RubySoho
Winston
A day in my life, pt. 1
May 22nd 2007 15:12
I'm going to do something today that I've pondered for some time. Generally, my focus since starting to blog has been on choosing a topic, stating some facts, and giving my feelings on it. It's a fairly standard method, widely employed on Orble. I like it. However, today, after giving it a lot of thought, I've decided to share something personal. This blog is meant to deal with issues using critical thought and reason. But sometimes the best way to make a point is just to tell a story. This story happens to be true.
This is something I wrote a couple years ago, about a particular day in my life. I won't say what day, but I think it will be obvious. I'll post the first half here, and the second half will follow later today or tomorrow.
The Commute
The river of bodies creeps forward steadily, painfully, foot by foot. This line stretches ahead of me for an eternity, disappearing beyond the threshold of my sight. It may end in another state, for all I can tell. A couple miles away from where I stand a few thousand people lay dead within a mountain of smoldering rubble. Smoke hangs in a massive, funereal cloud over this newly minted wasteland to the south. In the street to my right, two different streams flow past me in opposite directions. One is human, covered in dust and grime and tears, and it’s heading towards the back of the line. The other is rubber and metal, trucks and cranes and bulldozers, and it rumbles towards that rising black cloud. I should be sad or angry or pitying or any of a hundred other things. But, at this particular instant, all I can do is marvel at how massively long this goddamned line is.
Normally I’d be on the Metro North commuter rail now, not waiting in this immense line to take the ferry. Actually, at 3:00 on a Tuesday I would normally be at work, but the workday schedule went out the window around nine o’clock this morning. That was when ridiculous rumors started circling the office, nonsense really. It still seemed like nonsense when we went on the Internet to check the news and saw a picture of the massive crater punched through the North Tower. A few minutes later, another tower and another impact later, it wasn’t nonsense anymore.
Rumor wave number two arrived shortly thereafter: there were still eight planes unaccounted for, the Air Force was shooting them down, the Air Force couldn’t find them, they were heading for us. They got the White House. It might all have been true for all anyone could tell. Communication lines were choked, access on and off the island was cut off, and I was now a resident of the world’s largest prison. Growing tired of watching the pandemonium on the news, and with nothing else to do but wait, I went outside to get some air.
Sitting in the garden area outside our building with my co-worker Bea, I was in another world. Past the bars separating us from the sidewalk, cars still rolled in the street, people walked by on the sidewalks, and wind rustled the leaves on the tree branch above my head. It was really a beautiful day, sunny and warm, but not too hot, and for a moment I let it just be a beautiful day. But that was only a moment, and the weight of the carnage fifty blocks away quickly banished any illusions I wanted so badly to have. Reaching across the table I took one of Bea’s cigarettes, which she lit for me.
“It’ll relax you,” was all she said. And maybe it did. For the first and last time in my life I smoked an entire cigarette, right down to the filter. I never wanted one again. But I dragged on that thing like a junkie, and for a few minutes I was in Flavor Country.
The afternoon blurred by, with most everyone existing in a continual state of rage and anguish. No one worked. We all seemed to instinctively realize that bravely soldiering forward to carry on the workday would trivialize the events of the morning. Mostly we all sat around talking, but not really hearing anything. Finally, later in the afternoon, news that there was a way off the island reached the office. This is how I find myself in this line with a couple of acquaintances from work, Steve and Mary. We say hi to each and maybe chitchat a little on most days, but now we’re united by the common goal of getting across the river to the Jersey shore. What we’ll do from there is still anybody’s guess, but at this point achieving even this modest goal seems uncertain. The information running down the line has the wait time for the ferry pegged at eight or nine hours from where we stand. I groan inwardly, but with the tunnels and bridges shut down, the only way off the island is on a boat.
And so we move forward foot by foot, minute by minute, not really seeming to go anywhere. Steve and Mary, who work together, talk to each other lightly, as many people do, to avoid drowning in reality. I add a comment here and there, but mostly I’m silent. More than anything I want to call my family and my girlfriend, Julia, and just talk to them, even if I rack up a $300 cell phone bill. No one in the city is actually from the city though, and everyone wants to call his or her loved ones in Hometown USA. The airwaves aren’t meant to handle so many outpourings of affection all at the same time and an open cell phone signal is damned near impossible to obtain as a result. Still, I take comfort in the fact that I was able to get an e-mail out to Julia and she will let everyone else know I’m OK. 99.9% of the city is OK of course, but today anyone you know in the city that you don’t see standing in front of you, you assume the worst.
