September 11th, 2001.  Tuesday
 

    I suppose I need to write something about it, so I will.  I can't believe what happened today and what's happening.  I woke up this morning when the phone wouldn't stop ringing.  I figured if it was something important, or someone for me, they'd call my cell phone.  After the fourth call, i got up to check the number and *69'd it.  It appeared to be a DC number.  I was planning on going to DC today to visit, among others, Jen and Nicole, and my cousins.  Well, those plans turned completely absurd when I turned on the tv after Dylan's girlfriend called, telling him that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center.  We sat there, shocked, and just watched it all unfold.  At one point, Dylan said "I'm impressed that they're actually still standing after all that.  That was a little after 10AM.  All I could think was thank God my job in Tower 1 ended 11 days ago.  Otherwise, I'd've been on my way to work.  If I was still employed there, and if I actually showed up to work on time, I would have actually been in the tower when the plane hit it.  My aunt, who got me the job, might've been there as well.  It must've been a spectacular sight firsthand.  But seeing it on tv was bad enough.  We thought it was terrible, but the gravity of the situation didn't really hit home until the first tower fell.  We had the windows open and could see the smoke from the planes hitting the towers, and when the first tower fell, we could here it all the way from our apartment.  I couldn't believe my eyes. I couldn't believe it. Even now, 13 hours after seeing it, that's all I've been able to say.  I can't fucking believe the World Trade Center towers are gone.

    So i talked to my mom and Geoff, and of course canceled all plans to go to DC.  I've tried calling Jen in DC all day, but haven't been able to get a hold of her.  Even if I'd wanted to go, there was no way I could've gone.  Hell, I still don't know if I could get out of NY tonight if I wanted.  So Dylan and I just sat there watching the drama unfold.  I was never happier to see James than when I saw him and his girlfriend Rosario walking up to the door to our apartment.  He doesn't go to work until 10 or 11, so he was still in Brooklyn.  And the four of us sat there watching the TV.  Then Jen called and said she was at King's County Hospital in Brooklyn, for school, and was stuck there.  So she got on a bus going who knows where, and ended up somewhere on Flatbush Avenue and walked the rest of the way here.  Then the calls started coming in.  Roommate Josh called and said he was outside on the F train and saw the second plane hit the tower. Jed called to check in a little later.  He wasn't sure if he'd be stuck there till tomorrow.  Then Jen showed up.  By the time she got here, the smoke from the explosion and first collapse was directly overhead, with the winds blowing everything to the southeast and into brooklyn.  The air smelled funny, and the smoke was starting to obscure the sun a little bit.  It was such a beautiful, clear day, which made the smoke all the more apparent.  A little while after Jen got here, we watched the other tower fall.  At first I thought it was a replay of the first tower, but then nothing was there after it fell.  I was shocked out of my mind at the first tower coming down, but when the second one came I was just sort of numb.  The whole summer I worked there,  I'd be walking between the towers, thinking to myself, "I wonder what I'd do if i was out here one day and saw one of the towers falling.  Where would I go? Would i just start running? It'd probably land at least 8 or 9 blocks away, so I'd have to get pretty far."  I only really entertained these thoughts because it was so outlandish.  I never, ever would have thought it possible.  Especially after the bombing in 1993.  But the plan was just ingeniously simple.  Can't get into the World Trade Center because of increased security?  Then fuck, we'll just ram two planes into them.  And get this:  They'll be your planes.  It looked like a bad movie.  But then, this is a plot that you wouldn't even see in a bad movie.  Can you imagine a movie that involves terrorists flying two planes right into the World Trade Center?  nobody would buy it for a second.  Or even a movie where the WTC is destroyed.

    So amidst all the tv and people and phone calls, i sat here for a few minutes and just wrote down everything i was feeling.  I'd been feeling teary eyed all morning, and I felt like it was really important for some reason that I wrote down exactly what I was thinking and feeling at that moment.  This is the biggest crisis of my lifetime. I've never experienced anything more monumental than this.  Gone.  just gone.  piles of rubble.  And then the Pentagon. And then another crashed hijacked plane.  If all that happened was that a hijacked plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania, it would've still been national news and would've preempted all network TV coverage.  And now, it's just a sad little footnote.  I really felt like crying all day.  I was just shocked how much it was affecting me.  I felt like I needed to do something, I don't know what or why.  So we thought we'd walk over to Methodist Hospital and give blood.  But they had so many volunteers they couldn't take anymore.  So we sat around and i made lunch and we just watched more tv.  I'm really glad that we were all here and together.  That just seemed like a really important thing.  Then it was sort of weird, to be sitting on the front stoop with everyone, at 3 o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon.  Of course, the plume of smoke above us was pretty weird too.  James and Rosario decided to go for a bike ride.  Jed, Dylan, and I decided to go get some food.  As we were on our way out, Matt finally showed up.  He'd been the only one I couldn't contact all day. He'd phone earlier, so I wasn't too worried.  But his office building, where he was scheduled to start next week, is right across the street from he WTC, and i did entertain the thought that maybe he'd gone in today for some odd reason.  So I was glad to see him when he showed up.  After we'd gotten back from the food run, James and Rosario returned.  James said they'd recovered several "artifacts," and pulled out a few burned and torn pieces of paper.  They'd flown all the way across the river and into Prospect Park.  One sheet in particular was burned almost perfectly around the edges.  It looked almost fake.  If you were trying to make paper look old and burned, that's how it'd look.

