IX/XI/MMI
by Bob on September 10, 2007
September 11th, 2001.
Tomorrow, September 11th, 2007, is the sixth anniversary of that day.
It means something to me especially.
I was living in New York City, right in Manhattan when the tragedy occurred. I was on the Upper East Side in my apartment, near the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I saw everyone coming out of their terraces and looking South. I don't watch TV so it didn't dawn on me. My neighbours in their penthouses were looking aghast into the distance. So I looked out and saw smoke from the tower of the World Trade Center. Something I never expected to see, ever. And I was born in New York City and was there when the World Trade Center opened, and even watched it being built. I dined many times in its highest restaurant, Windows on the World. I went to private parties there. I went a wedding receptions there when my friends got married. I never expected to see it go down and disappear in ruins.
I turned on the TV. Another plane went into the second tower. I could not believe my eyes.
I called down to my doorman to see if there was anything he knew. Not much more than I did.
I was shaking, not out of fear, but of abject human violation of life itself.
I was supposed to lecture that Tuesday afternoon to to graduate classes at the university. But I got dressed and, rather than heading away from the disaster, I went downtown to try to help somehow in the rescue or triaging of victims. It was horrible. To this day I won't watch any film about it. It should be left alone in history in memory of those who perished.
After helping triage some people downtown, I later went up to the university and talked with our students who were more shaken than most people.
I listened to F-14 Tomcat or F-18 Hornet aircraft above me as I spoke to my students and calmed them in the laboratory at the university. I was very shaken to the core inside myself.
Earlier downtown I had helped some people onto buses who had been in the towers and were covered with dust and pulverised and burnt wires and rock. The had big triage tags around their necks which were colour-coded: DEAD, SERIOUSLY WOUNDED, WOUNDED, HURT, etc.
Then the Silence began. Everyone was afraid. A nation was afraid. A world was afraid. Its innocence had been forever lost. We all lit vigil candles, not fearing for our own lives, but for the sadness of those who perished, and we didn't even know how many there had been. No one could accurately count. People had been literally vaporised in the towers. And we lit vigil candles for the future, of which we were uncertain that day, the future for our children and everyone's children in the world.
It was not a boxing match wherein two identifiable opponents fought and a winner declared by a referee, and then all was well.
It was an unknown battle between silent opponents which killed so many people and made my hometown smell with death.
I would never return to what the media called "Ground Zero". I could not view it as either a memorial or a tourist attraction. It hurt too much.
Whoever did it, certainly made their point. At a terrible tragic cost to civilians.
One can try to compare the dropping of the Atomic Bomb and the devastation it caused to end a war. Or the bombings of England or Germany or even Europe in World War II. Or Pearl Harbor. Or really any war.
But no war had been declared in this case. The people working the the towers were not soldiers. They were working class people trying to struggle through another day of making a living. I used to work down in that area. It was a hectic existence. But they were just working people.
It reminded me of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer's words on the first atomic test at the Trinity site in Alamogordo, New Mexico. He adapted the words from the ancient Indian Bhagavad Gita: "I have become death, destroyer of worlds". (the actual text in Sanskrit said "Time I am, destroyer of the worlds, and I have come to engage all people. With the exception of you [Pandava], all the soldiers here on both sides will be slain ...")
Events like this cause a serious dent in our hope for mankind's future.
I hope all people in the human conflagration have found eternal peace.
I hope this kind of thing will not happen for a very long time, if ever again.
Because, September 11th, 2001 was a Tuesday and was one of the most beautiful days I can remember. The sky was very blue, the weather was perfect. That was before. Then it happened.
Whenever now I see a beautiful day with blue skies I get afraid. Because I remember that day six years ago. I am afraid for humanity, not for my own speck of a life.
May we all have strength to get along with each other, in peace, in this brief journey we know as life, on this earth in which we co-habitate.
Whoever did it made their point. There's nothing more to say. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Such is the power of nightmares.
Windows on the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center in New York City