Monday 16 September, 2002 at 10:03AM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (0)

This is a direct copy of an email sent to me in NYC shortly after the events of 911, from an old work colleague in New Zealand. PVV has ok'ed publishing it, thanks Pete.

Mate

Reading your thoughts on 9/11 has prompted me to offer you what I wrote on the Sunday evening immediately after that fateful day. I am baring my soul here so no one take the piss.

Its 7.45 on Sunday evening, September 17, 2001. I find myself sitting in front of my computer, with a need to put to words the thoughts and feelings swirling around my head. I am not normally prone to such inner ponderings, yet this is no ordinary Sunday evening. Sure, my 4 beautiful sons are tucked up in their warm safe beds. My wonderful wife of 18 yrs is sitting a couple of metres away. I know she loves me, I sometimes feel her love for me radiate from her like the glow of a light bulb. The TV is blaring in the background, but the sounds emanating from it are not the regular Sunday evening fare. For tonight, as has been the case almost continuously for the last 4 days, CNN has been beaming in to our home the tragedy and horror that is New York.

For the past 4 days, starting from Wednesday morning when my wife rang me from her work urging me to switch to the news, I, like most of humanity have been glued to the events as they unfolded all those thousands of miles away. It was strange, normally when my kids are told Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon is being turned of they complain like crazy. But even they, despite their young age, sensed this was something that Dad had to watch. They didn't realise they saw one of the defining moments of this new century unfold before their very eyes. The two 4yr olds just walked away, but my 7 year old, asked the type of questions that indicated he realised the horror of the situation, but not the significance. Why did the plane crash into the buildings Dad? Why did they do that Dad? Do you think they should go to jail Dad? What's all that dust Dad? What happened to all the people in the planes Dad? No matter how simply I tried to explain the twisted reasoning that drove the lunatics to these actions, he didn't get it. But WHY Dad, why do they want to do that Dad. He was telling my by those questions that from his 7 short years on this planet, he had learnt that love, tolerance, and an appreciation of peoples differences was how he had been raised, so why were these people doing something totally to the contrary? I thought to myself that if we were able to answer that question and convey the answer to all our fellow citizens of the world, we might not have to face the problems we are today facing. The innocence of youth is often talked about as a great virtue we unfortunately loose as we grow towards adulthood. Today more than ever, I wish that innocence and the simplicity of childhood reasoning was blanketing all of us.

Tonight, despite the fact I am thousands of miles away from New York, my eyes also feel like they are about to stream with tears. I have no dust and ashes to deal with, I have no friends or family or other acquaintances missing or dead, yet I too feel like crying. Yet I haven't, yet! I don't know if I will, or if I do, when or where it will happen. I just know that somehow, my life will never be the same. I have a grief and a sense of foreboding that is forcing me to put life into perspective. I have a job that does nothing for me intellectually, is not challenging physically, yet I earn an income well above the national average. The feelings welling up inside of me wont stop me looking for the perfect job, if it in fact exists, nor will it stop me feeling bored as I watch the clock ticking away till home time. But I am being forced to consider how lucky I am living away from the focus of the worlds lunatics. Notice I didn't call my home country safe, or perfect or wonderful. It isn't, yet I know that having NZ citizenship affords me a lifestyle and freedom that citizens of other nations would pay the earth for. They often do.

As I watch the images of despair and disaster from New York pore into my lounge room I try really hard to imagine what it must be like for those poor people displaced from their lives. I do, I really try hard, but no matter how hard I try, I know that I wont be in a bulls roar of the reality that New Yorkers are currently experiencing. I have an ex work mate who flew into New York just last weekend. Marcus was starting a new life over there, a new relationship, hopefully a new job, and a new future. He had only been there for less than 48 hrs when all this went down. We were never close friends, but had been workmates for almost 8 years. Despite that I felt a dread for him the moment I switched to the news last Wednesday morning. I have since spoken to a mutual friend who has spoken to his Mother. Apparently, he called her on the phone when the 1st plane went in to tell her to switch on the news. While he was talking to her telling her he was ok, He watched the 2nd one go in. Marcus is a surfy, a pretty laid back dude really, yet from all accounts, he's absolutely scared witless.

I am sure he's not alone.

PVV

Thanks for sharing this dude.

revisiting 911

      Sunday 15 September, 2002 at 4:16PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (3)

The 911 anniversary was a few days ago - there was a little bit of a tense feeling in the air around NYC at the time, fortunately everything remained business as usual. It's weird having fighter jets on patrol over the city 24 hours a day though, especially late at night when everything is relatively quiet and then you hear the low rumble of the F-16 jets passing overhead at high altitude. Rather than feeling safer for it, it only seemed to serve as a reminder to me that life can be precarious and shit can hit the fan anytime. Not something easy to get used to after living in New Zealand for years, but we adjust.

The other day I found myself looking at some of the photos from 911, two in particular from photojournalists Richard Drew and Jeff Christensen. The pics freaked me out a bit. Some may find these pretty disturbing, although they aren't graphic like you'd find on somewhere like rotten.com (although I think even they have kept away from publishing graphic 911 photos, thankfully).

The one thing that I cant help wondering as I look at the first pic is what was going through this guys mind right at that moment? Was he completely freaked out or just accepting his fate? *shivers*

This second pic was taken moments before the North Tower fell.. I really don't have words for this.

Hmm. I intended to write quite a lot more here today but I seem to have gotten myself a bit down thinking about this stuff. I'm not sure why I am even posting this.. just my way of dealing with it I guess. I will post again in the next day or so.

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