Kate Bennett wrote: > > i don't know if any of you who were there on 9/11 watched it (don't know if > i could have if i'd been there as living through it once is surely enough) > but if you did, i wonder how you felt about it...
I wasn't sure I'd be able to watch so I put a tape in just in case. The documentary a few months ago, by the French brothers, was unbearable. Early in that one I loved seeing all the many different types of people in the street, that diversity is one of the things I love so much about New York, but as soon as the smoke cloud filled up the screen I could smell it and literally couldn't breathe anymore and had to leave the room until the show finished. I must have some emotional distance from it all now because I was able to watch most of last night's show, even though I was crying or stunned most of the time. I was transfixed by the helicopter shots and seeing the building I was in get covered by smoke. It was strange to go back and forth between what I was seeing and at the same time feeling I was again on the 20th floor and a co-worker has just looked out the window onto Broadway and said "oh my god look at all those people running!" They were, flat out, like a herd of animals, then the lights flickering, the building shaking and then complete darkness outside those same windows, all within seconds. We'd seen papers flying in the air so knew about the airplanes and fires and a couple of people in the room had walkman radios and were giving us reports, but since we couldn't see the towers from those windows none of us knew exactly what was going on or why all those people were running. And when someone said one of the towers was falling, all I could think was oh my god thousands thousands of people are dying. I can feel myself shaking even now at the horror of it. Seeing the pictures of people covered in all that ash was extremely uncomfortable. That day, even three hours after the towers had fallen and when I started my walk home it was hard to breathe because there was still so much of that ash in the air. It was so finely ground you can't even see it in pictures. I didn't get coated the way people who'd been outside when the towers fell did, but I hated having any of that stuff on me. As soon as I got home every bit of clothing I had on was stripped off and left in a pile by the main door. I couldn't touch it for five days. Couldn't even look at it. I felt like I'd walked through a burial urn and those clothes were contaminated and I was completely violated. Many days later I was able to gingerly lift my jacket and skirt and take them to the cleaners. They knew where I'd been. During the documentary, I did have to leave the room when people were showing photos of their loved ones and describing them and holding out hope that they would be found. That is still unbearably sad to me, especially knowing that thousands of people were looking and telling their stories. Details varied but the story was always the same... I love this person... I want her or him to come home. It wasn't talked about for months, but anyone who'd been down there that day knew that most of those missing people had become part of the ash that was covering the city. In the show when the mayor's assistant talked about grabbing handfuls of ash because it felt like her firefighter husband was in it, I could only think, yes, he probably was, and how brave and honest that in her sorrow she could be so aware of that. Debra Shea
