Replies

From my Profile:

I will never forget seeing those fleeing uptown from lower Manhattan

I will never forget the blood, tears, and dust smeared across their faces

I will never forget the silence a crowd of thousands can make when seeing fellow New Yorker’s die

I will never forget seeing the FDNY and NYPD rush to their deaths

I will never forget my first train back into Manhattan - viewing a black cloud over where the towers once stood

I will never forget the prayers and sobs as we all looked out the windows as we passed

I will never forget the smell that lingered in the streets for weeks thereafter

I will never forget the skies that night. I lived in the country where the skies at night were usually filled with stars and uncountable blinking lights of planes heading in every direction. That night there were no blinking lights. You wouldn’t think it would be noticeable, but it was. The skies were motionless and I knew that America had been changed forever.

I will never forget the silence a crowd of thousands can make when seeing fellow New Yorker’s die

Words cannot express. I went to the site two years later, when by that time it was a large hole in the ground with wire fencing around it, to pay my respects, and the silence still hung over it.

I live in Maryland, in an air traffic region that sees a lot of military craft fly over between DC and strategic points north, as well as lots of ordinary air traffic. We are out at the exurban woods line, but there are a dozen highways a few miles away, and at night you can hear lots of proximity-stressed animals in the woods and cargo trains passing in the far distance. But for a couple of days after 9/11, air traffic had been halted and even the roads were voluntarily devehiculated. People who ordinarily lifted voices back and forth with neighbors and children on arriving home after work were quietened. I remember standing in my back yard near the forest, reflecting that I had not "heard" that much silence since the 1950s, in childhood, before superhighways, ubiquitous SUV engines, massive long-haul trucking, a perpetual electrical buzzing from power and communications grids, televisions and media everywhere, Musak, a car for every person instead of one per family, giant freezer motors in every grocery and convenience store, widespread air conditioning, stereo thumpers, or the heaviest air travel of any nation. The silence: it was nearly shocking in its nothingness. Primordially worshipful. No wonder, before all this technology, people witnessed hearing God. How many can today?