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September 11, Four Years Later



I don’t have any big philosophical thing prepared for the anniversary of September 11th, 2001. Instead I thought maybe we could just share stories of where we were and what happened to us on that day. That seems as appropriate as anything.

I was at work, fiddling around on the internet. I don’t quite remember the exact details of how the morning unfolded, but once we heard the news a second plane had hit, we knew something weird was going down. A small group of us spent the rest of the day scouring chatrooms and scraping together information from over-taxed websites about what was really going on. We had people on IRC who were basically just typing in what they heard on their local news channels, or from friends who were reporting live from the scene. It was kind of a mess, but at the same time, we had all these alternate channels to keep us informed.

We also heard lots of crazy news reports on the local radio. I remember one thing that claimed there were something like 22 jets currently hijacked all around the country. Another report said that a battleship had been taken over in Boston Harbor. Those are the two wackiest I remember off the top of my head.

Towards the end of the day, our noble CEO rounded us all up and gave an absolutely stirring speech forbidding us from going home early today, because that would mean that the terrorists would have won. Asshole.

Walking home later, the streets were deserted. We were obviously the only company with a CEO whose will was powerful and patriotic enough to stand up to the dirty terrorists. When I got home my girlfriend had started collecting together all our friends for a big dinner, just to make sure everybody was okay. Actually, looking back, none of them were really “my” friends, as she’d nimbly edged my real friends out of my life, but that’s a whole other annoying story I’m not going to get into.

In any event, these past four years seem like a lifetime ago now. I won’t say that I “woke up” that day, but I definitely did gradually every day from then till now - and hopefully on into the future.







7 Reader Responses

  1. katie boucher Says:
    September 11th, 2005 at 2:51 am

    I was in shop class, first period when the first plane hit, and across the hall, the choir teacher got a call, and had a TV to turn on. when i got out of the class, the choir kids were all buzzing about it to whoever else they saw, but didnt know what happened. i just remember overhearing someone say the WTC had been hit by a plane, and being like “what idiot misses an 80 story plus building?”. in french class madame body turned on the news and there it was, but the priniciple made an announcement to turn off all the TVs, etc, not to panic, yadda yadda. i didn’t hear about the second plane or the pentagon, or the pittsburgh plane until i came home and mom was sitting on a stool, three inches from the TV, crying, praying, whatever it is mom does when she’s upset. I had maybe three or four friends who had a parent killed, a couple more with uncles and aunts, but no widespread counseling was ever offered in the school, which pissed off alot of the teacher. Mr ferris, the shop teacher basically took matter into his own hands, and everybody cut their classes to sit and talk.

  2. James Russell Says:
    September 11th, 2005 at 8:29 am

    Being in Australia as I am, it was 10.45pm here when the attacks started. I was in the chatroom of a site I used to frequent when someone said to turn the TV on and watch what was happening. I remember the panic about how many more planes might’ve been hijacked, and recall that the Sears Tower in Chicago was a cause for concern for quite a while that day.

    I think something weird did go down on Sept. 11, although I don’t know what exactly. I watched a documentary last night called Loose Change, which offers a fair amount of circumstantial evidence that the official story has, shall we say, an incomplete connection with reality, but at the same time I find it hard to entirely swallow.

  3. Janice Says:
    September 11th, 2005 at 12:34 pm

    I was at home, getting ready for work, when every telephone in my apartment complex seemed to start ringing all at once. One of my family members called to tell me to turn on my television, that something was happening. I didn’t have a t.v. at the time, so I quickly ran to my office (I lived behind my work) and watched from there. I gathered with my co-workers and watched with amazement as the events unfolded. I worked at a Ayurvedic Healing center in La Jolla at the time. When our boss arrived, everyone at the center gathered into our meditation room to pray and meditate. When we finished, everyone was sent home for the remainder of the day. La Jolla basically shut down at that point. There was a strange and ominous feeling throughout the town. I just sort of wandered around, walking at the beach, feeling a sense of loss.

  4. Ran Says:
    September 11th, 2005 at 8:16 pm

    The big effect it had on me was to make normal society seem completely trivial. I was at a temp assignment (coincidentally at Getty Images, which now owns the most famous photo of the plane hitting the second tower), and not only didn’t we get to leave early, people were going about their meaningless crappy tasks as if nothing had happened. I was thinking, “Christ, the World Trade Center just collapsed and they want me to make photocopies?”

    That was the day I started walking barefoot in the city, because what the fuck! And I started taking my temp jobs much less seriously, because first it all seems so silly, and second they don’t pay me enough to risk death working in big office towers. A few weeks later I got fired.

  5. alistair Says:
    September 11th, 2005 at 9:12 pm

    i was getting my hair cut when the radio announcement came on about the second plane hitting the tower. i knew then that it was deliberate. i went home and held my children close and felt hollow. i don`t think that void has filled much since, so much as merely covered over. my training in logic and semantics don`t allow or see the necessity for supposition of blame in matters of serious concern but to know there are people capable of this sort of thing diminished my faith in humanity that day.

  6. Inder Says:
    September 11th, 2005 at 11:54 pm

    I was asleep. I woke up and checked my email and people kept talking about the attack, so I turned on the TV and realized what happened.

    I’ve been reading, just not commenting — you are too damn prolific you know, lol.

    Frankly it’s been one long dream *since* 9/11. I hope I wake up soon.

  7. james Says:
    September 12th, 2005 at 7:24 pm

    Like nearly everyone else in L.A., I watched it on the news right before I was about to go to work. What I find more intriguing, though, is what I was doing on September 10th, 2001.

    I was on my lunch break with my anarchist-atheist friend (at the time) Chris. I had just come back from Las Vegas for my sister’s birthday. An small earthquake had happened on the 9th when I was driving home.

    I’d been reading Noam Chomsky’s book on U.S. atrocities in Central America in the 80s. I was livid, and being surrounded by the buffets and conspicuous consumerism in Vegas only compounded my rage.

    Anyway, on the 10th, during our lunch break (which doubled as a smoke break) Chris and I were talking about how America has another thing coming to it, for all the crap it pulls worldwide. I remember saying that I thought Castro was a hero for standing up to us; I recall saying that I understand why terrorists hate us; I remember he and I were just ripping into Bush and his cabinet… and I also remember saying that America is primed for a big catastrophe to occur, and that we’d have no one to blame but ourselves…

    So when 9/11 happened the very next day, I had this weird notion of feeling like I caused it, with my incendiary words.

    My friend Chris turned 180 degrees that day, and went from being a punk rock left-leaning computer geek with hacker aspirations to calling the Taliban “towelheads” and talking about bombing the Middle east to oblivion.

    In comparison to the days that followed, 9/11 seemed almost unreal, like it didn’t really happen. But it did, and even though I know I didn’t cause it with my words, the coincidence tripped me out. But all it did was confirm what I already knew, and therefore I was less affected by it than, say, someone like Chris, who (it turns out) was only along for the surface of things. Apparently, his convictions weren’t solid enough to make the transition from the old world to this terrifying new one.

    I don’t speak with Chris anymore.



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