.....to all here who
lost people they knew.
Thank goodness, jcos, for your BIL's achey wisdom tooth!
Actually b/c my life has been in some major ways more difficult in the past 2 1/2 years than before-- 9-11
does feel longer away than before. But it
doesn't take too much for me to be "back there".
My story was a little weird amongst stories.....
I got up late (10AM) for where I had to be. I was living in Brooklyn.
ALmost ALWAYS I put on my Walkman as I run around the apt getting ready to leave.
But
I didn't that morning.Nor did my roomates ddidn't have morning TV on either.
I come bounding out the door,
glorying in the gorgeous day's weather. I see a Happy Summer Cloud, and keep on going.
I'm parallel to Flatbush Ave (which leads towards the Manhattan Bridge) somewhat above Downtown Brooklyn .
JUST
before I turned to go parallel, I flick on my Walkman. I hear
WITHOUT ANY INDICATORS as to WHAT & WHERE this biulding is............
"......firemen covered in ashes", "building collapsing", "i don't mean to
say this, but it looks like this could out of a movie">
I was like
WHAT was going on?!?? I PICTURED - for what reason I'll never know- one of the large red-bricked apt buildings in Queens. They're often a block long and 10 - 12 stries high.
AS I am paprallel to Flatbush ...the multiple set of radio voices reporting-
goes SILENT. Half a min? or more of what is called "dead air" in broadcast terms ensues.
I reach the next block, and NOW turn "down" the street that will bring me to Flatbush Avenue to finally get me to the subway
into Manhattan, around Houston Street.
Suddenly the voices- well,
one voice at first returns to the airwaves.
"The Towers are
gone", he says. I stop dead in my tracks., and stare ast my walkmen, as though it had turned into a....demon-water bug, sitting in my hand. It's amazing I didn't drop it!
The....what .....are gone? I think to myself.
I terribly, slowly (yet fast internally) as I begin to link up all I've heard- realize....
something was
unbeleiveable wrong!!!
The final proof awaited me ...ahead of me..... because I was ALSO was putting together where I was, and where i was looking towards in relationship to Manhattan as I had left my building and gotten this far.
I slowly turned my face upwards. The Happy Summer Cloud that I had casually noticed earlier ( north and west of my location) ...I looked at
again.
I
realized (being an artist & a colorist in particual) that it's
colors were WRONG for that time of day and season.
No it looked like....more like a cloud low in the sky in winter time.......yellow-beigeish. In fact it seemed to look heavier in appearence, thicker, grittier.
I
finally realize WHAT I was looking at above the close "visual blockcade" of the nearby buildings.
It WAS the
cloud of destruction, doubled in size as WTC 1 (north building) came down just as I was leaving my building at 10:30AM.
I went screaming and crying back to home. Sat all day with the radio on. I was too scared to see the TV images.
MY sister finally gets me around afternoon.
finally at night i turn the TV on and see the Actrocity and aftermath.