What follows here is not mine. The words the follow are from my friend, jason... he is an incredible writer, i lust for his skills with words. Jason has lived in New York City for many years and on the 5 year anniversary of September 11, 2001 he recalled back to that day. I chose to put his words on my blog just because of how different a view he has since he was an eyewitness to the greatest tragedy in american history.

It was Tuesday morning. I was wearing a black shirt, khaki pants, and my glasses. It was hot.
I had started working as a legal assistant at the firm only a few weeks before in late July, but aside from orientation and training, I hadn’t spent much time in the building downtown. Once training ended, I was immediately shipped to midtown to work on a case at an off-site location. It was miserable, stuck among boxes of documents piled high and stuffed into rows and rows of shelves spaced only a few feet apart. The heat from the sunlight of the sixteenth floor windows, mixed with the dust and the dry stale smell of paper, made for physically uncomfortable working conditions.
But more than that, I was lonely. While there were a few other legal assistants and some temps in midtown on the case, I was the new guy and had remained, for the most part, outside of the long-established cliques. Alternatively, training had been about bonding more than anything else. Between tedious info sessions and boring computer lessons I had established many friendships with the other new legal assistants. Yet before I could nurture them, I was off, banished to the glorified warehouse in midtown for the first seven weeks of my employment. This was not the glamorous New York City job that I had imagined when I accepted it over going to boring ol’ grad school.
Things were turning around, however. Just the day before, Monday, had been my first back in the downtown office since training ended. I was now mixed among the general population, able to enjoy the accoutrements of working in the main building, now my building – the shorter commute from my apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the subsidized (and rather delicious) cafeteria, the company of the other legal assistants, and the Wall Street area bars at which they had already begun to congregate for happy hours.
On the morning of that Tuesday, I left my apartment and walked the four long blocks to the subway. The time was about 8:15am. I had to be in at work by 9:30am. Leaving at 8:15 would put me at work around 9, with thirty full minutes to spare. I’d like to say that I arrived early for work because I cared about my job; having just started, I wanted to impress my co-workers and superiors. But this would be a lie. I arrived early because I loved the made-to-order omelet station at the work cafeteria. The station closed was out of most of the good stuff by 9:15. Even though I had only eaten the omelets a few times during orientation, I knew it was something I wanted to continue. If this meant waking up a few minutes early, that was ok with me – good eggs are always worth it.
I waited, as I always did, for some time for the R train on the Bay Ridge Avenue platform. It finally came and I boarded. I sometimes read on the commute and got through many books doing this (as it was about fifteen stops until I reached work), but on this morning I forgot my book. So instead I passed the time listening to my cd player, in particular “The Story of Them Featuring Van Morrison (Disc Two).”
Over Van the Man’s encouragement about how it soon won’t hurt half as much, there came an announcement from the train’s PA system. Due to a medical emergency, the train would not be stopping at Cortland Street. This was of no concern to me. Not only because “medical emergencies” were common (they could range from serious incidents like a commuter falling on the tracks to trivial things like someone throwing up in a crowded car), but also because I was not getting off at Cortland Street. That was World Trade Center territory, two subway stops (though just a few blocks) north of my stop near Wall Street.
The train carried on. Another announcement followed a few stops later. There was no mention of the medical emergency at Cortland Street this time; the conductor announced that the train would be terminating at the next stop and apologized for the inconvenience. This did concern me. I had been heading north from south Brooklyn toward my office in Lower Manhattan. Because my train was now terminating, I would have to switch trains three times (!) to get to work. Fuck.
First, I had to back-track my steps. I needed to board a train heading south, into Brooklyn, away from Lower Manhattan. I would take this one stop, switch to a train that would take me over the Manhattan Bridge into Manhattan – putting me north of my stop – then finally switch to a third train in Manhattan which would take me south, down to the tip of the island, and drop me off in front of my building. What a major inconvenience.
That first southbound train arrived shortly and I hopped on. I noticed a commotion from the opposite end of the train car, someone yelling about something or other, and I turned up the volume on my cd player. It is not uncommon for someone to be yelling on a New York City subway train – once a week I’m treated to a schizophrenic’s interpretation of the Gospel of Luke or a drunk’s rendition of “Only You.” That’s part of the charm of the city, really.
