Come on up for the Rising.
Sep. 11th, 2011 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
misachanTen years ago today I was a college student coming out of class to hear my boyfriend tell me that a two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center.
Ten years ago I watched the towers fall on constant repeat, thinking about a boy I knew in high school who'd joined the Navy, a coworker who'd just joined the Army, and wondered if we were at war now and if whether my boyfriend and cousins would be drafted into it (we were and they weren't, although I would go on to have friends who left the gaming table for the Army although by some miracle they all came back.)
Ten years ago I was taking the PATH in Hoboken to back and forth from school and looking at the wall of flyers of the missing, coming back to the same few and wondering if they were the same Japanese businesspeople who'd been on the PATH with me two weeks before when I'd taken the WTC train to get to Chinatown. We'd gotten off at the same spot, them headed toward work at the WTC and me on my way.
After ten years they're finally rebuilding. The WTC used to be my NYC homing beacon; they were visible everywhere and I knew that if I got lost (which with my sense of direction was often) I could just head toward them and I'd find my way. I hope someday that's possible again.
Bruce Springsteen wrote The Rising about 9/11 and the whole thing is brilliant. Here's two songs from it because they're better than anything I could write, no clips of that day because after ten years I think we carry all of that in our minds and can put them to the music ourselves. Just Bruce singing, one song of pain and one of hope.
Ten years ago I watched the towers fall on constant repeat, thinking about a boy I knew in high school who'd joined the Navy, a coworker who'd just joined the Army, and wondered if we were at war now and if whether my boyfriend and cousins would be drafted into it (we were and they weren't, although I would go on to have friends who left the gaming table for the Army although by some miracle they all came back.)
Ten years ago I was taking the PATH in Hoboken to back and forth from school and looking at the wall of flyers of the missing, coming back to the same few and wondering if they were the same Japanese businesspeople who'd been on the PATH with me two weeks before when I'd taken the WTC train to get to Chinatown. We'd gotten off at the same spot, them headed toward work at the WTC and me on my way.
After ten years they're finally rebuilding. The WTC used to be my NYC homing beacon; they were visible everywhere and I knew that if I got lost (which with my sense of direction was often) I could just head toward them and I'd find my way. I hope someday that's possible again.
Bruce Springsteen wrote The Rising about 9/11 and the whole thing is brilliant. Here's two songs from it because they're better than anything I could write, no clips of that day because after ten years I think we carry all of that in our minds and can put them to the music ourselves. Just Bruce singing, one song of pain and one of hope.
