12:00am: One Year Ago
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Written Sept. 18, 2001:
"It is one week since the devastating attack upon the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, and I am just beginning to return to what may be described as a quasi-normal existence, although I must confess that, for me, there will never truly be any returning to anything resembling life as it used to be. On Tuesday morning, Sept.11, I had awakened early and was at my desk here at home, on the upper east side of Manhattan, writing at 7:30 a.m. By 9:00 I was backing up my work to an online storage site I use, and had turned on the T.V. to catch an early edition of SportsCenter, wanting to monitor their take on the Giants blow-out loss to the Broncos on Monday Night Football. The phone rang at 9:15 and it was my best pal Rand, asking me... "Are you watching this?"
"What, SportsCenter?" I smiled, knowing Rand is not much of a sports fan.
"No," he said, "the World Trade Center. Two planes just flew into the towers."
I flipped to CNN News, and was dumbfounded to see the Twin Towers smoking and burning some 80 or 100 blocks to the south.
"I'll let you go so you can watch," Rand said, "just wanted to give you the heads-up."
"Thank-you, brother," I said, "I'll call you later," and hung up the phone and began watching what was rapidly becoming the most devastating event in American history.
Everything has changed since that day. It is hard to imagine that less than 2 weeks earlier Rand and I were vacationing together at my friend David's camp on a pristine lake in Maine, with our other best friend Duncan, and Ian, a new addition to our tight circle of friendship and comraderie. I grew up very near there, and spent many days and nights at that beautiful, still-virgin location. It has not changed very much, even in 35 years. We fished morning and night, releasing our catches as we have always done, and played 36 to 54 holes of frisbee golf every afternoon on a course Rand and I laid out our first two days there. Frivolous activities, and perfect vacation diversions; how trivial and meaningless they now seem in the wake of the 9-11 attacks.
When I practiced law I tried arbitration cases at the the N.L.R.B. offices in the North Tower, and had business in both towers on occasions too numerous to mention. I have been to Windows On The World at the top of the North Tower, the observation deck at the top of the South Tower, and taken the PATH train which runs below-ground. Like everyone else, the towers had become part of the topography of my life, standing tall as they did at the lower tip of Manhattan, obtrusive and majestic and, if you have seen them even but once, unforgettable. They were marvels of architecture, maybe the eighth or ninth or tenth wonders of the world. But in their essence they were merely colossal structures; it took people to breathe life into them, people that mobilized and animated the internal organs of these great microcosms of the universe, people from every walk of life, representing every nationality, ethnicity, race, creed and color.
But now they are gone.
The buildings can be rebuilt, but the people have been lost.
I struggle to find words to describe the depth of sadness in my heart, but find no words that reach far enough.
I watched, disbelieving, on live television as the South Tower came down like a crumbling house of cards, and the cameras showed brave Fire Fighters and Police Officers and Emergency Service Workers rushing into the North Tower, just after, and I was saying to my television to tell them to come back, that this one is surely coming down as well...
But lives were in danger and so they followed their instincts and their livlihoods and their bravery and nobility, and into the tower they went, heroes all, and they will never be forgotten...
The nakedness that now defines Manhattan's skyline, where once the Twin Towers reigned so supremely, mirrors the bleak sorrow of a heart that had learned to find comfort in knowing there were no greater depths of sadness to probe in this life and in this time, only to find, so tragically, that I was mistaken...
I want to believe that for every soul we have lost a new star is shining in the night sky that rises above us where Twin Towers once stood; and if that is so we can take great hope, for these bright lights will guide us as we struggle to clear away the rubble and forge a path back to the freedom and truth we sometimes have taken for granted but never forgotten, have fostered and nurtered and struggled and fought for, have learned and re-learned and learned again to live for...and die if need be.
New York City, 18 Sept '01"
We remember. We will always remember.
Posted by cronish at September 11, 2002 02:40 AM