Standing in this line gives me too much time to think, and the conversation in my head goes a hundred different and unpleasant directions. In a way, I have to acknowledge the sheer genius and audacity of the plan these killers wrought, turning our own technology and resources against us to achieve more destruction than any invading army could hope to accomplish. It is a lesson in humility for the nation, a sobering blow to our notion of invincibility. The word everyone is thinking right now isn’t even ‘why’ but ‘how’? How could the single most powerful country on the planet be sucker punched so swiftly and so brutally? Reality, it seems, is being altered around us all, and the new reality being crafted is that we are not invulnerable and most likely never were.
But what takes up most of my reverie time are thoughts of Julia, my girlfriend back in my Massachusetts homeland. Although we’ve only been going out for a couple months, we’ve been friends for years. This facet of our relationship is new but feels old and comfortable and right. The thought of my death, of missing the life with her I can see happening, is terrifying. As much as anything, I want to live to experience the life with her that I envision, and this makes me even more frightened that the attacks aren’t over, that I won’t live out the day….
Thankfully this train of thought derails as fresh news travels the line: the Port Authority bus terminal at the George Washington Bridge is opened, the bridge has been inspected and shuttles are running to New Jersey.
“What do you think?” Steve asks Mary and me. “This line is going to be hours. I say we go for it.” Mary and I agree, as we’ve moved less than a block in the past hour or so. Leaving our place in the line behind we turn and start our walk towards the uptown subway station.
“God I hope this works,” Mary says, “because I can’t see the end of the line. I’d hate to have to come back to the ferry.” All I know is that I’m determined to get home at this point, no matter how long I have to wait or walk or anything else.
The subway trip is strange, subdued. There’s a conflict in the brain between carrying on a normal action, like riding the subway, and the knowledge that today there’s no such thing as normal. I feel oddly claustrophobic during the trip, cut off from what’s going on above me, wondering if we’ll emerge to some new tragedy at the end of the line. But when the doors open and we emerge above ground at the Port Terminal by the GWB, all is as we left it at 50th Street. Too bad. I was hoping it would be better.
Another line snakes up the street and around the corner. In normal terms, it’s very long, but compared to the gargantuan line we left behind it’s almost non-existent. Army trucks roll up the street past us, loaded with National Guards who before today were serving their few weekends a year without any worries. The faces of the men and women in the trucks are concentrated and serious, but I’m sure they’re as scared as any of us. Maybe even more so. At least we’re trying to leave the city, while they have to stick around and defend it against a threat that no one really understands yet.
This line moves at a discernible rate, still slower than hell, but at least noticeable. Before too long, we’re around the corner and in view of the bridge. The GWB is barren, closed off by ranks of Army trucks barricading access. The only traffic on the bridge is a trio of shuttle buses, escorted by several Army trucks with yellow lights flashing. I watch anxiously as the buses recede towards the Jersey shore. I know the bridge has been inspected, but I can’t help wondering “what if…….”
Apparently I’m worried in vain, as a short time later the flashing light of the Army trucks become visible again, and the buses come back into view. This pattern repeats itself several times, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous each time. Then it’s my turn to board a shuttle myself, and my fear evaporates into joy at the prospect of getting another step closer to home. Once all are seated, the doors close and we begin our short drive out of the city and towards the sanctuary of the Jersey Shore.
On the middle of the bridge I notice a couple of women with tears staining their cheeks, looking backwards out of the windows towards the island we’re leaving behind. Mary, too, is crying while Steve is stoic and withdrawn. Turning, I see a stunning view of the skyline. Only there’s a hole in it, and where two proud buildings stood together just hours before, a heavy black curtain of smoke swallows the sunlight. I know that I’m looking at a funeral pyre. No tears come for me though. There’s only numbness, with the promise of pain beneath. For now I push it down; all I want to do is get to my apartment, lock the door and not come out again until the world is in order. Closing my eyes, I think about Julia’s visit a couple weeks before. We went to Battery Park, right in the shadow of the towers, to eat ice cream and people watch. It all made sense then. Now those towers are piles of twisted steel and shattered concrete and Battery Park is probably littered with dust and debris.
The shuttle bus drops us off right after the bridge, in the middle of the toll plaza. I’m standing in a place where thousands of cars should be cruising through, but instead a crowd of dazed people is milling around without a car in sight. The highways are closed within 10 miles of the city and I’m at least that far from my apartment. My hopes lie with Mary, or more specifically, her friend who lives in Jersey City. She’s the only person any of us know who is local to where we are, and not affected by the closing of the highway. She’s my only hope of getting anywhere near some form of mass transit, and home....
pt. 2 to follow
This is something I wrote a couple years ago, about a particular day in my life. I won't say what day, but I think it will be obvious. I'll post the first half here, and the second half will follow later today or tomorrow.
