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Abominations | Sep 13 2001

I imagine the first tower a split-second before impact, seen from the cockpit of the first plane. From here, at this moment, it would be all one could see. Does the pilot, knowing that victory is assured, throw up his hands in celebration? Does he cry a few holy words as the nose hits home, splitting concrete and steel and glass and ripping into someone’s office?

This is the conclusion of a larger imagining. Earlier I saw a group of terrorists standing guard at the cockpit door as the plane approached its target. Their shared fear, the only fear that remained: that one of the passengers would try to break into the cockpit and divert the plane.

Yet another cockpit scene: the moment the pilot of the second plane, the one headed for the south tower, first sees, in the distance, the mountain of smoke rising from the north tower.

*

Must admit admiration, if that is the word, for the terrorists. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. In my innocence, I always imagined an atomic bomb at Disneyland, or some such, the usual 50’s-style nightmare. But this was more impressive. Four teams of hijackers on four different planes. And the nerve of targeting – and hitting! – both the Pentagon, symbol of U.S. military might, and the World Trade Center, symbol of U.S. economic hegemony.

One of my many tasteless remarks from yesterday, spoken sotto voice: “Too bad we can’t hire these people to run the revolution.”

*

Of course those towers were hideously ugly – twin abominations. Every time I stood beneath one, I thought this. Even more, I thought it from the Staten Island ferry, which launched just a mile south and yielded a spectacular view of the downtown skyline. If you never experienced this, you missed something: two nearly featureless slabs rising an absurd, inhuman distance into the sky. From here, and elsewhere, I often wished them gone. Only not in this way, of course.

Well, then, in what way? In no way: I could not imagine it. Not that I didn’t try. For me those towers always represented our collective insanity – the insanity of concrete and commerce, concrete and commerce, and little else. But however much I hated them (and I really did hate them), I couldn’t possibly imagine them gone.

I still can’t.

Endlessly repeated video clips notwithstanding, I won’t really believe it until I’m down there and there’s nothing.

That will be a strange day.

And then over time I’ll adjust – one always adjusts – until I finally forget the fucking things, as impossible as that now seems.

*

I don’t know anyone who died, quite yet. That is, I haven’t heard of anyone I know dying, although I haven’t heard from everyone I know. Most likely, there will be second-degree deaths – people close to people I’m close to.

There’s a poem by John Berryman, from “77 Dreamsongs,” in which the protagonist, Henry, wonders if he has ever killed anyone. It ends:

But never did Henry, as he thought he did,
end anyone and hacks her body up
and hide the pieces, where they may be found.
He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody’s missing.
Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.
Nobody is ever missing.

Similarly, I’ve been going through all the people I know here, trying to determine if anyone’s missing. No one is, as yet.

In conversations with friends, we list the mutual friends we haven’t heard from. Each conversation produces a few more names – often those, at this point, of people I hadn’t remembered. I seem to know a lot of people in New York, none of whom are missing.