Remembering 9/11

9/11/11
I'll never forget where I was on 9/11. Down to which seat at which lab table, I can point out where I was in advanced Chemistry, lighting steel wool on fire, startled by how well and how quickly it burned. There was an announcement:

Ladies and gentlemen, a plane has run into the World Trade Center in New York city.

A very serious fucking accident. How could that happen? Those buildings have been there so long. How could they let that happen?

The whole class was abuzz, and some people started worrying aloud about people they knew in The City. Some classes sat silent, some classes started discussions, some classes ran amok in disbelief.

And then the second plane hit.
Suddenly it was an attack.
Suddenly a chill ran through the blood of anyone paying enough general attention to understand what was going on. Classrooms emptied out as students and teachers filed into the auditorium to watch the news on big screen. Tom Clancy provided some commentary based on his experience imagining such scenarios. Certain students were picked out from the crowd to get on the phones with mom and dad.

The smoke pouring from the buildings warped perspective, a nightmarish billowing as if they were mere smokestacks. As if they weren't a roiling glimpse at the inferno underlying any industrial nation. As if they weren't spewing the souls of thousands at high velocity into the beautiful azure afternoon.

The talking heads were choked up, some fending off panic, everyone milling about in a daze. School buses rolled in, but no one wanted to leave the screens for fear of missing something crucial. People held each other who'd not spoken three words in two years. A brotherhood and a defiance set people in step with one another, and many kids vowed to join up, to defend against whatever may follow.

It was a horrific day, a glorious September day, an innocuous day turned upside down. For all the victims, and the victims families, and the firefighters who'd get fucked by the insurance companies, and the soldiers, and the Iraqis and Afghani people who had nothing to do with it, and for everyone watching the accelerated crumbling of the American Empire, it was a day that changed everything.