(no subject)

[darkluna]

When I think of 9/11, I don't think so much of the 11th itself. Everything was so surreal that when I first heard what had happened in New York, I thought it was a sick joke. I couldn't imagine that people would do such a thing. It sank in throughout the day, but the constant repetition on television made it feel like a movie. It didn't feel real for about a week.

At the time, I worked in a building that stands right by the San Francisco Bay, by the Dumbarton bridge, in the flight path of planes landing at SFO. I would go up to the 10th floor to smoke. I was up there when I saw the first plane I had seen in the air since 9/11. It sounded so loud. I stood and watched it as it went all the way past me across the water, down to where I knew the runway was. When I glanced down at the people walking on the path by the water, I could see that they had all stopped, and they were all watching the plane too. We all stood still and watched it until it was safely on the ground. That was when I really felt how different the world had become.

Comments

Air

[(Anonymous)]

I suspect that one of the details of 9/11 that will often be hard to transmit is that all flights were grounded afterwards. It's one of those things I don't think you can really picture just by reading it. Living in Chicago at the time, there are always planes in the air heading to O'Hare. The days after 9/11 were eerily quiet in a way that is hard to explain.

Re: Air

[mrtomsmith.livejournal.com]

PS: Didn't mean that to be anonymous, but didn't realize I wasn't logged in. Apologies.

Re: Air

[darkluna.livejournal.com]

I guessed it was you or your wife.

I was trying to write something in this post about how I didn't even remember the last time I had seen a plane before 9/11 because I didn't even think about them, but that for a long time afterwards, I was acutely aware of them. But it wouldn't come out sensically.