24 hours

“No one will pull us down. Period.” Parishioner at St. Patrick’s Cathedral

“The city is going to demonstrate that it…can absorb this kind of blow -- we are going to grow stronger from it.” Mayor Rudy Giuliani

"To not retaliate ferociously for this attack on our people is only to invite a worse attack tomorrow and an endless war with terrorists." The New York Times

"Neither the air nor decomposing bodies should pose a major health concern." Health experts at the scene

"I need his body - I need to know what happened." A grieving relative

"Why did they die?" A child, speaking to a reporter on 1010 WINS News Radio

sept 11 2001 - the nine o'clock hour: the towers are falling

sept 13 2001 - and on the third day: no rest

sept 14 2001 - finding one, while others still search

sept 14 2001 - what now then: looking forward

sept 14 2001 - enter the president

sept 15 2001 - remembering what is impossible to forget

8:30AM, September 12, 2001

It happened. People in Los Angeles and Seattle and London and Toronto knew about it before many of us in New York did.

At 8:59 in the morning, September 11, 2001, the debate raging inside my head was whether or not to wake up and pay attention to the typical morning chatter on the Stern Show - and then, one minute later, someone enters the studio, saying that it's now really serious.

What's serious about today? Outside my window, it was a brilliant morning, one of the best of the early Fall I've seen in years. Azure skies, bright sun reflecting on the still-green leaves of the trees in the backyard. Above, I notice a plume of filthy black smoke, contrasting harshly with the cotton clouds adrift.

The Williamsburg Bank clock tower said 9:01. Slowly, it began to register - I called my neighbor and ran on the roof, and began to make phone calls.

There it was.

As in most of western Brooklyn, the line of sight to Downtown Manhattan is free and clear - it's less than three miles (as the crow flies) from here to the World Trade Center. There, I saw a gaping hole in the one tower, while the top of it's twin was wholly concealed by the smoky blaze.

The rest is known - an hour and a half later, both towers had been ripped from the cityscape, right before our eyes, and the smoke and dust and fumes made its way across the river, as thousands of papers - invoices, reports, memos - had flown only moments before.

It wasn't really funny, but it wasn't the sort of thing that you knew how to deal with. There we were, Brooklyn, forced to bear another wave of Manhattan's detritus, as we always do. People in Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights donned masks, the stench, possibly poisonous, was unbearable.

And then they came. Emerging from the haze, in a scene that resembled a million things we've seen on television and never in real life, they began their sad parade. Young and old, the healthy and the lame, pregnant mothers, housewives from Queens and Staten Island - they all came to Brooklyn, because they could go nowhere else.

People who lived in Bensonhurst were standing at the corner of Fifth and Flatbush, nursing aching ankles, sipping water that was handed out by large-hearted restaurateurs to the accidental tourists as they marched through Downtown Brooklyn. It was an endless stream - up the hill to Park Slope and Flatbush and beyond, and down Fifth Avenue towards Sunset Park and Bay Ridge.

The mood was somber, there was no mayhem or panic. My phone began to ring, and in between, I tried to make my own calls. I got invitations. Would I like to come here, or would I feel better there, I am weighing my options, and all of a sudden it hits me.

Hits me, as I stroll with a friend, along Dean Street through Boerum Hill, watching the afternoon light dance off brick and brownstone, where small groups of neighbors gather on their front steps with cordless and cell phones working overtime, and down through Brooklyn Heights, where thousands have gathered on the Promenade in virtual silence.

I would rather be nowhere else but here. If I ever doubted the basic goodness of this city's people, I doubt no more. The collective (wholly relative) calm that enveloped the so many of the eight million souls spoke volumes.

Not one person I spoke to wanted to get out. Many came to Brooklyn, many went to Queens, Long Island to be with family and friends, and even if we wanted to get far far away, who would board a plane at a time like this - supposing we are permitted to once again board planes - New York was the place to be.

Twentysomethings have finally experienced their own day that will live in infamy. It hasn't quite hit home yet. I mixed margaritas at the neighbors and dreamt of Mexico, I sat on the front step and watched the new city, in the throes of a full and complete mood swing. There was quiet, even though life carried on. It was a powerful moment.

It is now twenty-four hours after the beginning of it all, 7:59, when that fated American Airlines flight took off from Boston. The day today is more beautiful than the last - the smoke still drifts across the harbor and into Carroll Gardens and Red Hook. The gold plated dome of the bank tower shines, and the streets are all silent, at a time when trucks usually scream out their morningsong, on their way to the Manhattan Bridge.

Today there is no city, not south of Canal Street anyway. Howard Stern is back, my neighborhood is gathering at the bagel shop and combing the screaming headlines for just a little more news on a story about which we know everything and nothing.

Thousands are still buried in the rubble, a several minute train ride from where I sit in peace, and it is all just too much. As our Mayor said yesterday, it is too great a loss - one that none of us will ever be able to bear.

I think of the words God Bless America - for the first time in my life, I can say them without irony. Wherever we go, whatever we do - life will carry on, yes, but we will move through it forever changed.

That's the whole truth.

 

Email: davidr@lifeingotham.com

Next Update: 20 September

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