The Commute
The river of bodies creeps forward steadily, painfully, foot by foot. This line stretches ahead of me for an eternity, disappearing beyond the threshold of my sight. It may end in another state, for all I can tell. A couple miles away from where I stand a few thousand people lay dead within a mountain of smoldering rubble. Smoke hangs in a massive, funereal cloud over this newly minted wasteland to the south. In the street to my right, two different streams flow past me in opposite directions. One is human, covered in dust and grime and tears, and it’s heading towards the back of the line. The other is rubber and metal, trucks and cranes and bulldozers, and it rumbles towards that rising black cloud. I should be sad or angry or pitying or any of a hundred other things. But, at this particular instant, all I can do is marvel at how massively long this goddamned line is.
Normally I’d be on the Metro North commuter rail now, not waiting in this immense line to take the ferry. Actually, at 3:00 on a Tuesday I would normally be at work, but the workday schedule went out the window around nine o’clock this morning. That was when ridiculous rumors started circling the office, nonsense really. It still seemed like nonsense when we went on the Internet to check the news and saw a picture of the massive crater punched through the North Tower. A few minutes later, another tower and another impact later, it wasn’t nonsense anymore.
Rumor wave number two arrived shortly thereafter: there were still eight planes unaccounted for, the Air Force was shooting them down, the Air Force couldn’t find them, they were heading for us. They got the White House. It might all have been true for all anyone could tell. Communication lines were choked, access on and off the island was cut off, and I was now a resident of the world’s largest prison. Growing tired of watching the pandemonium on the news, and with nothing else to do but wait, I went outside to get some air.
Sitting in the garden area outside our building with my co-worker Bea, I was in another world. Past the bars separating us from the sidewalk, cars still rolled in the street, people walked by on the sidewalks, and wind rustled the leaves on the tree branch above my head. It was really a beautiful day, sunny and warm, but not too hot, and for a moment I let it just be a beautiful day. But that was only a moment, and the weight of the carnage fifty blocks away quickly banished any illusions I wanted so badly to have. Reaching across the table I took one of Bea’s cigarettes, which she lit for me.
“It’ll relax you,” was all she said. And maybe it did. For the first and last time in my life I smoked an entire cigarette, right down to the filter. I never wanted one again. But I dragged on that thing like a junkie, and for a few minutes I was in Flavor Country.
The afternoon blurred by, with most everyone existing in a continual state of rage and anguish. No one worked. We all seemed to instinctively realize that bravely soldiering forward to carry on the workday would trivialize the events of the morning. Mostly we all sat around talking, but not really hearing anything. Finally, later in the afternoon, news that there was a way off the island reached the office. This is how I find myself in this line with a couple of acquaintances from work, Steve and Mary. We say hi to each and maybe chitchat a little on most days, but now we’re united by the common goal of getting across the river to the Jersey shore. What we’ll do from there is still anybody’s guess, but at this point achieving even this modest goal seems uncertain. The information running down the line has the wait time for the ferry pegged at eight or nine hours from where we stand. I groan inwardly, but with the tunnels and bridges shut down, the only way off the island is on a boat.
And so we move forward foot by foot, minute by minute, not really seeming to go anywhere. Steve and Mary, who work together, talk to each other lightly, as many people do, to avoid drowning in reality. I add a comment here and there, but mostly I’m silent. More than anything I want to call my family and my girlfriend, Julia, and just talk to them, even if I rack up a $300 cell phone bill. No one in the city is actually from the city though, and everyone wants to call his or her loved ones in Hometown USA. The airwaves aren’t meant to handle so many outpourings of affection all at the same time and an open cell phone signal is damned near impossible to obtain as a result. Still, I take comfort in the fact that I was able to get an e-mail out to Julia and she will let everyone else know I’m OK. 99.9% of the city is OK of course, but today anyone you know in the city that you don’t see standing in front of you, you assume the worst.
Standing in this line gives me too much time to think, and the conversation in my head goes a hundred different and unpleasant directions. In a way, I have to acknowledge the sheer genius and audacity of the plan these killers wrought, turning our own technology and resources against us to achieve more destruction than any invading army could hope to accomplish. It is a lesson in humility for the nation, a sobering blow to our notion of invincibility. The word everyone is thinking right now isn’t even ‘why’ but ‘how’? How could the single most powerful country on the planet be sucker punched so swiftly and so brutally? Reality, it seems, is being altered around us all, and the new reality being crafted is that we are not invulnerable and most likely never were.
But what takes up most of my reverie time are thoughts of Julia, my girlfriend back in my Massachusetts homeland. Although we’ve only been going out for a couple months, we’ve been friends for years. This facet of our relationship is new but feels old and comfortable and right. The thought of my death, of missing the life with her I can see happening, is terrifying. As much as anything, I want to live to experience the life with her that I envision, and this makes me even more frightened that the attacks aren’t over, that I won’t live out the day….
