I wanted to write about some memories of mine. With today being the tenth anniversary of the WTC attacks, I figured I would start out with what many people are talking about. No one can forget where they were when it happened.
The New York Times recently posted this interactive feature of some recently released 9/11 tapes. You can listen to them while reading the transcripts and notes at the same time. They also track where the four planes where as you are hearing the calls.
While all of this was happening, I was sound asleep. I was in college and scheduled all my classes on a Thursday. I may have slept the whole day before. I woke up when the phone rang and immediately answered it, just in case it was the girl I had really liked. It turned out to be a buddy of mine.
"Go down to Liberty State Park," he said.
"What?" I said. I was still kind of groggy. We had been going to LSP to toss the football around. But that was in the afternoons.
Why would he want to play football in the morning? On a weekday? And did he not know that I wouldn't have the car because my mom was at work? And why didn't he just pick me up on the way instead of asking me to meet him there?
"You don't know what happened?"
"What happened?"
"Turn on your TV."
Okay. Apparently a plane hit the World Trade Center. Was this an accident? Some amateur flew into it? No, both buildings were hit. Okay, that's no accident.
I don't remember what my friend and I said after that, but it was brief. He was at work at Garden State Mall. He said there were some people panicking there, afraid the place would be attacked as well. After he hung up, I sat there in my mom's bedroom watching the news.
It was on WCBS, the only channel the TV could get. All the other stations broadcasted through the towers except for Channel 2. Just as in the 1993 attack when I came home from school and found out what happened, I sat there in front of the TV alone.
Okay, so the buildings are on fire. Don't they have helicopters that could douse it with water. This would be interesting to see. I can't believe these assholes are so stubborn and stupid to keep going after these buildings. We'll put the fires out, and we'll rebuild it.
I was taking a photography class at the time, so I decided to take a camera and go outside. We lived on top of a hill in Jersey City, and we had a great view of the New York City skyline. I walked one block to a street next to a small cliff with an unobstructed view.
There were a handful of people there. I didn't say a word to anyone. I may have had my headphones on, listening to AM radio on my walkman. I took a few pictures. A few minutes later, one of the towers crumbled, and my heart sank. And then the other one went down, too. I couldn't believe it. I was numb.
I developed the pictures, but I never published them. Even at class, I didn't tell anyone about it. I'm not sure why. I shared them with some close friends, but that was it. At the time, I was interested in exploring photography as a career, maybe even becoming a war photographer. After the semester, I didn't pursue it any further.
I ended up as a video editor in New York City in 2005. I can't say much about it, but I have had the privilege and honor of working on some important things. Some were not always easy to watch or hear. And all this time these things were happening, many of us were blissfully unaware.
I wish we could have kept on sleeping.
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