sorryless

October 10th, 2001

Sorryless92 Comments

The following are journal entries from my visit to Manhattan in October of 2001. I went with a team of volunteers to set up a free clinic at a police precinct on the East Side. With not a lick of medical know how, I quickly forged my spot in the group as the data entry specialist.

The results of this free clinic would later be sent to the Mayo Clinic and would serve as the first recorded documentation of the debilitating health effects suffered by first responders.

These particular journal entries came in the early morning hours of October 10, 2001. I’m leaving it as I wrote it, word for word. It’s disjointed and fragmented, but I have to leave it that way. The way I felt that night.



October 10th, 2001 .

I walked the streets tonight. I couldn’t sleep. Too wired. Too exhausted. I tried reading to put me to sleep, but no way. Its two thirty in the morning and I had to get this down. Something. I won’t take pictures. And I’ll probably never write a word of this time, but I need to just write this down so that I can read it when I go home. Even though I’ll never forget it.

. . . The streets were so quiet, so eerie. Just like after a snowstorm.

. . . We visited the hole tonight. If the wind is coursing your way, you can smell it from miles away. They smell it in Queens still. My sisters smelled it on their way home from Maine , days after it happened. They were on the Tappan Zee Bridge when they smelled it.

. . . They set up a perimeter around Ground Zero. We were a mile out when our police van was stopped, ID check. Going in they check ID, going out they hose your vehicle down.

. . . I heard someone in the van whisper ‘This is going to be bad’. We sat there in silent agreement.

. . . The hole is referred to as Ground Zero. It’s hell. It smolders and there are still pockets of fire a month later. I prayed hard. The sodium lamps carved through the night and gave it the illusion of an apocalyptic noontime. The workers are always there recovering the lost. They can’t leave, they won’t leave. They have to see this through for the lost. They have a different calling now. They’re not saving lives, they’re granting last rites. They will work this heap to the end, until every last piece is gone. They work all day and night, most lose the masks and keep on working.

. . . That smell. An electrical fire compounded a thousand times over. The smell of fuel makes you nauseous. The smell of fire sticks to you. It’s on my clothes .The smell penetrates every pore. We spent twenty minutes down there and I can’t get the smell off my skin, out of my nose and hair. It permeates. I held my breath as if that would chase it away. It’s always there. And these guys work that pit every day. Losing the masks. Still working. It’s going to be bad for them down the road. It’s going to kill them.

. . . I turned away. I didn’t want to see anymore. This is the worst of mankind. Those men working the pile are fighting hard against that worst but I felt it was all so hopeless. How senseless, all of it. I just wanted to scream I was so angry. I felt like throwing up.

. . . I didn’t bring a camera. Thank God for that.

. . . We talked about what this means tonight at the pub. The retired pastor warned against believing this will change policies or mindsets. He’s lived through Korea , Vietnam , the Kennedy assassination, the gulf war, Oklahoma City , AIDS, scores of natural disasters. He’s had his hand in the mix plenty of times. And none of those times changed things. Not really. I wondered aloud at the political gains to be had from this, because they’re coming. We all agreed. Political capital. Jesus. But true.

. . . These last couple of days have been surreal. I must have heard that word a hundred times today. When people spoke of the day, when people spoke of the days since. Always surreal.

. . . Friendship wasn’t a temporary excursion. It was valid and palpable everywhere. It held more than convenience. It held truth. People wanting to hear stories. Strangers crying them to other strangers. Smiles. It’s going to go away. We’re all going to go back to our old ways before long. Everything, even this hellacious thing, has a shelf life.

. . . The shrines. They’re everywhere. Every kind of personal effect you could imagine. Candlelit sanctuaries, a graceful patience. Every single story wants it back. The hours before the planes changed everything. Letters.

. . . Love letters, poems, family pictures, little league trophies,

. . . The streets bleed with these shrines. Every city block is a monument. And this is where I remember what this city is all about. Not a big town, but small villages. Each one holding a different story. I think to myself that I didn’t grow up around the city, the city grew up around me.

. . . Why do our differences generate so much hatred until something like this happens?

. . . Nothing divides us inside these shrines. Not race, not color, not party, not sexual preference. Inside these shrines, we’re all the same. Human beings. Why do we have to be knocked on our asses before we stop using these differences as a weapon? Before we start appreciating the fact that we’re all stories and not cardboard. Before we understand the intrinsic value in our differences.

. . . I picked up a teddy bear and held it for a while. She was twenty nine. Her father had left it there along with a letter. All the letters left by loved ones read the same way. They’re still hoping against impossibility that the missing are simply lost somewhere. It’s “Have you seen this person?”, and phone numbers.

. . . I held that teddy bear so tight, as if in the holding I could will her back to life. Return her to her father. And in that moment, I knew her, I knew them. I loved complete strangers. They had opened a door into their world and I entered.

. . . I just stood there and held that teddy bear tight. Strangers passed and I didn’t care. They didn’t either. We all were involved in these unspoken understandings all over the city.

. . . I just stood there and held that teddy bear and cried some. But I don’t remember her name. I wish I remembered her name. That’s so weird.

