Two days ago I walked to the Jefferson Market branch of the New York Public Library, on Sixth Avenue and 10th Street, to return a book. The library is not too far from where we live, and I’d been there several times before. I’ve been to that intersection tons of times, of course. When I was at my last job, the PATH station I used every day was right near it, and I often cross that intersection on some errand or another.
I usually walk through that intersection blind to its significance. But on Saturday I suddenly remembered. That intersection, right in front of the library, is where I was on the morning of 9/11.
I sometimes feel like I’m the only person in the country who had no idea anything was happening that morning until after it had happened. I’d spent the night with a guy at his apartment on 10th Street just east of Sixth Avenue. At 9:59 a.m., as the first tower was falling, I was in his apartment, lying awake in his bed. At 10:28 a.m., as the second tower was falling, I was still in his bed – getting nookie. With no clue as to what was happening.
Shortly thereafter, I said goodbye to the guy and walked out of his apartment, down a few flights of stairs and out the door of the building onto the street. I planned to turn right onto Sixth Avenue, walk a block down to the PATH station at 9th Street and go home. It was about 10:45 in the morning.
In any transition, there’s a line that divides before from after. Even if the transition is gradual, you can zoom in on the boundary line and find some small detail, anything, that marks the first sign of change.
I remember the exact moment that morning when something strange entered my consciousness. It was something entirely mundane.
As I walked out onto 10th Street I noticed that traffic was backed up along the street.
I looked toward Sixth Avenue and saw that the light was green, but no vehicles were moving. Or at least they were moving very slowly. They were letting the traffic whoosh north along Sixth Avenue, even though the Sixth Avenue traffic didn’t have the light. The 10th Street traffic was giving the Sixth Avenue traffic the right of away.
The strange thing was that nobody was honking.
Now, this is New York City. If traffic is backed up for even a second, horns start honking rudely, incessantly.
But nobody was honking.
Hmm, that’s odd, I thought.
My memory gets fuzzy here. I remember walking toward Sixth Avenue. I remember seeing a car zooming up Sixth Avenue, maybe more than one, covered in white dust. I remember people standing in the street looking south. I remember going up to them and looking south as well. (Here’s an approximation of where I stood, via Google Earth.) I saw a ton of smoke where the towers were supposed to be. I asked two women what was happening, and I think they looked at me like I was stupid. They told me that the World Trade Center had collapsed, and that it had been done by the PLO. I remembered that Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat had shaken hands on the White House lawn in September 1993, and I wondered if today was the anniversary. (I was off by a couple of days.)
I remember crossing to the other side of Sixth Avenue right in front of the library. The scaffolding that is there now was there then. There was a payphone on the sidewalk; people were lined up to use it. A radio was broadcasting news from a van parked on the street.
From there the day continued. I’ve written about it here before in great detail.
Take this next statement for what little value it’s worth, because it’s not worth much – it’s just a personal observation: I’ve always felt kind of weird that I didn’t know about 9/11 until after it had happened. I feel like I’m the only person who didn’t actually see the towers collapse at the moment they collapsed – either in person, from a distance or on TV. I’m sure I’m not the only one, but sometimes I feel like I was. I feel like I missed some crucial part of that day because it didn’t happen gradually; to me, it happened all at once.
Anyway.
Today is five years later. Fifteen months ago, Matt and I moved up to the Village, and we live not too far from where I stood that day. It’s weird.
And so often I walk past that intersection and 9/11 never enters my mind. That’s weird, too.
But there are some moments when I remember.
This is the view south from our window, taken this morning.
And life goes on.
