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These are the days that you don’t think will ever happen in the United States. I’m in a state of stunned disbelief at the events that have transpired this morning. It makes no sense. I can only pray for the victims in this tragedy.

Terrorism has reached American soil at a level unprecedented in its short history. The bombing of Oklahoma City and the previous attack on the World Trade Center hold nothing against what happened this morning on the East Coast. Four planes headed for California were apparently hijacked, diverted, and crashed into prominent American landmarks, including the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

I received a call this morning on my cell phone, waking me up from my sleep this morning. I didn’t believe it when I first heard it. “The World Trade Center is gone.” The World Trade Center is gone. “What do you mean it’s gone?!?” Gone.

Airports around the country are closed. New York City resembles a war zone. The Bay Area too is under a heightened state of alert, especially in San Francisco. Moffett Airfield in Mountain View is closed right now. It’s unnerving to see effects of something happening thousands of miles away affecting something so close to home. Two police officers were standing near the Highway 101 entrances on Moffett Boulevard, directing traffic away from Moffett Air Field to 101 North and South. No way that anybody’s getting into that place right now.

All of the planes involved today were bound to California, meaning they all were fully loaded with fuel. These are the events that you see in movies or in nightmares. It’s happened though in our reality. Precision death rained today.

On January 28, 1986, I was in elementary school in San Diego, sitting in the library when I watched the Challenger Space Shuttle explode, seconds after liftoff. That memory was indelibly imprinted in my mind. Today, it happened again. It’s safe to say that on this day, September 11, 2001, your life has changed. I wasn’t around for the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but many are pointing out the shocking similarities between the two events. Everything’s changed. Children growing up in the 80’s remember where they were when the Challenger exploded, much like my parents knew where they were when JFK was assassinated. Children today will remember where they were when terrorism hit America. In the span of a few hours, their lives — all of our lives — have changed forever.

It’s 12:36 pm right now. I’m still at home, still in shock at what happened today. Events like these center you in what’s important in life, family, friends, loved ones. Events likes these make you call them up and tell them how you’re thinking of them and how much you love them.

Everything’s changed.

Watching on TV the scenes in Palestine, with people dancing in the streets, smiling and cheering, it’s eerie. That vision from the media might be used to manipulate people’s opinion against all people of Middle Eastern descent. Of course, not everyone in Palestine is cheering over the events from today… but to many in the American public, they might be. I just hope that widespread paranoia that gripped the US when Pearl Harbor was attacked does not sweep over this nation. We’re just now coming to terms about how we treated Japanese Americans during the war. It might happen again, however, and that’s a frightening prospect over the coming days, weeks, and months.

What makes people hate others so much that they wish to inflict such pain and suffering on them? I talk not just about the perpetrators of this despicable event but also of us. To them, we are the evil empire. To us, they are the enemy. The cycle of hatred begins in childhood, with the seeds planted early. In order for the world to be a better place, this cycle must stop with the children. They represent a better future, but they also represent a continuation of a darker past.

The world doesn’t need to be such a sad and dangerous world. It’s unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Everything’s changed.

I’ve received some email from my friend, Dave, who lives in New York. Included below are some of his thoughts on the situation occurring in New York the past few days:

