Reflections on 9/11

{pic: the journal I started the week of 9/11/01}

This feels a little self-indulgent, writing down what’s been going through my head as I remember. I’m still alive, and I didn’t know anyone that died. Not sure what my impetus to share is. I just started reading “A Path with Heart,” which is a sort of Buddhism-101 text, and if there’s any day to honor the human emotional experience, this might be it.

I had just moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan (from the Upper East) a month before. I came out of the subway (too lazy to walk to work) at 14th Street, headed into Dunkin Donuts as always, not paying attention to a damn thing. Came out, saw the people staring, saw the towers straight down Sixth Avenue. Ran to a payphone — cell networks were already overloaded — to call my mom, and let her know that I was “far” away, about 2 miles.

On the walk to my office, someone had placed a TV set on the sidewalk with the news, and I tried to reconcile the images of the burning towers playing on the screen, and the burning towers a few miles directly south of me. I could not.

I was on the phone with my cousin who worked in Brooklyn when the first tower fell; all I remember is screaming everywhere, on the phone, in my office, on the street. We ran to the roof of our building, where a photography equipment rental shop in the building had set up loads of equipment. I used some binoculars to look downtown. I wish I hadn’t. The second tower fell, and the watching the debris cloud roll up towards us was like watching huge ocean waves crash against rocks, on an unimaginable scale. Screaming.

The Pentagon plane. Finding out that my cousin, who lived down the road, was fine.

The Pennsylvania plane. Collapsing onto the floor on hearing about it; the relentlessness, combined with the fact that my brother was working in that area at the time, took me over. He was fine, much farther away than I originally had thought.

Leaving the office… to go where? I was consumed by confusion. Was it over? Were there more? Was it safe to do… anything?

Back at my apartment, there was a thin layer of dust, not much at all. Or was there any? I can’t remember now. It was silent except for sirens. I couldn’t stay there alone, in an empty neighborhood. There were soon to be blockades, I was sure, and my driver’s license didn’t show my new address. I took a ConEd bill with me to prove I lived there, just in case.

A slow slog uptown to be with friends. No subways running, but buses were free. Traffic was at a standstill. On the bus I rode, there were two people covered in dust and debris. No one knew what to say to them. People spontaneously burst into tears. This continued in the weeks and months following in the city—sometimes you would see people that just burst into tears right on the street. I think I comforted one or two of them; the rest, I blanked as to what would be appropriate, and in that moment of doubt, I kept walking.

Stopped first at friends’ on 28th Street, and watched WTC7 fall. How did it fall? I still have questions about that one.

Then finally on 94th & 2nd with one of my longest-time friends. We didn’t know what to do. After a while, we couldn’t watch the news anymore. We tried changing the channels, but our only choices seemed to be news and cartoons. Cartoons. Couldn’t do that, either. We went to a bar.

On Wednesday, I couldn’t stop crying when the news would show people’s posters of their missing loved ones. There had to be a better way. I walked to NYU Hospital, got in front of a TV camera, and said I was launching a web project to scan, upload and display flyers, that rescue and hospital workers could look at to identify people. We didn’t know that there would be no more survivors pulled, and no identifying remains.

Another long-time friend, a developer-genius, got in touch to say he would code the app I wanted to build. Hundreds got in touch via email, we set up a group, I started delegating tasks, hustling in-kind donations, and managing volunteers. Everyone wanted to do something. No one wanted to sit their pain and confusion, least of all, me. We worked all day and night for two days, until the city asked people creating online projects to stop, because there was too much misinformation floating around, and they would be creating a universal service for all. We stopped our project. I never saw the fruits of the city’s labor. Maybe there just wasn’t a need beyond our own to feel useful.

On Wednesday night, I went to a bar that I’d started hanging out at in my new neighborhood. There were only 8 or 9 of us. When it started pouring rain, we started crying all over again, and then ran out into the rain, jumped and splashed and danced awkward dances.

The weeks and months following are flashbulb memories.

I hated being asked by non-New Yorkers where I was and I how I felt.

Before it was called “9/11,” we called it “the tragedy” or “the disaster.” I think there were other names for it, too.

I lost my job leading the digital division of a small ad agency a month later. The partners cried when they told me. I considered striking out on my own as a writer, artist, something, but instead took a comfortable 9-5 job with a company I used to work for.

I felt more alive for many months, more connected and in flow. I grew an ego the size of Jupiter, there was an arrogance to surviving and moving on that came to me.

I remember standing in line at the grocery store shortly after they were reopened downtown, and actually had stuff in them. I had loaded up (unsurprisingly) with junk food of all stripes; the couple in front of me loaded up on fresh vegetables and Good Things. We stared at each others’ bounty. The two men finally started laughing and one said to me, “Maybe we should be living a little more like you right now.” I laughed harder, and said I was thinking the same thing looking at their goods. We hugged before they left the store.

In November, the Leonid meteor shower came around. I decided to stay up all night after a Dan Bern concert and take a 4am train to Long Beach, Long Island to watch them. I invited a few friends, who invited a few friends, and it ended up being 10 or 15 of us. We were blown away by the show. Dazzling.

The first issue of The Onion after 9/11 was the most cathartic humor experience I’ve ever had in my entire life, hands down. Especially “How Have We Spent The Last Two Weeks?”

The friends I made in the months following, most who hung out at the bar I mentioned, are still some of my closest friends. I am thankful, deeply grateful, for that, and that I had the luxury of continuing to live my life, and that I had lost no one in the tragedy.