six months

I don't even know where to start.

It was a beautiful day when I left the house this morning, and it looked to be a good and productive day. I got to work at 7:30am, or just slightly before the first plane wracked the World Trade Center. When some of my coworkers arrived, they told the few of us already there that a plane had hit the tower. We all thought it was an accident.

All the news sites were so hard-hit by people looking for information that I couldn't find anything except a preliminary picture of the building burning. I got updates from friends and acquaintances on the internet, who had access to television broadcasts. We were all in shock. After several tries, I managed to get an internet feed to NPR and listened to the news from there. I took the headphones from my computer so my officemates could hear the news as well.

Bit by bit, the news rolled in, one unbelievable headline after another. Two planes, two towers, intentionally crashed. The Pentagon. The towers collapsed, one by one. All those people... all the terror...

I can't comprehend it all. I can't imagine what it must've been like to be inside that building. I refuse to try.

I've never ever felt so small and insignificant. I've never felt so very vulnerable. We watched the reports from a broadcast downstairs, saw the video, the unbelievable videos. These things don't happen. Everything was so... normal...

It's as if I were raped today, my innocence permanently lost. The brutality of these attacks, the graphic vividness of even the videos -- I've never seen anything remotely like it.

We were sent home finally, those of us who are rather unnecessary to the functioning of the university. The tower was flanked with metal detectors, and my keys beeped as I left. I made the hike to my car, the sun shining brightly. All around me, people talked on their cell phones. "...World Trade Center..." "...Pentagon..." "...hijacked..." No one spoke of anything else.

I got to my car, closed the door, turned it on... on the radio, Bono sang, "It's a Beautiful Day..." It was sick in an ironic, horrible way.

And, I mean, it was a beautiful day, yet this horrible, unthinkable act happened. It seemed such a juxtaposition, the dark cloud hovering over my mood while the sun shone brilliantly outside. I kept thinking it looked like some Arnold Schwarzenegger movie; I don't know when it will fully sink in that it was real.

I came home and turned on the news, watched the reports for a couple of hours, then went to take a nap, my head pounding. I slept restlessly, dreaming of doom -- not first-hand doom in my dreams, thankfully, but that feeling that something horrible had happened. When I woke up, it was as if it had happened again.

Listening to people speculate is so frustrating. They talk about "acts of war," "collateral damage," they make assumptions that might or might not be true. On television, the members of Congress all stood together and sang "God Bless America." It was such a strange moment -- it looked like artifice, yet it was spontaneous, and seemingly genuine. Squibnocket says the rules changed today. Perhaps that's true. I fear learning the new rules...