    So for a little levity, Jed, Matt, Josh and I went up to the park to throw the frisbee.  The sun was setting, and a bright orange-pink cloud was painted across the deep blue sky, stemming thinly from the horizon.  It was really beautiful.  But terrible at the same time.  Occasionally, you'd see a few random pieces of paper or whatever a floating a hundred feet up.  We were throwing for a while, when this Asian girl asked if she could throw with us.  it turned out that Jed discovered that he knew her. So they chatted while we threw. At one point, matt threw it between me and jed and the girl, Jen.  I ran for it in front of them and leapt into the air to catch it, and just as I did so, something collided with me in thin air.  I caught enough air that I had time to look while still in midair after the collision, and it wasn't jed, but jen. That was shocking.  We did one of those fake-looking hits you see in football movies, where the quarterback throws a pass up the middle, and two people go for it, collide in mid-air, and spin around in the air from the collision.  We even had that big spin around each other.  When we landed, I was face down, and Matt and Jed came running over.  I just sat there moaning for a bit, and Jen said "Are you OK?"  And I said "I don't think we've been formally introduced.  I'm Greg."  This didn't get that big a laugh.  Niether did "Nice meeting you. Maybe we'll run into eachother again sometime."  Anyway, it must've looked really cool from a distance.  Heck, it looked really cool from my perspective. Jump, collide, spin, and while still falling through the air see what was going on. I'm just glad it wasn't Jed. He's a big mutha.

    So then we came home and watched President Bush's address.  It was adequate.  Say what you will about Rudy Giuliani.  The man knows how to operate in a crisis situation.  I'm so glad he's mayor right now.    I wish he were President at times like this.  He knows how to mobilize the police and public organizations.  Anyway, after that, I was sitting in my room, reading espn.com stories, when I just started crying.  I just burst into tears and started sobbing.  It'd been building all day, and for some reason, while reading about baseball, it just all came out.  It was sort of silly, really.  I was just crying for no reason. I mean, yeah, there was a reason, but I didn't feel particularly sad about one particular thing.  I can't remember ever crying just because I needed to cry.  I mean, I've never had to understand a situation like this.  Yesterday, James and I were talking about the fact that our generation's the first never to have a war.  Well, we're probably the tail end of that generation. But still, I never thought I'd see a war scene, or know what a burning city looks like and smells like.  This whole thing is just so sad. And even now, watching tv, my eyes are still tearing up.  Thinking about the firemen who ran in to save people and then died...It's just too much to bear.  I'm alternating between being really sad and being super angry.  What upset me the most was the scene of some mideasterners celebrating in the street, firing their guns, and women and children just clapping and laughing.  That's maybe the most evil thing I've ever seen.  And, as Jed pointed out, in this scene, some of the people celebrating are sitting in a Ford truck, wearing blue jeans and Nike t-shirts.  "We should start infecting all our denim exports with smallpox," is what he said.  I really think that if there were a draft and war were declared, this could actually inspire me to go.  I mean, I'd always suspected had I lived in the late 60s and were drafted, I'd've been a draft dodger, no question.  But this, this is something I could rally behind. Just that image in my head of the old woman cheering, and the kids cheering,  Fuckers. FUCKERS.  I know they've been getting all the propaganda their whole lives, and I don't really blame them, but I'm still just so angry.  Still, i don't know what action would be a satisfying reaction to this monstrous event. Of course, there's a good amount of me that wants swift, decisive revenge.  But then there's part that just wants the US to sort of turn the other cheek and not acknowledge it.  You know, just go back to business as usual. If they see we react with more violence, wouldn't that just make it more tempting to do it again?  Plus, when you're dealing with people who would gladly give their lives for their cause, how do you beat them? Kill them? so what? what can you do?

    Anyway, the calls and emails have been coming steadily all day.  I've been trying to be really good about getting back to people as promptly as possible.  This didn't seem like a day to be lazy about keeping up your correspondences.  Another interesting little note:  Being that it all happened in New York City, and I live in New York City, all the local stations were carrying their own station news casts.  In order to get the national CBS or ABC news, you had to know who owned what.  Like Disney owns ABC and ESPN.  So all the ABC news was on ESPN.  And CBS is owned by Viacom, as are VH1 and MTV.  So to see my man Gunga Dan on the CBS news, we had to watch VH1.  In contrast, the folks that own NBC don't seem to own shit, because we couldn't get that at all.
    On a small, personal note, I never got to go to the top.  I'd been talking about it for months, whenever I was unemployed, that I'd use that time to do all sorts of New York things that I'd never done before.  But I never made it up there.  Then, when I worked there, I got a discount from the 15 or 20 bucks it costs to go up, and I still didn't go.  And now I never will.  And now I'll tell my kids about my life in New York "back when the Twin Towers were still there."  I've seen the various angles of the crashes and collapses a hundred times now, and it still makes me want to cry every goddam time I see it.  Ultimately, I'm just very thankful that my friends and family are all ok.

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