Second Sight

09/12/01 11:26:10 PM
        Tonight it all took a turn. It started earlier today when the winds changed. The acrid smoke filled the air around me. It burns deep down in the throat. I’m on the top floor and right in the middle of the path of smoke. The last time I went out to look I couldn’t see through the smoke and ran back in. I tried sleeping but only managed a couple of hours. I decided to go out to rent a video in the hopes it might relax me and put me back to sleep. Just as I was heading out the door newscasters announced a bomb threat at the Empire which towers just outside my window. I decided to keep on going. Downstairs crowds were gathered in the street looking up. They had been evacuated from nearby blocks. It was a strange but familiar scene. The strong industrial smoke hanging over the streets. The confused or lost people standing in the streets with crews of police at every intersection. Just as lost and confused only differential in the detail of their uniform.
        I checked with my night security to see if he needed anything before I headed out. I got a block and the familiar glow of klieg lights broke through the smoke as I realized I was headed into the armory just down the street. Now the civil survivor center. The streets were full of a mix of relatives looking for lost loved ones. Dust covered police units and fresh national guard troops lined the sidewalks and doorways to the armory. Everyone eyeing me and me them with equal suspicion. Its a New York thing... the glance... just enough offense as it is defense which says in an instant I am a New Yorker. Like dogs snarling in an alley. I rolled by on my roller blades zipping around the emergency vehicles blocking the cross section.
        The video store was closed as was the one down the street and the one two blocks from that. At that point I would have bought a video... anything other than this same news... these same planes crashing... these same twin towers crumbling. Security had asked for a few burgers so I took off for a Wendy’s or the like. One after another passing places normally open ominously closed. Passing one store after another of long lines and empty shelves.
        Day two found me facing scenes much too familiar to me from years abroad and life in third world countries. Life in America, even here in New York City the Capitol of Capitalism, had been brought down to third world status. In less than 24 hours with just a few short blows to a few morally strategic targets. Trusting this will all change as soon as all the shops open and the streets are secure and safe to open... hoping my trust is not just vein or wishful thinking. It is then I look at myself and question what will I do now. What will I do for work. How will I build my tomorrow. Will I make it through this unscathed, have enough food, is it ever going to be safe again... was it ever? Or were we here in America living only an illusion? Was this the American dream? Did we all just wake from the dream with a start... a loud bang.
        Perhaps one of the more odd aspects of all this is its eerie silence. There was no enormously loud boom... no big bang... no loud scream of steel as the buildings collapsed. No thundering rumble... yes there was a roar. The roar of the jet planes flying low... the roar of the flames as they blew into blasts of smoke and flame... the roar of the crumbling walls of sheet rock and thud of cement floor into cement floor. The roar of fighter jets high over head. The commonplace and often irritable roar of the city now silenced with the silence broken now and again by the scream of sirens.