"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -- unknown

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - Albert Einstein

my tuesday and some thoughts...
2001-09-11 - 6:18 p.m.

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this was may day:

i awoke at about 2am. i could not sleep. my eyes wanted to close and i wanted to drift off to neverneverland, but i could not. i tossed and turned with many, many thoughts dancing inside my head. finally i gave up the effort and decided to do something productive. i made a list of questions i had on the condos i saw last night. i complied my list and congratulated myself for moving ahead on this. i decided i would make a 'to-do' list today.

i went to work and made my list, feeling somewhat proud of myself for compiling the list and becoming a tad more organized. personal things and work things both made the list and i set about deciding which items to tackle first. i was about to call a lady to get some info on a mortgage when my phone rang. i picked up the phone and one of the outside reps was there. he said something absurd, 'a plane just hit the world trade center.'

after realizing he was serious, i forgot about my list. it still sits on my desk where i had placed it. i broke the news in the office and turned up the radio. the normal morning radiojock idiots were on. i dislike most morning banter. i'm not sure why, but i do. they just annoy me. somehow they think they are witty and funny...and most importantly that i want to hear them talk. i do not. i want to hear music. anyway, they were located in a building in midtown nyc and actaully heard the explosion.

everything in the office stopped as we listened. gossip was rampent, was it an accident? terrorism? some kind of hoax?

there was nothing in our office but the radio. the morning-idiots were actaully interesting. i don't mean that in a light flip way, but they covered the story, something far, far outside the normal scope of what they do, better than ANYTHING i've heard today.

shortly, the outside rep called back to say he had just seen on live tv a second airplane hit the other tower.

at this point we became scared. i live and work about 30 miles from nyc. it was now clear that this was no accident, but terrorism. we had no idea what other locations would be 'hit' or what the hell was going on.

i called my parents at work.

i called my brother and left a message.

after that things become somewhat jumbled.

there were reports of car bombs, planes hitting camp david, fires at the white house..planes hitting the pentagon. some true, some false...we just knew that we were close to nyc.

we watched the spanish channel, the only channel we could get that we could make out any sort of picture on, and watched as the south tower fell.

that was chilling. that was when things clicked to alot of us, sunk in so to speak. you see, shortly after the south tower was struck and we watched in awe as both building smoked and burned a man called into the radio station. he was calling from the 86th floor of the south tower. he was calm, cool and collected. he stunned us. he explained they were behind the firedoors and everyone, atleast on his floor, was safe. he said to tell anyone who had family on his floor or higher, not to worry to much. that they were safe behind the firedoors and waiting to be rescued.

as we watched the building collapse on itself...someone said 'that guy was in that building.' we all had marveled at his final words, at how calm he was. we all agreed we would be babbling idiots yelling to be saved...

sometime after this...after the north tower fell. my brother called. it's the first time i've spoken to him in months. he wanted to know what was going on, why i called...i swore repeatedly at him and told him to turn on a tv. both he and his wife are in the navy. we talked a bit, i told him all i knew...fact and rumor. he said he was going to go to the base and i told him to pack a bag.

sometime after the north tower fell, we got a better set of tv anttenna and watched cnn. in a sort of rotation we moved in and out of the conference room...sort of taking turns watching the tv and sitting at our desks listening to the radio.

sometime after the north tower fell and we saw the scene from the pentagon my mother called me back. she was upset, having been locked up in a meeting all morning. she had just found things out. she told me she had a dream last night that something horrible happened and my brother and his wife would have to go overseas and she and my dad would have to care for their newborn child. she was scared and chilled her dream had become half true. i thought of my night. my restless tossing. there was no premonition of bad things in my mind, but still...there had been a reason i couldn't sleep.

people still called us, life didn't stop. not many poeple, but some poeple did. it was odd. my phone would ring, perhaps for the first time in an hour, and i would answer it saying, 'hi this is me..' and they would say a normalish greeting by habit, 'hey, its me whats up?' or 'how's it going?' and then there would be a little pause. we would do what we had to do with little small talk and hang up. it was a shock like situation...life went on and things had to be done.

i spent a while thinking about the firemen, medics and whoever else had responded to crashes...trying to save lives. i thought about the noise they heard when the south tower started to fall. i thought about them looking up and if they realized what was going on. what would you think? would you try to run? would you just sit and stare up at the falling tons of building? i thought about some guy in an office who just happened to glance out his window and see the plane before it hit. i thought about people in the south tower who saw the north tower get hit..and then they themselves get hit. i thought about the hospitals who got the call 'the world trade center has been hit by a plane.' what did they think? i thought about the dust and how you couldn't breath even if the building falling didn't kill you. i thought most about the guy who had called in to say everything was ok. i thought about the people in the plane who knew..who watched as they hurled toward the building. i thought about a lot of things.

even with all i've seen...all the countless replays i've watched...all the call ins to radio stations i've listened to...it seems like a dream.

i can't imagine a plan hitting the pentagon. i can't imagine planes being able to get that close. more than anything, if it can hit the pentagon, it could have hit anything.