92 thoughts on “October 10th, 2001”

  3. B,

    This is so poignant. I’m glad you didn’t “clean it up” but left it raw as you wrote it then. Most of us simply remember where we were or what we were doing then; most of us didn’t go to the site to help in any way, shape or form; most of us don’t even live in the United States and yet all of us, who are old enough, knows/knew somebody who knows/knew somebody directly affected by this horror.

    It was surreal.

    Q

    Liked by 1 person

  6. I’m glad you wrote today. I chose not to since, I’ve done it every year and was told…enough already. Lest we forget I take very seriously, that day of all days.

    As for you…you do remember her, vividly, which is why can write so movingly about her 19 years later. Through her, we know all their names.

    Lest we forget.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. I didn’t want to read. I knew it would be difficult, personal. But I also knew I needed to read. I needed to understand even a tiny portion. Until the teddy bear. Now I can’t stop crying. I’m crying for myself and I’m crying for them. The people I never knew and never will. This post touched me deeply.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Thanks for sharing these very real moments in that terrible time. Why should it take a horror like that for people to see everyone else’s humanity? Will we have to suffer another tragedy to wake people up again?

    Liked by 1 person

  9. I’m touched, seared, humbled, saddened, yet…hopeful, because your raw humanity in the face of indescribable suffering and pain gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, things can be better. Someday.

    Your post is exquisite in its rawness. Thank you for this glimpse into that tragedy on a day we remember and reflect.

    Liked by 1 person

  11. What a jaw-dropping diary entry. When I traveled to Baltimore for a wedding a few years ago, I stopped in my tracks at a piece of twisted metal from the towers. I just stood there, quiet, reflecting…full of heartbreak still after all these years. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Eerie yet beautifully observant.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Yeah, I forget there is a Trade Center right there in Inner Harbor.

      Back in ’06 for my fortieth birthday, a girl I was seeing at the time took me to Baltimore for the day. We arrive in town and are greeted by a helicopter zooming through the buildings downtown. It took our breath away, and then we heard gun shots. Turns out they were filming a Die Hard film. And here we thought, oh no, not again.

      Thank you Monika

      Liked by 1 person

  12. Dude. This was so … man. I was feeling it. When you talked about the guys working ground zero and losing masks and how it was gonna kill them. Dude. That was so eerie. Felt for all those people working trying to find people. I had no idea you were down there helping out. And your friend who lived through the wars and Kennedy’s assassination and all the other disasters. Man. Insight from everything. People say never forget, with a tragic event of that magnitude I don’t think people ever will, certain things that stay with you, even without pictures or words. It’s embedded. That teddy bear. Sending you peace and love bud. Peace and love.

    Liked by 2 people

    • Cali

      When I think back on that time, I can still remember it as if it just happened. Sometimes, I’ll be pumping gas or working on the car and I’ll be back there looking at the hole and smelling the flames, full of fuel and dusty toxins. It was impossible to think that humanity not only behaves this way but always has.

      Peace and love back at you

      Liked by 1 person

  13. Truly a great Share.
    To read the intimate thoughts brought us along side of those very raw and early days.
    The teddy bear ending was really powerful
    –Little things throughout were also good for really letting us feel the in ground experience – like this –
    Going in they check ID, going out they hose your vehicle down.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Intimate and raw, both apropos of that time and place, Prior.

      It was one of those things where before i could even think about it, I was hugging that teddy bear. Now, if I’d have belabored the idea, it probably wouldn’t have been something I would have done, thinking it too personal an item. But inside that moment, it was all personal and we were all there together.

      Thank you Prior.

      Like

      • Yeah – you worded that so well
        “Inside that moment”
        —
        A part of the shock
        Of 9/11 is still with me –
        I was setting up N64 for my son to play – we were selling our house and had a showing so I wanted to tidy up – It was when we had to put the channel 3 on the tv to
        Get the game going –
        Anyhow – news came
        On while doing that and first tower had just been hit. Then I got a phone call telling me about it
        –
        This post was really special and I think it means a lot to have it in the blogosphere – for future September’s but also for anyone who stumbles upon it through the year – that humanity connection

        Liked by 1 person

    • Thanks prior for recommending and thanks Sorryless for the vivid time travel. I thought this passage was particularly apropos to our current predicament:

      It’s going to go away. We’re all going to go back to our old ways before long. Everything, even this hellacious thing, has a shelf life.

      You brought back my mothers voice in my ear: Everything’s going to be ok. Hard to remember, sometimes.

      The new series The Loudest Voice with the magnificent and Russell Crow as a very portly, charming and despicable Roger Ailes (erstwhile chief of Fox News) has a great portrayal of the drama of that event and its aftermath, and the political profits reaped all along the way.

      Liked by 2 people

  17. Hi again
    Wanted to share this real quick
    —
    Another thing about October 10th

    But this one was 1995:

    success-is-stumbling-from-failure-to-failure-with-no-loss-of-enthusiasm

    “To celebrate its 10th anniversary, the Media Lab had invited submissions for the days leading up to October 10, 1995, on a variety of issues related to technology and the Internet, including privacy, expression, age, wealth, faith, body, place, languages, and the environment. Then on October 10, a team at MIT collected, edited, and published the contributions to “create a mosaic of life at the dawn of the digital revolution that is transforming our planet.”

    https://roughlydaily.com/2020/10/10/success-is-stumbling-from-failure-to-failure-with-no-loss-of-enthusiasm/

    Liked by 1 person

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