It seemed apt to post some thoughts today, on the 10th anniversary of the attacks on September 11th, 2001. I don't want it to be cheesy, or disrespectful, or anything like that. So no pictures.
I remember the day well; it's hard not to remember "where you were" when you first turned the TV on. I was hanging about at home, with no job as I was preparing to head off to University for the first time a couple of weeks later. I was talking to friends online, who suddenly went quiet except for demands that everyone should turn the news on, right now. I remember looking at the twin towers, one on fire. I didn't think too much of it; fires happen all the time, right? Then I saw the replay of a plane flying into it... That set the whole air of disbelief for the entire day. The other plane, news of attacks on the Pentagon and other planes coming down, until the towers themselves came down. It somehow never seemed quite real; you couldn't really get your head around the scale of what was happening.
In fact, I never could quite comprehend, even from all the news cameras and amateur footage, the size of the buildings as they were toppling - never mind the amount of people they would contain. I had never been to New York, nor had I been to any city even remotely as "tall" as New York. Only once I visited New York for business last year, did I try to get my head around the size of what happened. I went to Ground Zero; not deliberately (I was merely playing tourist around South Manhattan); and it was looking up that made me realise that something so huge was so very missing, in a sudden wide open space.
Our New York office has now moved into the new WTC 7 building - I've seen the view from pictures, across the site of the original towers and the memorial pools in the old footprints. A few of the colleagues I have there; even those not from New York, and mostly unpolitical; reluctant to get into any debate on "conspiracies" or "the war on terror"; have said they find it hard to take in. I think I'll find it difficult if I'm ever there, looking over the site and still remembering so much from 10 years ago.
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