I'm going to write about this...yes, I am.

So why have I just spent three hours staring at this blank fucking screen while trying to find the appropriate words? Why do I keep leaving the keyboard to go smoke a cigarette and stare at the TV some more? Why can't I sit still long enough to type out one sentence?

I haven't really cried. Yes, there were tears but they were more of the 'I'm making french fries and humming Bruce Springsteen songs regardless of these tears streaming down my face' kind. I need to sit down and bawl. Hug my pillow to my chest and cry until I'm empty.

I'm watching the planes slam into the WTC and the towers collapsing over and over again. At least thirty times now, since yesterday morning. At least thirty times, I have seen people die. The same scene, the same sounds, the same feeling in my stomach as I realize that at that very moment, children lost their parents, parents lost their children, lovers lost their lovers, friends lost their friends.

Over and fucking over again.

I remember when I visited NYC several years ago. What I wanted to do most, besides find a Beat Happening album, was go to the top of the World Trade Center. I'm petrified of heights...what a glorious way to scare myself. As we stood on the roof and looked out over the city, I thought about how awful it would be to fall from that height. I could swear I felt the building moving under my feet and had a morbid vision of the whole thing collapsing. I was pissed that we couldn't go all the way to the edge.

People were trapped on the roof.

People were jumping from the 90th floor. A man and woman held hands on the way down.

I was angry at the news stations for awhile yesterday. Why are reporting these details? Why are they showing bodies falling from sky like ragdolls?

Why?

Cuz it makes it all the more real. Seeing the buildings crumble like a house of cards, seeing the crash site in Pennsylvania that doesn't even *look* like a crash site, seeing the Pentagon burn. Hollywood has shown us those kinds of images many times before and the 'victims' show up alive and well, donned in Versace, a few months later at the Oscars. When the media reports on the child frantically searching for her mother or that the largest piece of debris in PA was 5 feet long, what happened yesterday no longer seems like some fucked-up movie. It's fucking real.

All the pain, heartache, blood, smoke, tears. All the heroism, good deeds, faith, unity that have sprung forth from the seemingly apocalyptic ruins. All of this...this is real.

I can't stop typing that: this is real this is real this is real.

The passengers, the people in their offices looking out the window to see a plane barreling down on them, the people who were/still are trapped in the rubble, the people who jumped, the rescue workers, the medical workers, the friends, the family, the nation.

So many people....

The sky was so blue yesterday....

'My fear is my only carriage/ So I've got to push on through/ Everything's gonna be all right/ Everything's gonna be all right/ Everything's gonna be all right'

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