Yesterday I went into work early, getting there at 9a to fix a huge emergency that had hit on Friday night at 6p, aka too late to do anything about it, and then proceeded to work for twelve hours with a break to go to the dentist again, then came home and played with the Sims for a few hours, so when I finally went to bed at nearly 3a, I set my alarm for 8.30a instead of 8a.

When the alarm rang, I hit snooze three times, finally getting up at nearly 9a. I walked into the living room, turned on the TV, and instead of watching something that I have TiVoed, as usual, I decided to turn on the Today Show, and there was a shot of the World Trade Center. And it was on fire.

I stood there in my underwear and bare feet, trying to process this information, and there was Janice Huff on the phone saying, "Didn't you see? Roll back the tape, it was a plane that crashed into the second tower, you can see it at the top right of the screen--see? There, there! And it passes behind the building and then in crashed into it!"

I guess I must have dressed before going upstairs, but I don't actually remember doing so, but no-one was in the living room, so I figured that they were still asleep and went back down. I wondered if I could go into work. I wondered if the tunnel would be closed.

I called in and talked to the receptionist, whose phone was ringing off the hook, and told her everything that I had seen, everything that they had said on TV, and then she patched me through to The Raccoon. I said that I thought that I might not be able to get in, and she said that she had had no trouble. I said that I would try if she liked, but then they said that all bridges and tunnels had closed, so that was that. She hung up because she was trying to reach her ex-husband, who works in the financial district, and who is almost impossible to reach at the best of times.

By that time, Cynthia had come downstairs to see if I had the TV on. "Where's Fran?" "He's at work, and I can't reach him." Of course, normally he only goes in around 10a, but this morning, this morning was the morning that he chose to go in. He works in midtown, so we knew that he wasn't anywhere near the line of fire, but we also knew that he was unlikely to be able to get home for hours and hours and hours.

And on the TV, the twin towers were still burning. They kept showing that plane hitting it, over and over and over. I wondered if I should call my mother, but it was so early in California and I didn't want to wake her. Then there was a shot of the Pentagon, and it was on fire. I called Amy again, the receptionist at work, and told her, also that there was no way in or out of Manhattan. She lives in Queens, and was trying to answer all of the phones and figure out how she would get home. Then I decided to wake my Mom.

"Hello?"
"Mom, it's me."
"What time is it?"
"Early. A quarter to seven or so."
"What is it? What's wrong?"
"It's the World Trade Center, two planes crashed into it, it's on fire, and a plane crashed into the Pentagon. We are at war."
"Are you joking?"
"No, it's really happening. The planes crashed into the towers on purpose, they are saying, hijacked planes, passenger planes."
"O my God, o my God..."
"And I wanted to let you know that I'm home, that I hadn't gone into the city."
"I'm so glad..."
"O my God, the tower is falling, one of the towers is falling! I cannot believe this, you have to go downstairs and turn on the TV."
"I will, I am. I'm so glad your safe."
"I didn't want you waking up and panicking and the phone lines being down and you not being able to reach me."

And then I hung up and we just sat there, staring at the TV. I have never in my life seen a sight as shocking as only one of the twin towers standing alone. That sight was more shocking than seeing the other one go down. It was like something out of a movie, it didn't look real, but only half the World Trade Center standing looked like something in a dream, something never even imagined. And all the while, hearing through the open windows more sirens than I ever thought possible, and big planes flying low overhead. I kept expecting another explosion, but they must have been fire or military or news planes and helicopters, because there wasn't one.

It was getting harder to call work, I kept not getting through. They were saying that the PATH was still running, and I was trying to get the info to The Raccoon so that she could get home. But I couldn't get through, and then the dial tone cut out. We went upstairs to see whether it had happened to Cynthia's phone too, and it had, so I took her cell phone up to the top floor to try to get through again.

After a few tries I got through and got to her, and she said, "Don't come in!" She couldn't have been watching any TV, or she would have known that it didn't ever cross my mind to try to come in all intrepidly, by swimming the river or something. I told her, "All bridges and tunnels are closed, but the PATH is running, take the PATH!" then the cell cut out and she couldn't hear me. Cynthia ran upstairs and said that the tower had fallen, and I thought of course it fell, we saw it fall, but maybe it had only half fallen then, and that the PATH was closed now, but NJ rail was running out of Penn.

I couldn't get another signal, so we went downstairs and stared at the TV. And that was when I realized that what Cynthia meant when she said that the tower had fallen, that she meant the remaining tower. That the entire World Trade Center was completely gone. Neither of us could move. When it was just on fire, at the beginning, I kept saying out loud that I wanted to go down to the boulevard and see it live, but that I only had a few pictures in my camera and no other film. But after it was gone, all I could think was that I couldn't bear the thought of seeing it.

They kept showing the collapses and the second crash from different angles, they kept showing people on the street covered in thick white dust--they looked like statues come to life.

I have never felt less like the media were vultures, I was so proud of the local reporters that I watched all day on ABC and NBC. I never saw the glee that you sometimes see, it was all a sense that everyone was affected--the anchors, the cameramen, the reporters in the field, the victims and the audience, we are all New Yorkers, this affects us all. I saw reporters running from the debris, I saw them frantic and choked up, but most of all I saw them determined to convey information. That every person they showed had people at home wondering if they were safe, that everyone needed to see all the people that they could, hurt, unhurt, crying, in shock, anything.

