Andare, Partire, Tornare

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911

So there are downsides to working so near the White House. We were caught in the upheaval

caused by the horrible occurences today. I was upstairs in my office/hallway, idly listening

to the radio with one ear and chatting with my boss, who was about to start interviewing

somebody for another museum position. When the news first came out, I assumed some idiot had

stolen a piper cub, or something, and had crashed into the buildings. We never expected

something of this magnitude.

They evacuated our building briefly, and then let us back in. Our museum instituted its disaster

plan, which meant that we went to each period room and pulled things away from the windows, and

took paintings down from outside walls so that vibrations wouldn't hurt them. Some items

were wrapped in blankets just in case of flying glass. It was a surreal experience, but

it was good to be doing something, rather than just sitting around and listening to the news,

helpless. The sirens were all around us, as police closed off streets and cordoned off the roads

near the White House.

I'm still quite numb. Because I was at the office, I haven't seen a lot of the tv news on it, just

radio, and I wonder if I'm still disassociating from what happened because of that. I did see

the World Trade Center collapse, and something in my chest seemed to break free as I watched.

While I was leaving DC, with other museum staff, we could see the grey plume of smoke from the

Pentagon lifting up into the air. My god, everybody works at the Pentagon - neighbors, friends,

it's the big employer in our area. The surreal thing was that the streets looked fairly normal,

until you realized that there weren't enough people on the sidewalks, and suddenly yellow tape was

appearing accross intersections to block them off until they could move in these rolling barricade

truck things.

I feel very shaky, and sad. It's almost too much for tears.

I take that back. I just read an account of people in Stockholm holding a vigil in front of the

US embassy with white candles, and just lost it. My god, my god, my god.

5:24 p.m. - 2001-09-11

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