The Aerie
[This may not be something everyone wants to read. I know I don't.]
The mind is the most astonishing special-effects device ever built. I
am amazed by the detail in the dream it provided, even as I wrestle
with the emotions: the long hair of a fallen woman gaping like a
wound; the broken light fixtures on the ceilings as seen from the
street. And yet the oddest things my mind overlooked: how although the
light fixtures were broken, the ceiling tiles were all in place.
In my nightmare I was standing along the walkway beside the Hudson
river in Manhattan, about two blocks west and across the street from
the World Trade Center. The jets had already hit, but there was no
smoke or dust -- in the dream it was as if the obscuring clouds were
edited out to provide a clear view of hell.
I was surrounded by an anonymous crowd of screaming, crying people as
the dream began. I was able to look up and see where the windows were
all blown out of the WTC, as if that floor were only a few stories
overhead. Through the shattered black glass I could see the ceiling of
the floor where the plane had hit. No people were visible, but all of
the light fixtures were gray and shattered, although all the ceiling
tiles were in place.
As I watched the building began to collapse, first with a great
rumbling sound, and then with successive smacks as the floors above
impacted the next one down. I screamed along with the crowd, believing
that each crash of floors meant the deaths of hundreds, and the sounds
seemed to go on forever.
As the debris began to arc over the streets I turned my eyes away,
aware that every distant speck was possibly a person, a man or a
woman, spending their last moments in hopeless shrieking terror. When
I looked again, the buildings had collapsed, and I felt the grief and
horror rising up in me.
When the WTC buildings were gone my attention turned north, to two
smaller buildings, as these were hit by falling debris: multi-ton
girders several stories long that slashed off the faces of these
buildings as they fell upon them. There was, likewise, no smoke or
dust as the facades were sheared away, and afterwards I could see
quite clearly the people inside.
The first thing I saw was a woman fallen to the floor about six
stories up, right at the edge of the damage. Her hair was a dark blond
and must have been permed, because rather than fall limp it bounced
and swayed elastically, in clumps parallel to the floor. This woman
seemed to be struggling and as I watched a man, balding with dark hair
and a white shirt, fell beside her and struggled with her. His efforts
were futile, and suddenly the woman fell away and plummeted out of
sight, and I knew she was dead. The man lay at the edge of the floor,
his arms extended uselessly as if he might summon her back up.
Other women were falling from the two damaged buildings, and some were
coming down quite near me. A few feet away was a utility truck, a
half-extended cherry-picker with a thick square elbow. One woman, a
small dark-haired Italian, landed ON the elbow of the arm and sat up,
screaming angrily for someone to help her as she started to slip off
of the curved, greasy surface. Behind her, another woman fell across
the extended lamp of a streetlight, snapping it off as her body hit
it. People screamed as parts of bodies began falling to the street
around us.
A moment later the nearer of the smaller buildings began to collapse
and people leapt from the windows. I watched helplessly.
Mercifully I was able to tear myself awake as the rumbling began
again.
[1]Last
Posted by Albatross at February 5, 2002 12:00 AM