Neither of my networks showed any of the tape that I know exists of the people jumping from the second building as it fell. I could not stand seeing that. I suppose that they showed it nationally, but locally they knew that nobody needed to see that, we needed to see the people who were still alive, the people who had survived.

Later in the day, there were people in the newsrooms who had walked all the way uptown, and they sat there at the anchor desks, dust in their hair, forgotten masks around their necks. One man said that he was in the first building hit, the second one that went down, and it took him an hour to get out of the building down the stairwell, walking in single file because the firefighters were going up in the other direction. And he wasn't out of the building for a minute when it collapsed, and he knew that all those firemen had been in there. And he started to weep.

Another guy said that he didn't understand how this whole building had fallen, and on the street there were all these pieces of paper with writing on it, and they weren't even wrinkled or torn.

And the woman who had been in the last attack in 1993 as well as this one.

Katie had called in from school, they were staying there, and Molly and Bonnie's school called and said that the buses would be going out late and could Cynthia pick them up. She said that since we were in Weehawken, she didn't know whether the roads were closed, we're so near the tunnel, you see.

She had a doctor's appointment that she decided to keep, after ascertaining that they were open, thought they would be closing early, and thought that she'd try to get to the school after that. I went downstairs and decided to see if the dial tone was back and log on to the internet.

I answered all of the frantic emails asking if I was alright, and sent out my share of frantic emails as well, receiving the answers I hoped for. I read the email that was sent before this happened like I was looking at something a hundred years old, it seemed so removed from the reality of the now. I answered some frantic phone calls. I tried to call my actors to confirm what they already knew, that rehearsal was called off, but couldn't call through to the city at all.

And I watched the man who I am for once actually proud to call my mayor, Mayor Giuliani. He was strong, he was moved, he was real but not useless with grief. He's about to leave office, and as of this moment, I truly love him. He said that the casualties were unknown, but that the number would be more than we can bear. Like the local newspeople, like the rest of us, he is another New Yorker in mourning.

I know that I keep emphasizing NY, even though this is something that affects America as a whole, that it belongs to us, and of course that Washington and Virginia and Pennsylvania are affected as well, but right now all I can think about is my town, my home for nineteen years. And I can barely get my mind around that.

I heard some footsteps upstairs, and Katie was home. She said that in second period, teachers started coming into the classrooms and asking whose parents work in the city, whose parents work near the World Trade Center. Both of Katie's fathers work in the city, but she didn't know in what neighbourhoods. Nobody knew what was happening, nobody knew why they were asking that.

At one point, the second plane flew overhead so low that they all had to get under their desks, as they were afraid that they were being bombed. Finally, Katie asked a teacher what was happening, and she said that planes had crashed into the twin towers. She and several other students ran upstairs to a window with a lower Manhattan view and watched the second building fall.

They called various students to the office, including Katie, students that either had parents working in the danger zone or students who were the only family member in the school, that they had no family support right there. That was Katie, thank goodness.

She said at the assembly, two girls, sisters, started screaming because their brother was in one of the buildings.

Cynthia came home after a few hours, without the girls because she hadn't made it to the school before the bus left. She almost couldn't get home, all the streets around us are closed off. All we could do was keep watching TV, and wait for the rest of the family to come home. The girls got home an hour or so later, and Fran finally made it around six or seven after waiting for hours at the ferry. The third building, 7WTC fell when he was halfway across the water. One of his brothers works at 5 WTC, but he is fine, just got a good coating of that building dust.

It looks like a nuclear winter, like a volcano, like a war zone. I guess all disasters have that horrible similarity. Rubble and dust.

Amongst my email asking me if I was okay was one from Kim Rollins, who said "And when I checked your website to make sure, I must have stared for half a minute at the picture on your main page. The city doesn't look like that anymore."

And I hadn't even thought about my front page. All day I had been saying that all the postcards, every picture of the skyline are now pictures of the past--I didn't remember that I had such a picture of the past on my own website.

In a later email, Kim said "They're showing the night skyline of Manhattan now. I thought it would look like a smile with a tooth missing, but it doesn't. It looks like a body with a missing head." I don't want to see it. I can stand it on TV, barely, I cannot imagine looking over the water, like when the van makes that turn after getting through the tunnel, you've seen that sight in the opening credits of The Sopranos, and seeing the skyline of my broken city.

Other NY entries about this day:

Hannah Beth
Jeff
Josh
Mad Brunette
Gus
Byrne (or so his notify said, I haven't been able to hit his page yet)
Tracing

Today's horoscope:
Despite some impatience, you ARE making progress at work. Have faith that your dedication and talents will pay off in the end.

One year ago today:
"Deep in the heart of the Ozarks, there was a house that happened to be real near an airport..."

* Yesterday / Index / This Month / Tomorrow *

E-Mail

Graphics by the graphically inclined Saundra!

This page was written by hand. My hand. Only pussies use HTML editors.
Last Updated Wed 12 September 01:31:09 2001