9/11... belatedly

it was three years ago last saturday. wow, it seems both so much longer and much more recent than that.

following various links i ended up on laura holder's site (aka lauratitian) and saw her post about 9/11 when it happened and it got me thinking.

actually it got me feeling. i see things like this, these personal glimpses at the disaster that happened and i can't read them properly. i feel choked. i feel like i'm almost about to cry.

so where was i? it's something everyone remembers, isn't it.

i was working my last day at starbucks in uxbridge. it was the end of summer vacation between my first and second years at university. i'd spent the summer working back at starbucks after Thomas (manager) had invited me back, and had been whored out to various stores: richmond, kingston, gloucester road, uxbridge. kingston was the best, it was where mikee and scotty worked. uxbridge i didn't like very much. apart from the fact that it's miles away, the people there weren't so easy to get on with and they seemed to resent the fact that i'd come straight in as supervisor when i was the youngest person to work there (hah. sorry. that was a belated hah, as well).

so i get in to work for a 1pm shift and i've just punched in when my sister calls me on my mobile to say a plane had crashed into one of the world trade center towers. we were both kind of "wow" but it seemed like a crazy joke at the time.

in the next hour more people came in and reports trickled in. both the towers had since been hit. a plane had flown into the pentagon. i had to explain to Roberto (spanish? south american? can't remember), one of the guys working with me, what the pentagon was. when he understood it was a US governmental building he cracked a huge grin. "good. down wiz ahmairicayn goverrement." what a prick. i hated him even more right then. maybe if he'd realised what a big deal it all was he wouldn't have said it. but he still did.

my sister called again, more panicked this time. she was home alone and i think she just wanted some reassurance, to hear a family voice. there wasn't much i could say, especially as i was meant to be working. she stuck a VHS in and pressed record; every channel had been taken over by the news.

when i finally got a break, i went over to the electronics store in the shopping mall where we were based. i think it was a Dixons. the mall was pretty empty. there were other people gathered in there, standing hushed in front of the bank of televisions that always line the back walls. all televisions were either showing footage of the event, or were tuned to a Sky Movies channel that just showed movie trailers in a continuous loop. one of them for that schwarzenegger flick, The 6th Day and there were a few seconds when you couldn't tell which screen was showing reality and which was showing the future apocalyptic style film. i suddenly couldn't stop shivering and got out the store.

i don't remember much of the rest of the shift; i don't think anything much happened. everywhere was much quieter than usual, i know that much.

those are my main memories of the day. then a couple days later, driving up to nottingham and back in a day with claire to drop stuff off at the new house. driving with her is usually pretty fun, we put on loud music, she pisses around, we talk and joke. we listened to bbc radio the whole time, constantly talking about the tragedy and we barely spoke a word between us. it was strange.

and now. it's the personal accounts, like i mentioned, that affect me. it's almost as if it's been overdone or something in the mainstream media. although saying that, the images of it in Bowling for Columbine made me cry and not be able to stop.

a while ago, whilst at work, i was browsing through people's archives (it's so much easier with a good broadband connection) and came across frank's dedication to the event here and, even though i was at work, it made me cry. that sneezy feeling you get in your nose, the choking feeling in your throat, the prickling feeling in your eyes when you're trying your hardest not to - started as i read his caption then eventually got the better of me as i scrolled down and read the comments.

and that's just one of them that immediately springs to mind. like i said, it's these personal takes on the tragedy, the personal element that get me. i think it's been - i don't know, overdone or something in the mainstream media. the pictures and words are still horrifying but when it's just something like this - and from people i've met in person, no less - then it just brings it home to you.