September 11

I'm fine, so are Matthew, Kim, Itay, Rosa, Felix, Michelle, Liz Wollman, Zach and Julia--I've talked to or seen them all. [Sept 12--also heard about or got in touch with Liz jacobs, Fergus McCormick, Osten Johanssen and Kathy Blake, they're all fine]. To get in touch, try to call me at 646 295 7733.

I was listening to the radio when the first crash happened, went to my roof and saw the horror unfold there. My mental map still has those building there, I walked through them yesterday evening, with the very same people who went back today. As Jame said who called me a little while ago, there is nothing intelligent to add to this, so I won't. All I can hope is that the two towers stood long enough for most people to be able to evacuate.

If you want to post comments or say you're OK or ask about others, do use the comment button below.

September 11: Night

I've been able to reach most friends in NYC and so far everybody I know is fine. I'm home now, it's night outside, and if I glance South out my window over the screen of my computer there is only darkness where this morning stood the two towers of the World Trade Center, 2.5 km away. It's eerie, knowing that so close to here a familiar place has become a landscape of horror.

I've watched enough television for now and so I thought I'd write to let you know what I saw today.

I work across the street from the World Trade Center towers (in the World Financial Center) but since this was going to be my last week at Bridge I was only working alternate days (the company is bankrupt) so I was not meant to go to work this morning.

I had just gotten up and was in the bathroom when around 845 ET my radio (which is always tuned to WNYC) said they had just seen an explosion in the North tower. From my window, which has a clear view of the NYC skyline, I saw flames and smoke pour out of a large gash near the 80th floor of the tower. I went to my roof and watched.

About 20 minutes after the first explosion, a huge fireball erupted out of the South tower, about 2 thirds of the way up. People screamed on the roofs around me, where everybody was beginning to gather. Most memorable is the bright bright orange of that explosion, and also the crispness of it; it's a quality difficult to describe--it's the quality of NOT seeing it on television, at a much higher resolution and in the outdoors, under a clear sky. The boom came later.

It was difficult to know what had just happened. I already knew from the radio that the first explosion had been caused by a plane. Was the second caused by a news helicopter accident? The plane that caused this second explosion had in fact come from behind the tower, so from my vantage point I had not seen it.

I went back downstairs, thinking that the course of these tragic events had come to some kind of end. I went online to check the news and was glancing out the window (as I'm doing now) when the South tower just started going straight down. This was probably the singlemost shocking moment of the day for me. In retrospect, it is probably also the single moment when most people died. It was shocking because the buildings are huge, because they are not meant to fall down, because I am used to walking underneath them every day. More importantly, the area around the World Trade Center is like canyons made up of buildings--I was suddenly afraid that skyscrapers were going to topple over one after the other. And this was the South tower, the one most recently hit, the one with the least time to evacuate.

Some friends (Clarice and Zed) came by to see if I was OK, as did Sveta. We went to my roof and watched more, helplessly, not wishing to be any closer, while I tried to call people whom I knew had offices in the Wall Street area. Cell phones (and land lines) were only working sporadically, probably because of overload. In the meantime, it had become obvious with the dual plane crashes that this was an act of terrorism. As we stood watching, The north tower collapsed as well. Again, we saw huge dust clouds billowing through the canyons of lower Manhattan. Again, there was that strange dread I had never felt before this day, of being very aware at a particular instance that large numbers of people were dying nearby.

I don't have TV reception at home so we decided to watch TV at Sveta's. Walking along St. Marks and First Avenue was strange. There were very few cars on the road by now (over 2 1/2 hours after the first explosion) but many people walking in small groups, or gathered around televisions set out on the sidewalk by merchants. Strangers were talking to each other, ambulances and buses were driving past at high speed on mostly empty streets, and people kept on looking South, at the huge, volcano-like dust and smoke cloud the blanketed the southern sky. Noticeable were small groups of people in business dress walking or huddled around payphones, their cell phones useless, trying to call home.