But what is uncommon is when the ranting is coming from a kid my age wearing a blue New York Stock Exchange trader’s jacket, holding a stack of charred documents in his hand, hysterically yelling, “They got the World Trade Center! They’re going to get the Stock Exchange next! They got it! They got it!”
This…this was different.
I can hit the New York Stock Exchange with a tennis ball if I’m standing at the steps of my office building. Logic would therefore imply that I have a vested interest in any situation in which someone is trying to “get” this building. But this is New York City – people bleed to death in the streets while others step over them. I was tired. I was late. I was pissed off. And worst of all, it was becoming clear that I was going to miss the omelet station. I didn’t have time for any shit.
We reached my stop and I got off the train. The second train came shortly thereafter and I got on. I tried to look at it positively. Even though I was now going to be late for work, at least the trains were arriving quickly. And now that this train would take me over the Manhattan Bridge I’d be treated to a view of the downtown New York City skyline, which looks even more spectacular in the morning, hulking over the bay, teeming with hundreds of thousands of people working, than it does at night, when there is light, but no life.
I reflected upon how much I’d grown to love Van Morrison in the past few months (who knew there was so much more to him than “Brown-Eyed Girl” and “Domino?”) when the train emerged from the subway tunnel and started its slight ascent onto the Manhattan Bridge. I sat up in my seat, lifting myself out of a slouch, to get a good look at the skyline.
This is when it started for me.
One of the towers of the World Trade Center was on fire. It was a spectacular site, the first image to warrant the use of the word later most commonly employed to describe the day: surreal. Flashes of red and orange darted out of the sides of the building, a million angry tongues lapping at the sky. Thick clouds of black smoke, seemingly the size of small planets, encircled the top of the building before dissipating high into the air. The sky that was cloudless and blue when I had left my apartment earlier in morning was now scarred and dyed gray.
Commuters flocked to the left side of the train, their faces and bodies pressed against the windows and each other. No one spoke. Everyone watched.
Soon though the cell phones started flipping. My fellow riders began calling family and friends to find out what was going on. I joined them. My first call was to my roommate Kyle, a grad student who usually slept until noon every day. I figured he’d be able to turn on CNN or NY1 (the New York 24 hours news channel) to figure out what happened. But my cell phone didn’t work. Neither did anyone else’s. True or not, we reasoned that the cell phone reception tower was probably on top of the burning World Trade Center tower. That’s why we weren’t getting service.
But as the train descended back into the tunnel, now entering Manhattan, there was calm (as strange as that now sounds). There was a fire – this much was true. But there are fires. They happen. Collectively, there was an assumption that this was something that the Trade Center was prepared for. Perhaps it started in the Windows of the World restaurant before spreading to a few floors, but certainly all the employees had been evacuated. Not a big deal. Not for New Yorkers, anyway.
***
Canal Street – City Hall – Cortland Street – Rector Street – Whitehall. This was the route of the third and final train that I would take that morning, the one that would bring me to work. When I got on at Canal Street, this time after a bit of a wait, the car was unusually crowded. Not exactly packed, but several people were standing. I was among them, gripping a pole nearby two cute French girls, who were seated and pouring over a travel guide.
There was a quiet but easily identifiable tension. By now, everyone had heard that one of the World Trade Center towers was on fire. And this train would take us directly under the WTC, which stood just above Cortland Street. As we pulled out of Canal, we learned that because of “police emergency” at Cortland, we would not be stopping there (the situation had gone from “medical emergency” to “police emergency” in the span of less than thirty minutes – all mumbo jumbo, certainly, but still not a positive turn of events).
We pulled away from the City Hall stop and were moving slowly south. We reached the Cortland Street subway station, now eerily quiet and empty. Riding through an empty subway terminal in Lower Manhattan during the morning rush hour is a strange, unsettling experience, like bearing witness to a modern day ghost town. I tried to imagine what was happening a few feet above ground and a few thousand feet above ground. How would they reach any people if they were stranded on those top floors? Would they use helicopters? Can helicopters even go that high? A true “crisis” Irish Catholic, I made the sign of the cross and asked God to help out, if possible.
At Rector Street, we picked up no one, not a single person. A few riders got off. We were now one stop away from my work. Much to the chagrin of the other riders, the conductor announced that Whitehall would be the last stop on the train. The train would then not make the commute into Brooklyn. That was fine with me. This was a rare day in that I just wanted to get in to work, if only to find out what the hell was going on.
