Today I tried to dive into work - anything to keep the mind off of yesterday’s horrifying events. It’s so strange how I can almost forget for a moment just what happened - then I see a Web site mentioning the attack, or catch a quick soundbite from a passing radio, or see a flag at half-mast, and it all comes flooding back.
I still haven’t heard from my friend Sarah, who works in Manhattan. As far as I can tell, her office is far North enough that she should have been okay - I’ve tried calling her parents but there was no answer today. I’m hoping for the best.
Images have been permanently burned into my brain. It’s as if I have some cruel Viewmaster stuck in my head, playing back the horror over, and over, and over. The plane cutting into the second tower. People, covered in soot and ash walking away from the disaster area, looking like walking corpses…
What I will never forget, though, was an image that thankfully hasn’t been shown too much: a medium shot of a man falling to his death from the tower. The camera is far enough away that he’s just a dot - but you can see his legs flailing away in the panic of the moment, and you’re screaming at the television, ohmygodohmygod he’s still alive ohgodohgod and then that’s all you can take and you can’t cry anymore and you finally turn away to hug your girlfriend and pet your cats and be thankful for what you have, right here, right now.
