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9/12/01

“Boom!”…@#$%!

The title just about sums it all up.

Holy ____t!

For the moment, I ignore the tragedy of hundreds, probably thousands dead as well as the grieving families of those lost or missing when the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed on Sept. 11 2001.  I dwell instead on what my manager so aptly said; “they just aren’t there anymore!”  You do not know what seeing the sights most of us have been seeing on TV in the newspapers for the past two days does to a former Staten Islander.

For those of you who don’t know New York City, if you live where I did, you come into the city every morning from downtown, with the skyline of lower Manhattan stretched out in front of you as you stand in line on the deck of the Staten Island Ferry, waiting to dock, waiting to get off.

During my two separate years of residence in the city, I did not spend much time Downtown. Midtown was my first home, and more my cup of tea.  I usually got off the boat and jumped into the hole in the ground to let the subway take me wherever I wanted or need to go: to the MET, to the Museum of Natural History where I worked for a very brief time, or to my school.  I spent very little time in lower Manhattan.  The WTC was the one local NYC monument that I had never been inside, although I did the rat maze in the basement once trying to find my way from the subway to the Path train to New Jersey and back.    -Do you know there was a shopping mall down there?  When I did stay downtown, my memories of the WTC are of two gargantuan beacons that I used to navigate the unfamiliar maze of narrow streets by.  I saw a picture on TV this morning that disturbed me.  That of the most recognizable trim detail in modern American architecture toppled from its perch overlooking the Big Apple.  Twisted and formed by the impact and pounds of exploding jet fuel into a great big flower of hate rising from the pavement on or near Van Cortlandt Street. (I don’t know the neighborhood that well).

I think for me, as for many other expatriate New Yorkers -and I know many, that the point is driven home by the thought, the realization that had I stayed there I might very well have been in the tunnel under those things when they collapsed.  One of the many subway lines that run under the plaza is the one that connects most closely to the ferry terminal, the 1-9 line up Seventh Avenue.  That was the train I used everyday to get to work, to get to FIT.

I still cannot imagine going back to New York City at some later date and not seeing the towers hulking protectively there on the southern horizon.  This thought is made even more profound by the knowledge, a hunch, and probably a correct one, that they will never ever be rebuilt, exactly as they were.  Somehow I have a feeling that our skyscraper building days in this country are over, at least until we understand how to deal, what to do about our collective feet of clay.

So what do you think of all this?

I myself, am starting to get worried by the state of affair I see around me.  Not about more terrorism.  I think that whoever is responsible for this is done for now.  Surprise and shock are as much their points as anything.  The guard is now up, and they cannot surprise us anymore at least not for now.  So I think, I hope that things will be quiet for the time being.  I am worried because I have already heard some stuff that I don’t like, on the news, in the media, on the Web.  I have heard the words “reprisal” and “revenge” mentioned more than once.   More than I would like, at this early juncture.  And it scares me, more than any terrorist man holding a gun to my forehead and screaming “Bang! You dead!”

Somebody from the Free Press out selling a special edition of the paper yesterday asked me “I’m taking a poll: are you mad?”

She seemed slightly surprised when I said “no,” Unlike Pearl Harbor, which seems to be the historic metaphor of choice and comparison these days, adopted already by the media and the politicians, we do not know who did this.  I know people are talking “bin Laden”, but we don’t even know with any certainty who flew the planes.  How can I be mad at something or someone I cannot see?  I’d never make a good rabble-rouser.

I am sad and upset for sure, about all the people killed and missing and hurt.  And for my own very selfish reason, that my memories of the unblemished New York City skyline are all that’s left of it -memories.  But I am more worried.  I worry that our country is going to get stuck in some stupid knee-jerk reaction mode.  You see Pearl Harbor was not only the beginning of a war, and in that case probably a justifiable war, it was the beginning of a whole lot of hate, internment camps and the like.  Just yesterday mere hours after the crash and the collapse, I heard a Muslim organization on the news, speaking through a representative, giving out guidelines for precautions to be taken in the coming days, the coming weeks, the coming months…  -Years?  It was totally glossed over in the hype of the four crashes and the implosion and all.

Then the thought occurred to me that these people, perhaps every Muslim or Arab-American in America, are scared.  It seems to me, and read any history book you choose for justification, in terms of human behavior that some real stupid stuff is often a prelude to some more real stupid stuff.  Until a cycle gets going that can’t be broken out of.  And then…

I realize that I am really scared, not for more bombs, or planes, or planes used as bombs, but about what our country, our people, our whole world, is going to do next.

Watching the towers implode on TV was hard.  Going back to New York some time in the future might be harder yet.  But what will be hardest for us all will be doing what we have to do, what we must do if we want to survive, next.

Glad I’m not in f@$%ing NY,

(As my friend would put it)

-Lyra McMullen

Author’s Note:  This essay was written as it says on 9/12/2001. I have deliberately refrained from editing this piece other than correcting egregious errors of spelling or grammar. And it remains as I initially wrote it 15 years ago. Somehow I have refrained from publishing it for this long. Yes, it is rough and raw, and possibly offensive, but I feel it is important that we remember how we felt without the cushion of time that comes in between. 

And if you are wondering, I have been to NYC since, in 2007 and I saw Ground Zero before the reconstruction was completed.