{"id":11122,"date":"2011-09-12T17:06:47","date_gmt":"2011-09-12T21:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=11122"},"modified":"2011-09-12T15:51:33","modified_gmt":"2011-09-12T19:51:33","slug":"911-no-matter-how-long-i-looked-some-part-of-my-brain-never-stopped-waiting-for-the-credits-to-roll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/09\/12\/911-no-matter-how-long-i-looked-some-part-of-my-brain-never-stopped-waiting-for-the-credits-to-roll\/","title":{"rendered":"9\/11 aftermath: “No matter how long I looked, some part of my brain never stopped waiting for the credits to roll”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Megan McArdle<\/a> tries to put into words what it felt like to be in New York in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks:<\/p>\n

\n

At ground level, there was the tangible reminder — that multistory shard jutting out of the smoking rubble that became one of the iconic images of 9\/11. But somehow, that didn’t make the absence any more real. I worked down at Ground Zero for a year, from shortly after the attack, to just after the first annual memorial. I stood right next to that monumental fragment when the ground was still smoking and firefighters were spraying it with hoses to keep the smoke and ash at bay. I smelled the odor that pervaded Ground Zero for weeks, maybe months — burning office fixtures and damp embers. And yet in my deepest mind I never connected any of it with the buildings where I had worked on and off throughout the 1990s — even though I stood looking at it from the very familiar streets where I’d eaten lunch so many times. It didn’t look like a building, or even the ruins of a building. It looked like a scene from a movie about the destruction of the World Trade Center. No matter how long I looked, some part of my brain never stopped waiting for the credits to roll.<\/p>\n

As the rubble was cleared away, and all that was left was two concrete-lined holes in the ground, I spent a lot of time walking around the site trying to come to grips with what happened. I was waiting for that moment that always happens in the movies — the one where the music swells and the main character, silhouetted against a rolling sky, finally grasps everything that has been lost. <\/p>\n

It never happened, maybe because I was not the main character. I am one of, I think, a relative few — the perhaps tens of thousands of Americans who can plausibly claim that 9\/11 utterly changed their life. Without 9\/11, I would not have worked at the World Trade Center’s disaster recovery effort; I would not have started blogging; I would not now be a journalist. I would not have had most of the relationships I had in the past ten years, be married to my current husband, or live in the city I now call home. I would be in all visible ways a completely different person if those towers had not come down. But in the story of 9\/11, I am not even a bit player. I’m maybe an extra. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Megan McArdle tries to put into words what it felt like to be in New York in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks: At ground level, there was the tangible reminder — that multistory shard jutting out of the smoking rubble that became one of the iconic images of 9\/11. But somehow, that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[321,256],"class_list":["post-11122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-usa","tag-nyc","tag-september11"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2To","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11122"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11124,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11122\/revisions\/11124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}