Then followed hours of television watching, a ritual you all no doubt participated in. Eventually I went home, took a shower, and got a bite to eat at St. Dymphnas--bars that were open were full this afternoon, and still are tonight. New Yorkers were meeting up en masse this afternoon, sharing stories, needing each others' company, and probably taking their friends a whole lot less for granted. I know I do.

I am still amazed that the 2 World Trade Center towers collapsed onto themselves, rather than topple in a certain direction. Many more buildings could have come down and many more lives lost. In fact, when I came home I went back to my roof, and not one minute later, around 1730 ET, I saw 7 World Trade Center, a big 50-odd story skyscraper directly underneath the North tower, silently slip to the ground. This was the third and final major building to collapse today.

It is very early after this catastrophe, but one thing already seems certain: The future will be decentralized--no longer will banks and stock exchanges concentrate trading floor and clearing houses so densely. People will work more from home, businesses will value less aggregating together. I don't think they will ever build anything like the World Trade Center again in New York.

Thanks again for your calls or emails, but don't worry about me, I'm fine. Right now I'm thinking about the survivors that are beginning to call on their cell phones from under the rubble.

After September 11: Vermont

On a whim, Itay, Rosa and I rented a car last Thursday afternoon and drove it to Northern Vermont. With nothing to keep us in New York until Monday, we went searching for peace. What did we find? A field. A forest. A hiking trail. A view. A sparkling night sky and a pond so still it reflected the stars. The time to think.

On the back roads of Vermont and upstate New York, the American flag is now omnipresent, fluttering from porches, cars, schools and supermarkets. On the way back to New York, the Empire State Buildingís red, white and blue lights announced the new skyline from afar. In the East Village tonight the flag is out in front of French cafes, Mexican burrito joints and biker dive bars.

And makeshift shrines are sprouting up everywhere. In front of fire stations, naturally, but also along unused walls, where graffiti artists have sprayed memorials, people have brought candles and children have taped their drawings. In Tompkins Square park large chalk drawings on the pavement are surrounded by hundreds of candles. This being the East Village, some pavement messages heatedly disagree as to what exactly President Bush should do.

On many traffic light poles and telephone boxes, missing-person notices are fixed, sometimes hand-written, often with color pictures. The losses are still felt at the individual level in New Yorkóthe tragedy has not been abstracted here.

Here is a good site pointing to original commentary on the World Trade Center attack.

Cortland Street stop, N/R

For 4 years up until September 10, 2001, I often took the N/R subway to work, getting on at 8th Street and getting off at Cortlandt Street, where passengers were disgorged into the huge underground mall below the World Trade Center. I would track past hundreds of commuters, a J.Crew, a Gap, a Sephora; perhaps I'd get a cafe latte from New World Coffee, at the North-east base of the North tower, before heading though its entrance hall on my way to the pedestrian bridge that led to the World Financial Center.

Soon after Sept 11, 2001, the N/R train resumed its service, but without stopping at Cortlandt Street. The first few days, passengers would look up from their doings and stare quietly out the carriage windows at the wooden support struts that had been hastily built. In orange spray paint on the walls, "DO NOT STOP," conductors were told. After a few months, as the salvage efforts on Ground Zero progressed, the station was cleaned up, and the struts disappeared. People no longer looked up or grew quiet as we passed the station.

Yesterday, for the first time, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a bright spot where the mall was. Today, I confirmed it: the exit that used to take me to the mall has been opened by workers, and it leads to bright daylight.

I've grappled with the idea that in my head, the mental map I've built up from years of walking through the World Trade Center still exists, even though the place does not. Until today, subconsciously, the mall still existed behind those boarded-up doors.

In the same way, being kept away from the actual site of the disaster protected me from having to update this map, but as of yesterday, they let you walk all along the southern perimeter of Ground Zero, with an unobstructed view of the site, much like any construction site. I walked by there. You can clearly see the rebuilding of the 1/9 subway line, as well as many partly demolished subterranean levels. I'd seen some of this before from our office's window at Falkor LLC, but being right next to it, on the ground, makes it all a lot more immediate. Go and have a look if you haven't been recently.