Then, as we moved in the tunnel between the Rector Street and Whitehall subway stations, the ground shook. My first reaction was that it was an earthquake. Before I could rationalize that it couldn’t be an earthquake because New York City is four hundred miles away from the nearest minor fault line, the train stopped. Not suddenly, but not gently. I lunged forward and grabbed the pole I was standing near with both hands. The momentum of the unexpected stop caused my work bag to swing off my shoulder and hit one of the cute French girls in the head. Before I could apologize to her, the train, now still, grew dark. It was pitch black. The conductor, in what I can only imagine was a communiqué meant for the other MTA employees on the train and not the commuters, screamed over the PA, “We just lost power!”
This whole sequence of events took place in less than three seconds.
In the car in which I was standing, people began screaming, crying, running the gamut of “flipping out.” Back-up lights came on, dimly lighting the train. I tried to stay calm, but I don’t remember much of what I was feeling at this time, as everything was happening too quickly. I only remember what I was doing, namely, walking with the other passengers to the front of the train. Apparently, the first car of the train was in the Whitehall Street subway station, so we were not stuck in the middle of a tunnel. The crew instructed all riders to walk to the front of the train to exit from the first car. So we moved, single-file, up to the front. I turned down my Van Morrison so that I was better able to focus on getting out as quickly as I could.
I walked behind the two cute French girls. They were frazzled, speaking in rapid fire French to each other. I imagined that I would take care of them once we got out of the train. They could come with me to my office building to figure out what was going on. Sure, it might be weird to have two strange French girls in my office, but I was sure Security would understand and give them each a building pass. Then maybe later that night, when this was all figured out, we’d meet up for drinks and I would kiss both of them at the same time. Even in a crisis situation, I was thinking about sex. With two girls.
But when we reached the subway station and exited the car, I knew that something might be seriously wrong. The station was filled with ash, smoke, and dust. (I realize that this might sound silly in retrospect – it was the dust-filled subway station that freaked me out, not seeing a trader having a nervous breakdown about people “getting” buildings in Lower Manhattan, not seeing a tower on fire from the Manhattan Bridge, not being underground in what felt like a 4.2 earthquake. It was dust, fucking dust.) There was no time to think, though. We were moved up and out of the subway station.
If being in the dust-filled station was my first clue that something might be very wrong, this feeling was confirmed when I exited the station. There were white-out conditions on the streets of Lower Manhattan. Everything was ash and dust and heat. Again, falling back on my on what comes most naturally to me, one of my first thoughts was, “The French girls! Where are the French girls!” But I couldn’t find them. Visibility was almost nothing. If you were to extend your arm out before you, you wouldn’t be able to see your hand. It was so difficult to see and orient myself that even though my building was only a block away from the subway exit, I got lost. Van was covering Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.”
I entered the first building that I saw to get my bearings. People were packed into its lobby, shaking off dust, trying to make phone calls, panicking. I was already covered in the ash and dust. It was caked into my hair, beard, clothes, shoes. I was in the strange building’s lobby only a minute, taking a moment to grab some tissues to clean off my glasses and so that I could hold them against my mouth as I walked to my office. This fire was apparently much, much bigger than I thought.
When I finally arrived at my building after what seemed like days, all employees were packed into the basement into the sublevel conference rooms. There were televisions on and working telephones.
This is when I figured it out.
My first reaction: I have to call my mom.
There were lines at each of the four or so working telephones in the largest conference room, so I left that room and ducked into a nearby caseroom that I had been assigned to the day before. There was a computer there and a telephone. As I brought up CNN.com to read as much as I could about what had and what was happening, I got connected to my mom. I assured her that I was alright, that I was at work, but was safe there (I explained to her that the building was a bomb shelter, which was true, but I left out the part about how it’s 40 stories high and one of the largest in the Lower Manhattan skyline).
My next call was to my roommate Joe, who every day traveled from our apartment in Bay Ridge to the World Trade Center, where he would take the PATH train into Newark where he worked. Joe had left for work before me that morning, before I had even woke up, as he usually did. I was certain that he was at the World Trade Center at some point that morning. My hope was that he had already made it into Newark by the time the planes struck. Based on the timeline I was reading about on CNN, I knew it was close.
