I wasn’t using LJ in Sept 2001, so I don’t have any posts or electronic recollections from the day.
Here’s what I posted last year – of course my memory of the day has not changed, so I will just quote it:
I woke up, and walked over to the computer to check my email before getting in the shower. Joeycat’s status on YIM was something like “a plane flew into the World Trade Center”. So I went back into the living room, and turned on CNN. I think was when only one tower had been hit yet, so I was watching TV when the second tower was hit. I think. Honestly, I don’t remember. But I do remember watching CNN when the towers fell.
I was sitting in the living room, transfixed on the television. I think at some point Susanna and/or Kristen (my roommates) must have woken up/come in, but I don’t remember. I do remember sending my boss a text page saying “hey, I’m running late this morning because I’ve been watching the news”.
I arrived at my office in downtown Chicago around 9:30 AM. About ten minutes after I got in, the news came that they were evacuating our building, and everyone should go home. I got on the L, and was quite nervous for the few minutes when the train went past the Quincy stop (next to the Sears Tower).
Went home, and Susanna and Kristen and I went for a walk and got some ice cream. Our neighborhood was so strange – very quiet, and it was eerie not seeing/hearing any planes overhead. We posted on Windyhop that anyone who was upset, confused, or just needed to be around people were welcome to come to our house that day/evening.
We ended up with about 10-15 people at our house throughout the evening. Some of them were folks I never really got along with, but that day we all needed to be by someone. We all had friends and family in NYC, and were quite worried. Things like swing dancing politics went right out the window that day.
I also remember that a few days later (maybe it was the next day, I don’t recall), that the was a “moment of silence” around lunchtime. Jeff and I were at the West Egg restaurant (now called the Atrium) drinking coffee and smoking while that happened. It’s weird, but that will always be a permanent memory of mine as regards 9⁄11, even though it didn’t happen ON 9⁄11.
I was in NYC a few weeks after the attacks, for Y3A. It was only my second time in New York, but even I could tell that the city felt DIFFERENT. I remember sitting on the floor at Nando’s house on Sunday morning, getting ready to go to Central Park, when the President came on the television to inform us that we were going to war in Afghanistan.
I remember skipping Frankie Manning’s birthday celebration in 2002 because I was afraid to fly over Memorial Day weekend.
I remember last summer being at the PATH station where the WTC stood, and looking into the gaping hole.
I remember being so relieved that none of the people I love were harmed by any of this. And I remember wondering why I deserved to be so lucky.
Ogden on Yehoodi posted this on 9/11/2001, and I think he hit the nail on the head:
EVERYONE: Remember where you are today, remember your feelings as you hear the news roll in, fix it in you mind because there are not many time where you can say that you were there when the world changed. Today the world has changed, and its not pretty. We now know what Americans felt on that “Day that would live in infamy.” Remember this so that you can convey it to your children and your grandchildren. And I am not being overly dramatic. The United States has been proven vulnerable today, the last time that happened we spent the next 5 years embroiled in a world war that changed the face of the world forever. When the human toll comes in the American public will give the government Carte Blanc to resolve and rettaliate as they see fit.
Make no mistake, the world tomorrow will be a different place than the world today. What will come of this? Who can say? But whatever the results, good or bad, remember it, freeze it in your mind, so you can say you were there the day the world changed, and you can remember the way it was.