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Saturday, August 13 September 11th Revisited
Last week while I was sitting on the deck of The Red Inn having a glass of Sauvignon Blanc waiting for the sun to set, two men sitting next to me started a conversation with me. Turns out we were all New Yorkers…somehow in between the comparisons of the best food in town, the way the boats look just before sunset and how fabulous the deck at The Red Inn was, our talk turned to September 11th. Maybe it’s because the anniversary is coming up, maybe it’s a right of passage that New Yorkers do when they meet up in an outside town, maybe its because one of the guys works on Wall Street, but all of a sudden in front of all that beauty the three of us were transported to that terrible day. The Wall Street man’s building had the windows sucked out. He was late for work that day, thank god, but stood below watching the people jump. His lover did not know until later that day whether or not he was okay. In an instant I was in the midst of one of the most lasting memories I have, almost as intense as watching that first tower fall and that is the dust, the thick wall of floating debris that turned ground zero and the surrounding area into an eerie place that was hard to describe to anyone who had not been there. It was strangely peaceful in the sickest possible way. It muffled the noise like falling snow. It felt like walking through a quiet snowstorm and yet you knew that some of what was falling on you were what was left of lost lives. The sick peace of it reminded me of what someone once told me it felt like to freeze to death. “You get really sleepy at first and kinda peaceful…then you feel warm and not cold.” I will never forget my first day at ground zero walking through the wall of dust finding the etching in the dust made by the loved ones of those lost… ”Johnny we are looking for you” “They may take our buildings but they will never get our souls” This morning I turned on my laptop and found the news showing the just released footage of the firefighters from that terrible day, 15 hours of radio transmissions and 500 oral histories that have just now been made public. There are the descriptions you have heard, how everything turned black and filled with screams. There two are personal stories like the fireman who realized the objects falling were people and turned away so as not to violate their last private moment and decision. But we are all changed from this terrible day. I asked a close friend of mine if she felt that I had changed from that terrible September and she said, “Completely…but it is mostly for the better.” Mostly… I do like to think that I have become kinder, more willing to talk, to listen, to work things out before starting a fight. I like to think that now…I understand the need for peace more then ever. I just wish our president had changed in this way too….
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