The Periodic Label

Dancing Across The Water

Applying for a radio job recently, I had the chance to write an optional cover letter explaining my unique perspective as a New Yorker.  I realized I’d never written down my specific experiences about September 11th before.  Still not sure if I’ll use it as a cover letter, but it was interesting to recount it.

Part of what I think gives me a kinship with Vonnegut is his experience during the Dresden Fire Bombings during WWII where he was a prisoner of war synthesizing vitamin supplements in the basement of an old slaughterhouse (labeled #5) while the allied carpet bombing turned the city into one massive blaze (tens of thousands were killed over three days).  In the story, it’s Billy Pilgrim hearing the “footsteps of giants” above, while somehow he and a handful of other POWs and Nazi guards are spared, but Vonnegut alludes often to the fact that it was him surviving in that slaughterhouse. 

Applying for a radio job recently, I had the chance to write an optional cover letter explaining my unique perspective as a New Yorker.  I realized I’d never written down my specific experiences about September 11th before.  Still not sure if I’ll use it as a cover letter, but it was interesting to recount it.  So today being the six anniversary, it seemed appropriate to include it here.  I certainly don’t intend to make any comparisons between the fire bombings and 9/11 except to say that it’s a surreal experience to survive a historic and gruesome tragedy (lyrics to the song, “You” that I wrote based on the experience are included at the bottom - it is a song off our first EP and can be downloaded free from this site).

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On Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, I was late for my day job on the 97th floor of World Trade Center 1.  Converted from temp to permanent on September 10th, I wanted to make an impression and arrive early that day.  Fortunately for me, my girlfriend, Carin was having a bad morning, so I stayed with her until she felt better, making me late for work.  As I walked out the door into the blinding sunlight on 10th street and Avenue C, I saw the first plane fly over my head.  Flying low, the scream of engines pushed to their limits echoed off the surrounding buildings - I had a sense that something was wrong in the pit of my stomach, but only briefly.  I thought nothing of it moments later. 

With my head down walking toward Broadway on St Mark’s everyone was stopped, but I kept walking to the N/R train until I overheard a half sentence from a nearby conversation, “...plane...through the world trade center.” I turned and asked the lady to repeat herself.  She said a plane had just flown THROUGH the World Trade Center. 

Through? 

She pointed to a narrow, dark gray cloud distinct in the clear, blue sky that was actually a plume of smoke.  I followed the plume down to Prince Street and saw the gaping hole where my office was.  The World Trade Center is 110 stories high, so I repeatedly counted down from the top to the widest part of the oval hole - 99, 98, 97.

I had just quit smoking about a month prior, and in a moment of dissociated thought I asked myself, “man, I wonder if this’ll start me up again...”

I cried in hysteria for a while wondering if my boss was up there (a very decent father and husband named Vince), realizing that from where we sat, facing uptown Manhattan, I would have watched that plane fly right through me had I been to work early as planned.  I called my mother hoping she hadn’t seen it on CNN.  My cell phone couldn’t connect a call, but a pay phone was free.  Fortunately, I got through, and fortunately, she hadn’t turned on the TV that morning, as I suspect she would have collapsed.  As I explained the awful accident, I couldn’t understand where the plane WAS, I couldn’t get the image of the plane flying “through” the building out of my head - as if maybe it cleared the building relatively in tact and crashed into the river.  Where was the plane now?  Where were the passengers? 

As I continued to speak to my mother, another massive fire ball exploded out of the midsection of WTC 2 - my mind had already started treating the image like it was on a movie screen.  Were we in real time?  Was this actually happening NOW?  I had no idea the fireball was caused by a second plane, I only saw the ensuing destruction.

“Mom, it’s mayhem down there, I don’t understand what’s happening.” Amazingly, she knew immediately, “it was planned, honey; it’s a terrorist attack” - the awful truth sank in immediately and violently, I felt like a kid finding about death for the first time.  About eight years, five months and seven days prior, my best friend, Matt died in a car accident when I was sixteen; he was still alive for a few hours after wrapping his mother’s Volvo around a telephone pole, and people still had hope.  Everyone, sadly, except my mother, who burst into tears when she arrived on the scene, and knew he’d never survive the second she saw it.  Let’s just say, I have an instinct for her instinct. 

I wanted to vomit, I wanted to explode, but I assured her I was okay - told her I would go home, and hung up.  People were crying and screaming on the streets, I began to calm myself some, but couldn’t stop wondering if we were in World War III.  Was this the beginning of the end? 

Instead of returning to the east village, I found myself walking south as fast as I could, as if in a trance, as people came streaming uptown from the opposite direction.  I needed to be there.  I needed to consolidate the impossible information my eyes were reporting with my other senses.  Otherwise, it felt like an illusion or a dream, and I couldn’t allow that.  I kept walking until I got to Chinatown, about a dozen blocks away from the trade centers.  I stopped to listen to the radio wherever I could, and I kept hearing “terrorism” more and more; and that people were jumping from windows in WTC 1 above where the plane crashed.  I thought of a nice, married Indian couple I knew who worked on the 99th floor.  The heat apparently unbearable, would they jump together?  Would I jump?  Were they already dead?

I looked around obsessed, realizing I needed help or a favor to get any closer.  Thinking my eyes were betraying me again, I saw Harrison Ford leaving an apartment building a block away, so without thinking I walked over to him and asked him if he could get me down there.  He looked confused by the question, and politely said no.  I was feeling desperate and manic; the situation even more surreal having just had an encounter with Indiana Jones. 

I thought of my girlfriend sitting at home terrified, and I decided to give up and return home.  I hitched a ride back up to 10th Street and 3rd Ave and walked east to Ave C.  On my way, I bumped into my friend Jim, who lived nearby, and he looked at me like I was a ghost, assuming I had died.  I convinced him otherwise, and we both returned to my apartment to see Carin.  We cried and hugged, and moments later I watched my building crumble on NY1, once again unable to understand if it was really happening.

Underneath all the frenzied noise in my head, I could hear a voice repeating the same phrase over and over again, convincing myself that, “I’m here now, I’m here now, I’m here now.” At least once a day since, I can still hear it…

”You”

Lying next to you

Your hair was smooth

You danced and swayed and flew away

You could hear

You could hear the planes

Made your heart start racing

You thought you were dreaming

You thought you were awake

Open your eyes and try to see

Flex your throat and make a sound

I’m here now you say

But what do you really know?

Do you really know?

You can see over the buildings

Monuments they sway

Flying over traffic

It stands still

And you are still

And monuments they sway

And I’m here now you say

I’m here now…

But what do you really know?

Do you really know?

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