9/11/2001

I’m doing radiology in our trauma hospital here in the bronx. I never thought i’d be so happy to be in the bronx. we got sent home, obviously and i went home to change etc. went back to the hospital dressed for trauma a little better and helped to set up. if you’re not familiar with new york, i live about as far away as possible from the WTC to still be considered in NYC. anyway, we helped set up the ER. we set out about 100 stretchers with gowns and bags for personal effects. after all that, they told us to come back later tonight as right now the ER is packed with people and very few patients, only a few EMTs who were less critical. i was actually watching tv while changing clothes earlier and saw when the second tower collapsed. It was unbelievable. If you had asked me yesterday what the top 5 most unlikely things i could imagine happening were, this would probably have made the list. of course, the panic sets in when you suddenly remember that you have friends down there. My close friend Dani recently started working next door to the WTC and not until several hours later when she had the wherewithall to put a message on her answering machine was i able to stop worrying about her. In three years I had virtually never been down that far but recently brooke’s brother josh moved down there and you’ll notice brooke’s not on the my send to list because i still haven’t heard from her or her brother and i’m very concerned about him. in the last two or three weeks i have walked thru the WTC numerous times to and from the subway and have driven around there also. it’s amazing to see the pictures of lower manhattan from the empire state building…where you’re view of the stature of liberty used to be obscured by the WTC all you can see now is a plume of smoke blowing towards brooklyn (which you can see from my school, miles away) and the statue is in the background…looking really small. i’m going back to the hospital around 10 tonight. i’ve been worrying about my applications so much that i’m realizing i’ve lost a lot of perspective. i hope they have something for me to do at the hospital tonight because i’m going crazy sitting with my friends watching tv like everyone else.

9/12/2001: More from Dave:

i thought i’d continue to send you guys thoughts of what everything’s like here as (hopefully) we’ll never experience anything like this again. it’s like a day and a half later and we’re still watching buildings collapse live on tv. there was a chain of events that we all watched…the last seven floors (out of 110…amazing) of the second tower collapsed and that caused WTC 5 aka the Hilton to collapse…then two minutes later or so, one liberty plaza collapsed. this was all about 5 minutes ago. since most of the tv stations broadcasted over the air from the top of the WTC we’ve only had one real tv station ever since this all started. of course, for whatever reason it just went out, so now we’re watching jersey tv since we have no cable.

other interesting things: airplanes. with all these major airports around here, we’re accustomed to constantly seeing several planes in the air. i live under the flight path of laguardia and it’s been eerily quiet. yesterday the F-16s were flying over and for me, it was nothing unusual because I’m so used to the fighters from Miramar flying over, but all my friends had never seen these planes before. we all jumped up when we saw a plane approach laguardia about 20 minutes ago and we heard later they just allowed interrupted flights from yesterday to land.

this morning we did the only thing we seem able to help out with, and that’s give blood. i of course have completely useless AB- blood but it seemed necessary to do. there were about 6 of us who went together. i personally needed the peer pressure because even after three years of jabbing people, i still get skittish about my own blood.

the wind: yesterday evening we went up to the penthouse (28th floor) and looked over manhattan. our apartments are much taller than anything around and anything else in the bronx i think. we have a great view in general. last night the wind was blowing the smoke over brooklyn and party obscuring our view of lower manhattan. the sunset was spectacular. for those of us from california, we’re used to the late summer brush fires creating amazing sunsets which are an irony unto themselves. my first thought when i got to the penthouse was that i couldn’t orient myself. for three years i’ve immediately known where i was looking by orienting to the WTC. even more practically, when i would come out of the subway at a stop i was unfamiliar with, i knew i could immediately find the towers and orient myself. it’s very strange. i soon realized i didn’t have any pictures of the WTC. you just sort of take it for granted. i had been up there once since getting here. i had gone swing dancing at windows on the world (it used to be one of the best deals in the city, just $5 cover charge) with brooke and some einstein friends a couple years ago. i didn’t bother taking pictures of course. anyhow, this morning i went upstairs with steve and ankoor and steve brought his $2.99 amoco disposable camera which he got with a tank of gas last week. we snapped about 20 pictures…irrational i guess, you really only need one to tell the story. the smoke was blowing over the hudson into new jersey even this morning. i imagine the smoke will blow for some days. with the smoke blowing that way, we had a better view this morning. steve asked me what some building was that was (now) the tallest south of the chrysler and empire state bldgs. i said i didn’t know and that two days ago we probably wouldn’t have ever given it a second thought. sometime today the wind shifted. i was walking home from the hospital this afternoon and i noticed the sky was noticeably smoggy. someone told me the view of manhattan was pretty obscured because the smoke was blowing more or less directly toward us. the smoke itself is upsetting. while the vast majority of it is pulverized concrete and steel, you know that there is a human side to the smoke and it’s makes the sunset that much more powerful. we also noticed one other thing while looking out from the penthouse. looking almost straight down, one of the back parking lots of jacobi was being converted into a temporary morgue by the National Guard. lots of hum-v’s and green tents. that’s about all i want to say about that. yesterday was very unsettling for a lot of reasons, probably mostly for me was knowing i had two friends down there. not until i had found out that they both were safe did i feel able to take a breath all day. i have several friends here who have lost friends down there and it’s really upsetting. there’s been a lot of hugging and crying in the courtyard. morgan stanley itself had around 3,700 people in the towers and many were close to our age. a lot of these people were the best and brightest in their college classes. i’m sure there must be someone else who i once knew who’s lost down there, but i count my blessings that the two people who i’m close to are ok.

