.
For me, the single most horrifying thought to come out of September 11th centers around the planes. Not just that ordinary flights were turned into weapons, but the passengers. There were dozens of people, probably people not unlike myself on those planes. The image of those people, trapped and hurtling towards the World Trade Center, towards the Pentagon, towards a Pennsylvania field... it is quite frankly, one of the most awful things I can imagine. Every time I've flown in the past year, I think about that.
I wish I had something profound to say, something brilliant, something that would make all the politics of this moment fall behind. I'm not sure there is anything to say. If there was, all the terror in this world surely would have brought it out by now, right? But I'm not feeling very political at this moment.
I remember last year. I remember how I sat on the edge of the coffee table, wearing only my bedspread clutched tight around my chest, how I had the television turned up to maximum volume because the maintenance men were cleaning out our leaky air conditioner. I remember the horror-stricken faces of the newspeople as the towers came down, and the dusty grey twilight that descended on those streets. I remember watching all day, until I couldn't stand it and I drove to Metro, crying the entire way. I wanted to see my friends, and know that the whole world wasn't on fire.
When I was younger, I wanted to live through some generation-defining moment, that I could speak about the way my mother does now and then about Kent State or the Kennedy assasination. Human, I suppose. This longing to feel connected to others no matter what, in faith or blood.
For me, the single most horrifying thought to come out of September 11th centers around the planes. Not just that ordinary flights were turned into weapons, but the passengers. There were dozens of people, probably people not unlike myself on those planes. The image of those people, trapped and hurtling towards the World Trade Center, towards the Pentagon, towards a Pennsylvania field... it is quite frankly, one of the most awful things I can imagine. Every time I've flown in the past year, I think about that.
I wish I had something profound to say, something brilliant, something that would make all the politics of this moment fall behind. I'm not sure there is anything to say. If there was, all the terror in this world surely would have brought it out by now, right? But I'm not feeling very political at this moment.
I remember last year. I remember how I sat on the edge of the coffee table, wearing only my bedspread clutched tight around my chest, how I had the television turned up to maximum volume because the maintenance men were cleaning out our leaky air conditioner. I remember the horror-stricken faces of the newspeople as the towers came down, and the dusty grey twilight that descended on those streets. I remember watching all day, until I couldn't stand it and I drove to Metro, crying the entire way. I wanted to see my friends, and know that the whole world wasn't on fire.
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no subject
Date: 2002-09-11 09:44 pm (UTC)I have thought several times about what those passengers were thinking as they watched their plane hurtle towards the WTC. It's like something out of a horror movie. What a horrible last thought.