Untitled
Five years ago today, I was moving into my new home of Newmarket, New Hampshire. I was listening to poetry on a tape and setting up my new studio. The morning was beautiful and clear. Not a cloud in the sky. I was anxious, because I knew already what would come in another nine months: that I wouldn’t stay in this house, that I wouldn’t marry the sweet, understated boy who loved country music and bowling. But I was trying to convince myself I would.
We had just returned from California the day before, where my family had taken in my doomed engagement at face value. It had been a patchy visit, but what family visit isn’t?
I reached through the boxes and brought out all my favorite things. My art supplies, my collection of favorite postcards. Then I heard the phone ringing downstairs and I raced to get it.
“We’re being attacked.” I think those were his words. Actually, he made a joke, referencing a mutual joke, but neither of us got it really. I went upstairs and turned on the radio. That’s when I got it. Peter Jennings was breathless. Around him was a swarm of voices and clatter, like you hear when a telemarketer calls, and you hang up. He was listening, and so his reporting was slightly delayed. Then something horrible happened—-you could hear Jennings bracing himself. There were screams. “The towers are falling.”
It was like listening to the War of the Worlds. Listening to chaos and terror is its own kind of horror. You mind grasps and fumbles to make up its own images, because all you have are haunting sounds. Something terrible is happening, something huge and enormous and filling you with fear, but you can’t see it coming. You can only sit there, frozen on the brown carpet, breathless, listening.
It was later in the afternoon that I went to the theater where my fiancé was at work. They had CNN playing on the smaller screen, which was the size of a picture window. That’s when I saw what I had listened to earlier and my body went white and I couldn’t help myself, I cried out, “oh my god!”
It was worse than I had imagined it.
This morning it seemed like an even more crowded day in New York City. The subway was packed. A woman collapsed. There were cops in many of the stops. My mind was filled with the past. I thought about those moments before it happened, while I was still in my pajamas, the windows open. Then I thought about the man I saw running on that large screen, later in the afternoon, his green tie flailing behind him as he ran, while the timber came rolling down. For a moment, it was the end of so many things, we couldn’t begin to know. Then, inevitably, time makes us stand up again, feel again, if differently, and take in what remains.
When I came out of the subway, I looked up at the pure, blue sky and the beautiful buildings. I tell you, it was dazzling.
We had just returned from California the day before, where my family had taken in my doomed engagement at face value. It had been a patchy visit, but what family visit isn’t?
I reached through the boxes and brought out all my favorite things. My art supplies, my collection of favorite postcards. Then I heard the phone ringing downstairs and I raced to get it.
“We’re being attacked.” I think those were his words. Actually, he made a joke, referencing a mutual joke, but neither of us got it really. I went upstairs and turned on the radio. That’s when I got it. Peter Jennings was breathless. Around him was a swarm of voices and clatter, like you hear when a telemarketer calls, and you hang up. He was listening, and so his reporting was slightly delayed. Then something horrible happened—-you could hear Jennings bracing himself. There were screams. “The towers are falling.”
It was like listening to the War of the Worlds. Listening to chaos and terror is its own kind of horror. You mind grasps and fumbles to make up its own images, because all you have are haunting sounds. Something terrible is happening, something huge and enormous and filling you with fear, but you can’t see it coming. You can only sit there, frozen on the brown carpet, breathless, listening.
It was later in the afternoon that I went to the theater where my fiancé was at work. They had CNN playing on the smaller screen, which was the size of a picture window. That’s when I saw what I had listened to earlier and my body went white and I couldn’t help myself, I cried out, “oh my god!”
It was worse than I had imagined it.
This morning it seemed like an even more crowded day in New York City. The subway was packed. A woman collapsed. There were cops in many of the stops. My mind was filled with the past. I thought about those moments before it happened, while I was still in my pajamas, the windows open. Then I thought about the man I saw running on that large screen, later in the afternoon, his green tie flailing behind him as he ran, while the timber came rolling down. For a moment, it was the end of so many things, we couldn’t begin to know. Then, inevitably, time makes us stand up again, feel again, if differently, and take in what remains.
When I came out of the subway, I looked up at the pure, blue sky and the beautiful buildings. I tell you, it was dazzling.
posted by Summer Pierre at
11:00 AM
1 Comments:
I actually thought it WAS War of the Worlds at first - that NPR was doing some dramatization. That was the only thing that made sense.
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