Thankfully this train of thought derails as fresh news travels the line: the Port Authority bus terminal at the George Washington Bridge is opened, the bridge has been inspected and shuttles are running to New Jersey.
“What do you think?” Steve asks Mary and me. “This line is going to be hours. I say we go for it.” Mary and I agree, as we’ve moved less than a block in the past hour or so. Leaving our place in the line behind we turn and start our walk towards the uptown subway station.
“God I hope this works,” Mary says, “because I can’t see the end of the line. I’d hate to have to come back to the ferry.” All I know is that I’m determined to get home at this point, no matter how long I have to wait or walk or anything else.
The subway trip is strange, subdued. There’s a conflict in the brain between carrying on a normal action, like riding the subway, and the knowledge that today there’s no such thing as normal. I feel oddly claustrophobic during the trip, cut off from what’s going on above me, wondering if we’ll emerge to some new tragedy at the end of the line. But when the doors open and we emerge above ground at the Port Terminal by the GWB, all is as we left it at 50th Street. Too bad. I was hoping it would be better.
Another line snakes up the street and around the corner. In normal terms, it’s very long, but compared to the gargantuan line we left behind it’s almost non-existent. Army trucks roll up the street past us, loaded with National Guards who before today were serving their few weekends a year without any worries. The faces of the men and women in the trucks are concentrated and serious, but I’m sure they’re as scared as any of us. Maybe even more so. At least we’re trying to leave the city, while they have to stick around and defend it against a threat that no one really understands yet.
This line moves at a discernible rate, still slower than hell, but at least noticeable. Before too long, we’re around the corner and in view of the bridge. The GWB is barren, closed off by ranks of Army trucks barricading access. The only traffic on the bridge is a trio of shuttle buses, escorted by several Army trucks with yellow lights flashing. I watch anxiously as the buses recede towards the Jersey shore. I know the bridge has been inspected, but I can’t help wondering “what if…….”
Apparently I’m worried in vain, as a short time later the flashing light of the Army trucks become visible again, and the buses come back into view. This pattern repeats itself several times, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous each time. Then it’s my turn to board a shuttle myself, and my fear evaporates into joy at the prospect of getting another step closer to home. Once all are seated, the doors close and we begin our short drive out of the city and towards the sanctuary of the Jersey Shore.
On the middle of the bridge I notice a couple of women with tears staining their cheeks, looking backwards out of the windows towards the island we’re leaving behind. Mary, too, is crying while Steve is stoic and withdrawn. Turning, I see a stunning view of the skyline. Only there’s a hole in it, and where two proud buildings stood together just hours before, a heavy black curtain of smoke swallows the sunlight. I know that I’m looking at a funeral pyre. No tears come for me though. There’s only numbness, with the promise of pain beneath. For now I push it down; all I want to do is get to my apartment, lock the door and not come out again until the world is in order. Closing my eyes, I think about Julia’s visit a couple weeks before. We went to Battery Park, right in the shadow of the towers, to eat ice cream and people watch. It all made sense then. Now those towers are piles of twisted steel and shattered concrete and Battery Park is probably littered with dust and debris.
The shuttle bus drops us off right after the bridge, in the middle of the toll plaza. I’m standing in a place where thousands of cars should be cruising through, but instead a crowd of dazed people is milling around without a car in sight. The highways are closed within 10 miles of the city and I’m at least that far from my apartment. My hopes lie with Mary, or more specifically, her friend who lives in Jersey City. She’s the only person any of us know who is local to where we are, and not affected by the closing of the highway. She’s my only hope of getting anywhere near some form of mass transit, and home....
pt. 2 to follow
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Comment by charliesgirl_992000
Histeries, Mysteries and what not
Lifes little slices
Mystical Creativity
we lived in Illinois then. 3 years ago we moved to PA. soon after i was here we found out taht we where about 45 minutes from the site of the crash of flight 93. There starting a new memorial. i've been wanting to go very soon, and see if anything has been started.
such a sad day!!!! i'm glad you are sharing your experience.
Tammy
Comment by Winston
Small Thoughts on Big Questions
Thanks for reading, pt. 2 will be up tonight or tomorrow
Comment by charliesgirl_992000
Histeries, Mysteries and what not
Lifes little slices
Mystical Creativity
Tammy
Comment by Wendi
The paragraph that struck me most in this bit is as follows:
I'm sure you weren't alone in that Love became priority. It's just such a shame that it takes a tragedy of this nature for so many to realize how special love is, and how much of a loss it would be if tomorrow never came.
-- moving on to part 2, now...
W
Comment by Winston
Small Thoughts on Big Questions