i’ll send more tomorrow if i think anything else is worth writing about. in the meantime, i’m sitting here with ankoor and we’re just watching the army helicopters and fighters go by. I hear there’s an aircraft carrier sitting off Long Island. I don’t know how I feel about that either.

9/13/2001: More from Dave:

i guess the subject title remains appropriate…so i won’t change it yet. i had enough people write me to tell me that i should keep writing so i will. i think it’s also pretty therapeutic for me to write it and hopefully for you guys to read it. i’m not in to writing much tonight because i’m really tired.

i think you guys probably know most of the details of what’s going on now because the main stories are national news now. but here, they reopened the airports around 11…and at least 5 minutes later someone called in a bomb threat to laguardia…so much for opening it. how many sickos are really out there? it’s amazing. it’s hard to look at those around you the same anymore.

anyhow, they reopened it and sometime tonight some “middle eastern looking type” tried to sneak thru security with a fake pilots license. so now all the airports are closed. i’m glad.

i actually went out to long island to get some fresh air today. of course, i didn’t get very far before i was reminded. i got to the whitestone bridge which only seconds before had been reopened from a bomb threat. (we’ve had something like 90 today). i whizzed across the bridge…there was no one in sight…it was very odd. i’m used to sitting in the toll plaza forever. of course, from mid-span there is an amazing view of the city. nothing but the empire state, chrysler and that new tallest lower manhattan building whose identity is still secret. i’m not getting attached to it because buildings are falling down still all around the lot formerly known as the WTC. i was sitting in a park at around 6 and the sky was seemingly suddenly filled with big planes again. i happened to be under the flight path of JFK. it was odd. hard to imagine that the sight of jets would be odd. anyhow, they of course all disappeared by sunset…thanks to the incident at laguardia. driving back over the bridge tonight, it was that time of night when it is virtually dark out and all your eyes can perceive is the contrast between the deep maroon of the last rays of sunlight and any clouds that might be absorbing the light. over the city, there was a wall of dark opposed to the last faint gasps of sunset. the wall seemed to extend all the way from lower manhattan back to the bronx where it was lost into surrounding blackness. the constant cloud is the permanent reminder for those of us whose direct vision of the site is obscured.

just a final note: if my respect for firefighters and EMTs wasn’t already unmatched, the job they are doing right now is pushing it to new limits. there are believed to be more firefighters lost in the WTC than were lost in the entire history (over 100 years) of the FDNY. to do this work while knowing that they are going to be discovering their colleagues must be unspeakably hard.

to close: there was an image on tv last night that brought everyone in our little tv watching group to tears. the 300 foot tall mast that used to stand on top of 1 WTC was discovered sticking about 50 feet out of the rubble. you guys may have also seen the footage, but some firefighter took a big American flag and planted in on the mast while about 50 of his colleagues stood by saluting. it reminded everyone in the room of that famous black and white picture of the troops planting the flag on iwo jima over 50 years ago.

tomorrow ankoor and i are heading down to manhattan. i think i’ll pack scrubs just for the heck of it. i’m sure i won’t be able to get close, but i’ll take a little camera and hopefully get some shots. lots of love

dave

ps. everyone’s getting better around here, it’s slow but it’s happening. i’m sure you all are noticing the same. this is uniting people in a way that only something like this can.

—a positive that we all should focus on.