Reflecting on 9/11
Sep. 11th, 2011 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meteordustI live on the other side of the world from New York. It seems a little presumptuous to post about it, but it also seems impossible to pass over it. Even though I don't really have the right to comment, I can stop and remember.
What I wrote in my diary on the first anniversary of the attacks:
"It wasn't a year ago today. I've only just realised. Despite what the calendars say, it's not September 11. It hasn't happened yet. America is still sleeping. It won't be time until this evening, late this evening, close to midnight.
I don't remember September 11 after all. It was Wednesday, 12 September 2001, that I woke up to my mother's knock and the news that the World Trade Centre towers had fallen down.
I didn't understand at first, just roused from sleep, grappling with the Chinese-English translation interface. "Fallen down"? "Do you mean someone tried to blow it up?" Remembering the bomb attack, how many years ago? People had been killed and injured, the buildings evacuated.
"No," my mother said, "they've fallen down."
Outside, on the tv, they were showing the ruins of the buildings, and footage of the planes hitting the towers, and their sudden shocking collapse.
I went to work. The screens in the food court in the lobby were showing the news footage nonstop.
One of the first emails I received that day was something forwarded by one of my coworkers to everyone in the office - an eyewitness account of the whole thing by someone who had been in the buildings when the first plane hit. It was detailed and immediate and personal.
I couldn't concentrate on my work. I kept thinking about how many people must have died when the towers fell, and the poor people aboard the doomed planes. I thought about the people jumping from the burning buildings. I thought about the US going to war over this, and the anger that would rise, and how more innocents would die.
At lunchtime, I went downstairs (past the tv screens, where people stood watching) to the local net cafe. When I checked out Megatokyo.com, they had made their pages black in mourning. I sent a subdued email to Eidolon Tree, totally different to the reply I'd intended to write.
When I got home, I didn't want to face further news reports. I spent the evening immersed in Feintuch's Challenger's Hope, a bleak, wrenching novel, that somehow managed to be cathartic in the midst of the real bleakness around me."
Ten years is a long time. But it can seem like yesterday. I hope the tomorrows can be better ones.
What I wrote in my diary on the first anniversary of the attacks:
"It wasn't a year ago today. I've only just realised. Despite what the calendars say, it's not September 11. It hasn't happened yet. America is still sleeping. It won't be time until this evening, late this evening, close to midnight.
I don't remember September 11 after all. It was Wednesday, 12 September 2001, that I woke up to my mother's knock and the news that the World Trade Centre towers had fallen down.
I didn't understand at first, just roused from sleep, grappling with the Chinese-English translation interface. "Fallen down"? "Do you mean someone tried to blow it up?" Remembering the bomb attack, how many years ago? People had been killed and injured, the buildings evacuated.
"No," my mother said, "they've fallen down."
Outside, on the tv, they were showing the ruins of the buildings, and footage of the planes hitting the towers, and their sudden shocking collapse.
I went to work. The screens in the food court in the lobby were showing the news footage nonstop.
One of the first emails I received that day was something forwarded by one of my coworkers to everyone in the office - an eyewitness account of the whole thing by someone who had been in the buildings when the first plane hit. It was detailed and immediate and personal.
I couldn't concentrate on my work. I kept thinking about how many people must have died when the towers fell, and the poor people aboard the doomed planes. I thought about the people jumping from the burning buildings. I thought about the US going to war over this, and the anger that would rise, and how more innocents would die.
At lunchtime, I went downstairs (past the tv screens, where people stood watching) to the local net cafe. When I checked out Megatokyo.com, they had made their pages black in mourning. I sent a subdued email to Eidolon Tree, totally different to the reply I'd intended to write.
When I got home, I didn't want to face further news reports. I spent the evening immersed in Feintuch's Challenger's Hope, a bleak, wrenching novel, that somehow managed to be cathartic in the midst of the real bleakness around me."
Ten years is a long time. But it can seem like yesterday. I hope the tomorrows can be better ones.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-11 02:50 pm (UTC)I may not be able to reply to this actual post in such a way as to make you feel good about it, but your post directly made me feel able to post about MY 9/11 experience (although minus some detail).
9/11 made us react on the inside, and for many of us there was an external reaction as well.
You know what? In retro retro retro spect.... I think 9/11 made you and I stop emailing each other. I tried to respond as non-emotionally as possible, and you tried to respond as non-critically as possible.
Or am I misreading it?
(add: i should just make this my default icon. i use it for everything!)
no subject
Date: 2011-09-11 03:59 pm (UTC)I don't actually remember what happened to our email exchanges. Over the years, I guess I'd just assumed that they were overtaken by the shift to LJ, just like the old school mailing lists were. Regarding that day itself, all I remember is that it should have been a chatty fandom kind of email, and instead it was a serious "take care" type of email. I can't remember anything else about emailing or not emailing from back then, but my recall may be spotty...