To Discover the Language of My Soul.....: Remembering 9/11

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Remembering 9/11

Of all the images of September 11, 2001, this, is perhaps the image we remember most:

The already-smouldering 1 World Trade Center North Tower, spewing black smoke from the imploding impact of American Airlines Flight 11 into the air, as United Airlines Flight 175 implodes after impact into 2 World Trade Center South Tower, looking like a modern day image of Pearl Harbor.

And for my generation and younger, 9/11 is our Pearl Harbor.

American Airlines Flight 11 impacted between the 93rd and 99th floors of the North Tower, killing all 92 on impact at 8:46 a.m. People from floors 90 down were able to escape; everyone from 91 up to 110 perished in the later collapse of 1 WTC, including Frank De Martini and Pablo Ortiz, two Port Authority workers who helped 77 people escape from floors 89 to 90 after the inital impact of Flight 11.

Meanwhile, United Airlines Flight 175 impacted between floors 77 and 85, killing all 65 passengers and crew instantly at 9:02 a.m. Everyone from floors 77 down, including 18 from the impact zone and the floors above the impact, managed to escape. Those 18 only did so by way of Stairwell A; miraculously, it had remained intact after Flight 175's impact.

It was the greatest terrorist disaster in the state of New York and America, since the Oklahoma Bombing. Over 3,000 were killed; the world over sat in stunned silence as the planes hit the WTC and the towers fell.

I was in sixth grade when the towers fell. I remember getting to school early and watching the news on the TV in one of my teacher's classrooms, as the towers burned and later fell. I remember when they shut the TV off and then started class; refusing to tell us what had happened or explain what was going on. We didn't find out until later what had happened.

My friends and I grew up in the last ten years, watching the horror unfold on TV, listening to politicians use 9/11 and the over 3,000 deaths on that day as fuel to invade a country that had nothing to do with the WTC, and watching friends and loved ones go over seas to fight for a noble cause. We lived the eight years after under a president who launched the biggest witch hunt since the McCarthy era. We lived in a nation where, if you were unpatriotic, or disagreed with what the president was doing, you were labeled unpatriotic, or if your thinking was to extremes- a terrorist or a traitor.

This image- of three NY firefighters raising the flag at the wreckage of the Towers- is a modern day exact replica of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima.

When I was back east in 2008- my mom, grandma and I were going on a cruise- we watched that morning as we were getting ready and packing up to go to the harbor, the news coverage as they- NY firefighters, police officers, and others- made the same run they and other colleagues took that fated day in September.

I could go on and on in this entry, but I think I'll just do a series of articles over the course of today.

Because this day, like Pearl Harbor, is worth remembering.

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The Photograph in the Music Box

April 15, 1912

“They recovered two children that had been in first class. One was identified as Loraine Allison. The other was never identified.”

The RMS Titanic sinks after striking an iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic on April 15, 1912, taking thousands with her. Though the majority of the survivors are first and second class, and the majority of the victims third and crew, there were a few casualties among the upper classes that have long since been forgotten with the passage of time.

Among the casualties is a young girl; never claimed, she is later referred to as Victim 281 and buried in Halifax. All that is left of this innocent girl is a fading photograph in a music box buried in the wall of an apartment building in Manhattan- discovered nearly a century later by Shaynee Wilcox, the daughter of the new tenants. Armed with only the faded photograph of the young girl, Shaynee’s determined to discover
her true identity, and finally lay to rest the spirit of one of the Titanic’s youngest victims. As she uncovers clue after clue, Shaynee soon discovers that, not only does the girl have a link to the Titanic sinking, but she also has a link to Shaynee herself.

The Romantic Egotists

“I grew up among the great artists of Paris- Ernest Hemingway and his wife, Hadley; Ezra Pound and William Faulkner, Picasso, Gertrude Stein and her lover, Alice Toklas, and
of course my parents Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.”

It is with these very words, that Frances “Scottie” Fitzgerald takes us back to those long ago nights in Paris; when the
world was still recovering from the destruction of the Great War, when Russia was trying to reassemble the shattered pieces of itself after the bloody fall of the Romanov dynasty and Germany was allowing a man called Hitler to start taking control.

In Paris, the wave of painters, writers, dancers and playwrights’ crashes upon its shores like the Allies upon the European coast. Sex, drugs and alcohol run the streets of grand ol’ Paris, corrupting the mind and setting in motion the wheels of rebellion. It is here, in Paris, at 27 Rue de Fleurus, that a group of expatriate Americans meet and begin turning out some of the greatest literature, art and dance of the twentieth century. The child of the couple forever known as the “Romantic Egotists”- the real beautiful and damned- Scottie tries
hard to come into her own during those muggy Paris nights, despite the constant push and pull of her mother’s erratic behavior and her father’s egotistic criticisms. Here, among the sting of smoke and smell of alcohol, surrounded by lust, love and sex, young Scottie sips her first taste of jealousy, and
discovers the cost of being famous. Into this world, Frances Fitzgerald is thrust, a silent witness to the trials, tribulations, darkness and light of a generation defined as forever “Lost.”

The Sound of Sickness

"Sickness has returned.
Cover your ears and hold your breath.
Breathing in could result in death."

Alexi Michaels has been surrounded by Tuberculosis his entire life. With his mother, he places docent at the Waverly Hills Sanitarium to tourists in Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops, telling them the history of this sad and disturbing chapter in Kentucky's history.

That same evening, while taking a private night tour of the decaying building, Alexi meets Marit, a fourteen-year-old girl who resides at the Sanitarium while she slowly dies from TB. She's watched and waited for Alexi to arrive, spending decades within Waverly's rotting walls, a spiritual shell of the girl she once was.

Over time, Alexi begins to win Marit's trust, and using a series of family photographs, Marit tells him of her unfortunate story. She knows all the secrets and stories of the hospital, including those of her unlucky family members- both hospital resident and worker.

But Marit has a secret. A secret that sent her to an early grave. A secret she's willing to share with Alexi if he gives her something in return.

Something that, to Marit- like every other patient at Waverly Hills- is worth more than its weight in gold.