Jason - September 11

On the writing

This week was  a hard one, for a few reasons.  First, the topic was on 9/11 which for most of us comes with a bundle of emotions.  Trying to remember how we were before, what it was like in the days and moments while events unfolded, the things we think and do now as a result.  It is a mass of wires and some of them shock.  Secondly, I selected stream of consciousness as a writing style, meaning no real adherence to punctuation or grammar, just very loose prose.  It was actually much harder than I thought it would be.  I worked on mine all week until late last night.  It evolved over time.  I am not sure this is the final form of this piece, but it is the one I can post this morning.  I hope you enjoy it.

Falling

the programming suddenly didn’t matter for in that moment something had happened an interruption something to break up the morning a dark intermission presented on a clean plastic table which had been dragged into the office and was straining under the weight of a large TV placed on top of it and now it was blaring talk of a plane in New York City hitting a building and reality was FALLING everything warped until there was only the impact a smoking hole in glass and steel that consumed the noise the speculation the everything which came before until from that past and through the smoke a second plane flew and crashed vanishing into the mirrored side scarring the sister tower and stunning all of us watching from our wheeled over office chairs which were not unlike the office chairs being used to shatter windows so victims could escape the heat and suddenly they were FALLING cameras watching their decent down down down into the horror the confusion everyone wanted to know what was happening an accident or terror certainly two planes crashes at the same site could not be pilot error the odds would just be unthinkable and it was because of the depth of this unthinkable many of us started to call our homes our wives and children to have dozens of the same conversations, conversations of many questions and few answers and then it happened with moans and screams second tower hit was the first to fall FALLING tumbling in on itself crumbling and collapsing creating a cloud of dust and debris papers and glass hiding the steel teeth which still remained erect pouring out destruction and anguish covering the light of the sun and uprooting us grinding us into something else freezing us in place until the first tower too was FALLING leaving this gap in the skyline this symbol of loss and betrayal a black hole which would draw us all together binding us into a single heavy mass a great weight a collective where all of the divisions which separated us cease to have meaning crushed under the weight of the moment a moment which had us holding hands and going to churches and leaning on each other recognizing our mutual need for each other we would be one and be lifted together lifted to heights we hadn’t imagined and then we would crest and again we would be FALLING falling from unity to hate and a desire for revenge we would strike back again and again on foreign soil and innocents at home we craved that unity that patriotism that bonding we felt when we held each other staring at what wasn’t there and cried but we can’t seem to find it I never want to feel what I felt as I watched that newscast from my office on a TV dragged in but I do want to feel that unity that came afterwards but instead all I feel and all I see is FALLING still FALLING