i just saw the documentary "nine innings from ground zero" on HBO about the yankees playing the world series that year. Just the vibe of the crowd puts me back to that tragic time...i guess its something that you never get over. i think the weather being 50 degrees and feeling like fall brings back memories too, more so than the actual anniversary date. i've heard that your senses store more memory than anything else, like how a touch or a scent triggers memories. i hate when things slip into the back of your memory til you barely remember they even happened, sort of like most of my childhood so i thought i would recollect my memories of the world trade center and 9-11-01....when i woke up that morning on september 11, 2001 i had a bad feeling. it just seemed dark, somber like a rainy day when you don't feel like getting out of bed. although it wasn't raining. i had this feeling that i shouldn't go to work that day. But i was working as an intern for a documentary edet belzberg (whose doc on homeless romanian orphans got her an oscar nomination) and i pulled myself together and dragged my lazy ass to work. on the train ride over i heard some people talking about a fire at the world trade center or something. knowing the rumor mills that float around subway trains and new york, i basically just ignored them. when i got up to edet's apartment on 72nd st., i rang her doorbell and she was still in t-shirt and boxers. she asked me what i was doing there. i thought i had gotten the day mixed up. i said, "coming to work?" to which she replied, "sharyn, the city's under attack!" as if i should know. i was dumbfounded, confused, etc. and she hurriedly told me to come inside. she had her t.v. on and it was a news broadcast in which the twin towers were literally falling apart. "wait, what? no, this can't be happening. is this real?" it seemed like a hollywood stage or something. it just didn't seem real. i think the news stations were trying to make sense of it too. cnn kept cutting away to footage of palestinians cheering in the streets. "wait...are palestinians behind this?" it was as if they were trying to remain business as usual in the world of news reporting and image manufacturing. as if they could "explain" this as "some terrorists" (i.e. arab palestinians) just bombing a country. Put in that context i said "its like we're the israelis now and they're cheering at our demise." i tried to call my boyfriend at the time. he tried to rationalize it politically, saying that he's not surprised and giving me his pro-palestinian schpeil. i was frankly disgusted that he would even justify it like that. i wanted comforting, sympathy, not some political bullshit. i quickly hung up with him and told edet, who is jewish but she had no opinion about it. she was on the phone with her mother. i decided that i needed to be in the company of friends or home. so i left edet's and told her i would be okay and i walked to the train station. the station was closed. i hailed a cab. we didn't move for nearly 10 minutes. I decided to get out and walk to another train station and the cabbie was generous enough to not charge me anything. i walked several block to get to another train station. meanwhile, everything looked in chaos around me. it felt post-apolcalyptic. i always compare it to the ending of ghostbusters, when the ghosts take over. there was a homeless man holding up a sign that basically said the chickens had come home to roost (is that the right phrase?). i saw business people covered in soot walking around. i saw people selling bottles of water. the commercialism starts already...or it never ended. the stations were closed for a few hours so i basically just wandered around and finally i found an open station. as i crammed my way into the train, bodies literally pressed against each other, worse than any rush hour i'd ever seen, i heard one woman telling a co-worker that in her in country they were used to things like this and that you just have to try to keep living normally because if you live in fear that's what they (the terrorists) want. all of a sudden a homeless "busser" comes on the train and he's singing an operatic song trying to make a buck. tension was high and as he came around panhandling, one irate man from long island yelled "DON'T YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TODAY?? PEOPLE DIED TODAY!!" to which the opera singer casually and flippantly replied, "so what? are _you_ going to tell all of their families?" which upset the already upset man even more. so doing what most testosterone-fueled men do when they are emotionally upset, he grabs the homeless guy and shoves him against the wall. i start getting pissed and yell "STOP!" but no one really hears me in all the commotion. the irate man is literally trying to push the homeless man out of the train doors, which keeps the doors from closing and the train from moving. so now other people start getting pissed off because they can't get home, not because this big muscle-y white man has this skinny haggard black homeless man by the scruff of his neck and pushing him off the train. finally a train conductor comes by and tells the homeless man to get off the train. he remains proud even though he's been humiliated and assaulted in front of everyone and says no, not until the other guy gets off. they both refuse to budge. i say "why don't you BOTH get out!" no one hears me. finally the homeless man moves down to another side of the train and then the train finally gets moving. i think i ended up going to my ex-boyfriend's house where he lived with 3 other guys in forest hills, queens. andy and his girlfriend ana were the first to come home. they both work in midtown and tell us about their day and having to evacuate from their buildings. its starting to get dark now, people should be coming home from work now. the reality of what happened is starting to hit me more. i think about all of the people who won't come home from work like they normally do and about their families. i start getting really sad. i want to light candles or something. dennis is worried because he knows someone from high school who works in the world trade center. he doesn't know if he's okay. dennis is worried for a couple of days. the roommates subsequently go to his funeral a week or 2 later. i think of all the things i remember most about that day and those dark days afterwards are the sirens. even now when i hear a siren i panic. "did something happen!" i think to myself. i also remember the burnt smell in the air and the soot that covered cars and streets all around dan's house. i stayed most of the time there because i felt i needed to be around other people and i didn't like my apartment that much at the time. (it gave me an eery feeling. i later found out from my roommate that a postman who lived there had shot himself in the house. that is another story entirely, but it was always creepy after i found that out because we still got mail for him from the NRA!) anyway, back to the events of the world trade center demise...even though i didn't know anyone personally that died it was like losing distant family members because new york is like a family. even though it's one of the most densely populated city in the world, there is a community in new york city that you can't find in any other city. i think because struggling in new york bonds you in a way that no other city can. you share the same trials and tribulatons: the hassles, the hussles, the frustration. i also actually worked in the world trade center about a year before the attack. i temped for 2 days at a law office that had just moved into the building. when i took a film class over the summer of 2000 we had to share an anecdote and ironically, i joked about how high security was at the world trade center and how much of a hassle it was to even get up to the building for a receptionist temp job. that seems like such a distant memory now, along with going to windows on the world, the restaurant/bar on top of the world trade center. i can still remember that view though, i did always think that it was such a luxury to be up there and to see that kind of view, the illusion of invincibility.