9/11

I'm feeling overcome by emotion all over again. Things have gone on, but I remember this day the same. I remember being at home with my 1-year old early in the morning and getting a call from my husband on his way to work telling me something terrible had happened and to turn on the TV. I remember finding out a week or two later that an old friend I didn't think even lived in NY anymore had moved back, and didn't make it out of the towers.

Thinking about it all makes me incredulous that we're even considering a move back to the NY area. Except, of course, that it could happen anywhere people live.

For years, the imagery worked its way into anything I was writing. The sense of falling and crumbling, of destruction and loss, the revealing of a chaos we couldn't shield from that reached all the way to California. But the image of the two towers falling exists as a simple image. Whatever its ramifications, whatever happens in the future, however we interpet the events, that symbol endures.

And with one look at the calendar or the New York Times, it's powerful enough to draw the whole emotional body back again.