I couldn’t reach Joe. All cell phones were out of commission by this point, reduced to plastic flashy trinkets that told time. Instead, I called my other roommate Kyle. We had a landline in our Brooklyn apartment, where I was hoping Kyle was awake and aware of what was going on.
Kyle answered. Before he could even get out his “Hello,” I asked if he had heard from Joe. He had. Like so many stories that we would hear about on that day, Joe had to be at work early that morning for a meeting. He had left for work earlier than normal and was safely in Newark before anything had happened. Had he left at his normal time, he would have been under the World Trade Center, waiting for the PATH train, at just about the time that the first plane struck. Joe was still in Jersey (and wound up stuck there for two days), but he was safe.
I hung up the phone with Kyle, promising him that I’d be in touch. My plan, if you could call it that, was to wait it out at work. I returned to the large conference room which doubled as the information and communication center for the firm and learned that subway trains were no longer running. My options were to walk home, which would take me past the WTC, over the Manhattan Bridge, and through ten miles of Brooklyn, or to wait. I chose the latter.
I don’t remember how long I waited in the conference room with the hundred-plus other employees, transfixed by the news on television, before my “plan” became moot. The word came down that everyone in Lower Manhattan had to evacuate the area. We all had to go. Now.
When I left the building, it was clear and it was hot. Less than a half mile away, the World Trade Center burned, sending billows of smoke up into the sky. But the wind was blowing from the east, sending the smoke over the Hudson River to New Jersey. The ash and dust had settled. As I stood east of the towers, the sky above me was blue, cloudless, like it had been when I left my apartment hours before.
I couldn’t bring myself to begin the walk back to Brooklyn. While building security was ushering us out of the office, there were rumors that asbestos was now everywhere and there might be subsequent explosions from gas leaks around the WTC. Before I could start on the long trek to my apartment, I needed to pull myself together a little bit. This was going to be a difficult walk home.
I ambled around at the tip of the island of Manhattan, following hordes of people to the Staten Island Ferry terminal. I don’t know why I did this, since Staten Island was not where I wanted to go. But this was when things were hitting me, when I was realizing – albeit slowly – the gravity of the situation. I moved, but I did so without thinking.
But fortunately, walking to the ferry terminal turned out to be the best idea I had that day. The ferries were running to Staten Island, but in an astonishing twist, private and commercial boats started pulling up to the terminal, offering to take groups of stranded people wherever they needed to go. One boat was willing to take people to Hoboken, another to Long Island City, another to Weehauken. When the captain of the tugboat in front of me shouted, “Anyone to Bay Ridge?”, I jumped on.
Though it was packed like a Calcutta ferry, I couldn’t have been happier to be getting away from Manhattan and back to Brooklyn. Soon I would be home, back to the safety of my almost-suburban apartment, where I could shower, watch the news, and connect with my friends and family. But then as the tugboat pulled away from the terminal, I turned and looked back at the skyline and saw the hole where the two giant towers once stood. The relief I felt about going home was instantly drained from my body. I felt empty. I would for a very long time.
***
I am not the one to eulogize that day or those involved who worked so valiantly to save so many lives, often at the cost of their own. Many more capable – and more qualified – than I will do so.
Not only that, I am unable to articulate how exactly that day affected me. I did not lose any friends or loved ones on September 11, 2001. I realize that for this reason I am very blessed. I stood in that conference room at work and watched those men and women on the phone, sobbing. I, like every other American, watched the news for days and days upon end after the tragedy, unable to sleep, listening to the stories of those who were looking for husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers, sisters, friends, knowing through their pleas that they were probably never going to find them. And I knew that I was most fortunate to escape that kind of pain.
And for this, when I think about that day, I feel guilty. At least, I think I feel guilty. I don’t know if I’ll ever have enough emotional intelligence and perspective to know for sure. I was there, yes. I saw one of the towers burning from a perspective that few others were able to see, yes. I think I was underground when one of the towers fell, yes. I walked the streets of Lower Manhattan on that September morning in the rain of ash and dust as shredded paper fell like ticker-tape, yes.
But 9/11, the events of 9/11, are not me. At most, I was an observer. I was there to see and to experience, but that’s it. I “lived through it,” but not really. I have a story, but not a scar.
And this, among the sadness, anger, and gratitude I feel when I think about that day, occupies my thoughts the most.