9/11/01, ~noon: I'm sure you've all heard about New York by now. The phone lines in my building have been cut (I'm sure they need the lines for more urgent things right now) so you won't be able to reach me for a while. However, the ethernet network is still running so I can send and receive emails. I just wanted to let you all know I am ok but very shaken. For those of you who don't know much about the geography of New York, the WTC is about 20 blocks from me. I can hear the explosions and I saw the towers collapse, but nothing has come near me. Oh, just got word that they're apparently shutting off power to Lower Manhattan so I might be cut off from email for a while too, but don't worry about me. For those of you who were expecting to see me in England tomorrow, this is probably self-evident but I probably won't be coming. All planes in the whole country have been grounded. I have no idea when flights will start running again, and if I'll even fly to England if they do run. Okay, that's all, please feel free to email and I will call as many of you as I can when the phone lines are back. If you want, please call anyone who may be worried about me but who may not get this email, and let them know I am fine. And pray. ***************************** 9/11/01, almost midnight: Thank you for all your kind words you have already sent. I am settling in for a long night. I am very tired, but I'm afraid to go to sleep, because whenever something incredibly bad happens, you go to sleep and then, for a split second after you wake up, you don't remember that it's happened. And you wake up and see the sun shining and you feel rested and you feel happy, and then all of a sudden, boom, you remember all over again, and I don't want to have that sinking feeling in my stomach again, so I'd rather stay up all night. But the only thing on television is footage of the plane crashes and collapses over and over again, and the streets are eerily quiet, which is especially creepy in the lively Greenwich where NYU students are normally out until all hours wandering through the streets and laughing and the stores are normally all open and the traffic noise goes on all night. But tonight it's like a ghost town here, and everything is closed with the shutters pulled down tight, and the only people out are shuffling around like zombies, and lights everywhere are out and the only blessing about it being night time is that you can't see the enormous plume of dust and smoke only a mile south any more. And there is no traffic at all, and even sitting in my room with the blinds down, the silence is deafening. There is the occasional siren, always heading south. Anyway, I don't want to disturb people in America who are (and should be) sleeping, so I've decided to harass people who are still awake (ie, in Australia). I've settled in front of my computer and I'll be checking my email all night. I'll also log onto AOL Instant Messenger for those of you with access to that. So if you want to talk, please send me a message. (Or if you're feeling extravagent, feel free to call me at 0011-1-212-443-5560, although it might take you a few tries to get through because the lines are still sketchy at the moment.) Hope you are all coping over there. Thanks again for your kind words. ***************************** 9/12/01, ~9:30pm: Well once again I owe you guys a big thankyou for getting me through the night last night. Thanks especially to those who called me. You were worried about calling me late, but trust me, it was worth it to hear your voices last night. Anyway, things are still pretty calm here. There was no looting or rioting last night at all, which was amazing and gratifying. Today, classes were cancelled and everything south of 14th Street was closed off and shut down. The NYU Law School is on 4th St and I live on 3rd St, so we are basically in the war zone. Most businesses are closed, and no one is allowed past the police at the perimeter of the area unless they can prove they live here. Even though we are allowed out, though, we don't feel like going anywhere. Where could we go? There was a "non-denominational vigil" at noon today in Washington Square Park, which is right across from the law school. It was organized by some students. I went there because I felt a need to pray and mourn, but the meeting turned out to have a much more political agenda. I agreed with what people were saying - that America needs to stand tall and come together to show the world that we cannot be crushed, that we need to let go of our anger and hatred because retaliation will only lead to more violence, etc. But it wasn't really what I needed at the time. Still, at least I got out of the apartment and got to see people. At the vigil, I saw the guy who had held me yesterday morning in the street, while the second tower was collapsing in front of our eyes. When the tower collapsed I was out of my mind, clutching his shirt and beating at his arms and screaming and sobbing incoherently into his shoulder. He had to hold me up for several minutes because I was shaking so uncontrollably and my knees didn't work and I would have collapsed otherwise. I had only ever met him once before - he's in my class. He was wonderful then, but today it was weird. He has seen me at my most needy and hysterical moment ever in my life, and what do you say to someone after that? "How are you doing?" he said, and gave me an awkward hug. "Okay," I said, "How are you? What did you do last night?" It was bizarre how people can come together at their moments of greatest need, and then feel embarrassed about it later. My flatmate is here and she has been trying to carry on with life as normal, just like I have. She cooked us a vegetable and pasta stew tonight which was really good, and good for me because if I had been cooking for myself I probably wouldn't have eaten, or just eaten a bagel or something. There's something that seems almost disrespectful about carrying on with your normal life while so many other people's lives are devastated - or over. I saw a friend last night who echoed my sentiments - we were talking about how we felt at a loose end because classes were cancelled and there was nothing we could do to help, and he said, "I have some errands that I could be doing, like going to the bank and stuff, but I feel so STUPID going to the bank today!" I know how he feels. Things like eating and banking and showering seem so trivial. But we have to do something or else we'd never be able to get out of bed in the morning. I had been hoping that classes would resume tomorrow, but they're cancelled again, because the dust from downtown is starting to get blown into our neighborhood and it's got asbestos in it. So we've been recommended to stay inside, and if we go outside, to wear surgical masks (which is not something that I packed to take to law school with me). They have also shut off the air-conditioning in our building to cut out the amount of air coming in from outside. But today was incredibly hot and stuffy, so it was hard. Another difficult thing in all this is that I won't be able to make it to my grandmother's funeral, which will be in England at noon tomorrow (local time). Neither will my parents. My dad wrote a letter to her saying goodbye, which he emailed to his family in England, and asked them to read it at the service tomorrow. My parents have also asked the minister of their church in Boston to conduct a special service for them at 7am Boston time, which is the same time as noon England time. But it's weird for us because we don't know how to reconcile this previous very personal loss with this much more huge, catastrophic world event. Is it selfish of us to continue to grieve my grandmother in the midst of all this? Is it even possible? It's not an entirely impersonal loss for my family though. Apparently a passenger on one of the planes from Boston that hit the WTC was a member of my parents' church and a father of 2 children, 4 and 6 years old. My mother teaches those children in nursery school and she says all she can think about is their little faces and she can't bear it. I still have 2 friends in New York unaccounted for, but I'm not really worried about them because I don't believe that either of them would have had reason to be in the WTC yesterday. I'm sure I haven't heard from them because they're busy dealing with their own stuff. Besides, it's almost a waste of time at this point to worry. There is too much else to think about. I guess that's about it for updates from New York. Tonight it is still eerily quiet, no traffic or late-night revellers again. At least the subway lines are running so I can periodically hear that reassuring "chuga-chuga-chuga" coming up from under the street. Without its accompanying background traffic noise, though, it sounds pretty loud. I think I will try to sleep normally tonight, even though it will mean waking up early tomorrow and having nowhere to go, because there are no classes and we're essentially under house-arrest. Andrew suggested that I play Civilization to amuse myself (my favourite computer game) but I told him the idea of blowing up cities, even computer-simulated ones, didn't appeal at the moment. So I have been playing solitaire. I don't watch much TV at the moment because no one really has any new news, so they just keep replaying the same footage, and now the networks have started interviewing hysterical survivors searching for their missing husbands/children/fiancees/co-workers/etc, and I don't need any more reason to be upset at the moment. Jill (my flatmate) has her TV on pretty much 24/7, so I just get any important breaking news, of which there is very little, from her. So, I hope you are all still coping and had a good night's sleep last night. Keep talking to each other and keep letting yourself be shocked and horrified and angry and devastated; it's how we know that we are all still alive. Thanks again for the continuing support and love. It means the world to me.