September makes me anxious
but not because the kids are going back to school
I had all kinds of jobs at university in New York City. In my first year, I worked in the art & architecture library. It was easy. People mainly came there to study, but when they did require books, they needed dozens. In those days, first, you checked the computer, then the card catalogues. Not everything was digital.
I also interned at the Kitchen, an avant-garde theatre in Chelsea. I help digitise and catalogue their recordings. We’re talking Diamanda Galas, Laurie Anderson, John Cage, Nam June Pike. I also help set up for artist exhibitions. Once, I painted the gallery white and hung frames according to the Spanish artist’s specifications. When I asked him when the art was coming, he smiled. The framed nothingness was the art.
In my second year, in 2001, I worked in the Oral History Department, again doing transcription and cataloguing. So much of what they did was not captured anywhere else. It wasn’t interviews with celebrities or famous politicians or intellectuals. They interviewed everyday people, letting them tell their stories about how historical events impacted their lives. I was studying film and doing a double specialisation in screenwriting and documentary. The office was at the top of the library, and I could look out of Morningside Heights Campus and Harlem from the window. It was perfect.
My first day was meant to be on September 12. The day before I was meant to start, the world blew apart.
I think the original project I was assigned to was about immigration, but instead, I spent the year transcribing oral history interviews of the attacks. It’s been many, many years, but some stay with me. There was a volunteer who went down to help and sorted body parts into bags. He was from the Bronx. He was Hispanic. He loved his city and his country.
At the World Trade Centre, there wasn’t so much for the volunteers to do. So he spent days collecting body parts. The volunteers (police, firefighters, National Guard members) put the arms, legs, hands, and heads into bags. He never knew what happened to them or if they were ever identified. Neither do I.
I think about this guy, just older than me, often. What happened to him? Did he stay in the city? Did he leave like I did? We were both so young. I knew his name and that he lived in New York. I also knew about his nightmares. I listened to him cry, often pausing and replaying sections because his sobbing made transcribing difficult.
After all these years, sometimes I forget about the date. It may get to 5 or, 6 or 7 September, before I think about it. But always around this time, I get uneasy. It’s a weird feeling to see the date itself. But, of course, we all have anniversaries of loss, or will.
What does an event or experience do to you? In the moment, but also in the years and decades later. Impossible to answer. We don’t have a control group for our lives. I can’t say my life would’ve turned out differently had I not been in New York as a teenager when the attacks happened. I do know how it has made me feel about this month.
September is supposed to be all look-forward-to-autumn wonder & romance, but it makes me anxious, and all I want is for it to be October.
We were hosting a meeting in MD with an organization from NYC on September 11. The meeting started shortly after 9:00, but a few minutes later, phones started ringing and people left within minutes. I went to a colleague’s office who had a tv, and we sat spellbound for the next several hours. When I finally left the office, I was almost the only car on I-95 north. At home, not far from BWI, it was eerily quiet with no air traffic.
I spent the afternoon calling my traveling staff, and one colleague who was at a meeting that morning near the Pentagon where he heard the plane crash. One colleague was stuck in rural Yemen, three others were returning home when their flight from London was cancelled, and one stuck in San Diego decided to rent a car for a road trip back to MD.
A tragic day and a very taxing day.
@Lloyd, this really breaks my heart. The part about collecting body parts, and the part about having to replay the transcript because of the man's sobbing. I can't imagine how all that must feel. I think I need to write a post about my experience on September 11th and the coming days and weeks, but I'm not sure I'm brave enough to do it. I had family in New York that we were worried sick about, and then once we knew they were safe, there was the two-toned mourning: 1- the mourning of a citizen of the world, horrified at the loss of life and devastation, and 2- the mourning of a member of the Muslim community, knowing the hate that would (and did) come our way. It's such a painful time.