9/11 photos

These are some of the pictures I took on September 11, 2001, from the roof of my apartment at 109 St. Marks Place.

September 11 in Stockholm

Stockholmers went to work with a leaden step this morning. From my 46 bus, as it drove along Sˆdermalm's northern shore, you could see the city's gorgeous skyline, and in the middle of it stood the NK tower and its rotating logo, as if it were a beacon marking the deed. People stared. Then, at Slussen junction, the bus stopped next to huge posters of a smiling Anna Lindh hawking yes votes. Today, these pictures felt eerily like tributes.

Anna Lindh isn't doing as well as originally reported. She'd be out of danger if only the bleeding from her liver would stop. It's on everybody's mind here.

And today is September 11. Two years ago, in a few hours, I saw a plane smash into the World Trade Center, and then I saw the towers collapse. I certainly hope it is the most awful thing I will see in my life, and while I remember it every day, September 11s will never be the same.

Who could hate a Swedish foreign minister so much? Especially Lindh? I think the answer is simple: People who hate the open society; people who have been on the blunt end of a Swedish foreign policy that promotes democracy, accountability, and human rights. Without any evidence, let me venture that if it was a hit job, the police should be looking at the Russian mafia for its child prostitution rings, and at Milosevic afficionados.

Anna Lindh

Anna Lindh didn't make it. She died at 5:29 am; the announcement was made half an hour ago. Other posts about the murder of Anna Lindh.We watched the press conference at work. People teared up. One sentiment expressed: What kind of country is this becoming? Well, the answer is: A good country. Maybe that's why she was targeted.

Commute

The weather turned balmy this week, above freezing even, and so I shed layers and took the iPod to work yesterday, the extra spring in my step brought to you by early Bjˆrk, Danger Mouse and by the disappearance of the ice sheets that until a few days ago extracted regular Bambi impersonations from unwitting pedestrians.

Bjˆrk's happy happy Big Time Sensuality [iTunes] was playing when I got off the subway at Gamla Stan, and then as I passed the turnstyles I got a sudden sense of deja vu. I'd done this before. More specifically, I'd heard this song before as I exited a subway on my way to work, but not here — in New York, Cortlandt Street Station, getting off the N/R line coming down Broadway and about to take my commute through the bowels of the World Trade CenterNot, of course, on my iPod, but on my Rio 600. iPods are strictly a post 9/11 phenomenon — they were introduced in Oct 2001. Since it is hard to imagine life before iPod, I predict we will soon be spotting anachronisms in period films set in pre-9/11 New York, with iPod-toting actors jogging past WTC-intact skylines..

Over the past two and a half years I have often thought back to the human geography of those buildings, especially the mall through which I walked twice a weekday for 4 years until September 10, 2001. I'd always be among the first passengers out the gate, having made sure to board the train at the right spot. Once on the concourse, I'd aim straight for the North Tower on the other end, which meant cutting obliquely across a wash of PATH train commuters brimming up from the depths along steep, wide escalators. They were from New Jersey, I knew, which is why it was tempting to think of them as living on some Dantesque level of hell below, being summoned to work for the day.

Every day, I'd pass the same stores: First, a newstand on the right, source of my weekly Economist, then a J.Crew, where I bought a turtleneck sweater I finally wore out a few weeks back. On the left, Chase Manhattan bank machines, followed by a slew of cosmetics stores. Then, past the PATH, on the right, a GAP, a science gadget store, a souvernir store, and a deli that sold obscenely large Bacci chocolate assortments, no doubt to guidos crawling home to the wife after some infidelity at the office.

I'd then take the revolving doors into the North Tower lobby, and cut across a corner to the footbridge to the World Financial Center, where I worked. Every time I crossed that bridge I marvelled at how tempting a target it could be to terrorists. Blow this up, I would think to myself, and you'd kill scores and block a major New York traffic artery. How spectacularly clueless of me.

Yesterday, as I walked the tunnel that leads from Gamla Stan station to the street, I also walked the old commute in my mind. Bjˆrk's big brash voice led the way in both places. It was good to be there.