Last night I was puking– mild food poisoning, flu, something I don’t know. I had decided to stay home the next day, and I got up this morning just to drive my husband to caltrain. We aren’t much for tv or even the radio, but the traffic was a bit congested on the way to the station to I turned on kqed.
This is how I found out. Taking the third street exit onto bayshore to the caltrain station, learning the pentagon had a “notch” in it, and smoke and something about the world trade centers… a bomb? what had happened? planes? An accident like that?
Philippe and I sat listening at the station in horror as we learned about the two planes that crashed into the world trade center, how they collapsed, how the pentagon also suffered from a plane crash-attack. Philippe turned to me and said, “Let’s go home.”
We’ve spent the last few hours on the couch, trying to call Andi, receiving calls from friends and family. Nobody has much to say. These are phone calls that you make just to say, “Are you still there? is this happening? Do you feel it too?” We sent out emails well, little pings to other friends and coworkers, and discovered Gabe is staying home, wondering about a friend in Manhattan, and Noel is also gone home to hunker down with his loved one, and Carbon IQ is empty today. As you can see, I’ve been surfing the blogs looking for reassurance.
Philippe called his mother to let her know he’s okay (mothers worry, no matter what coast you are on), and found out there was an earthquake in Holland. Sometimes it seems the world is going insane.
I think they said forty-thousand people were in the world trade center. Mayor Giuliani said he saw people jumping out of the top floor windows. I could imagine those people choosing their death– they could not live, so all they could do was choose their death. I cried for about the fourth time this morning.
I guess this is one of those events… people will ask you where you were when you found out. I’ll see the third street exit, when they ask me about the beginning of world war three, or about the event that ended civil liberty in America, or the event that caused us to bomb Libya/Iraq/Iran, or led to the relocation of Palestine… or maybe it will be merely the worst tragedy in my lifetime. I hope that this is all I remember when I take that exit again, that this was an isolated incident, that this will be the worst tragedy in my lifetime and none will ever overshadow it.
I’m going back to sit with my husband now. I wish I could stop watching, but I can’t. The only thing scarier than what has happened is what will happen next.