[escepticos] -> 11 September, 2001

[Víctor R. Ruiz <rvr@...>]

  Hola:

  Jesús, quizás esto te haga más cercano el holocausto que vivimos en
directo ayer.

----- Forwarded message from CV <cvarc en earthlink.net> -----

Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 14:32:09 -0400
From: CV <cvarc en earthlink.net>
Subject: 11 September, 2001
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0.2


The expressions of concern from so many of you on other astronomy email 
lists, as well as family and other friends, have been very helpful. Being 
human, there is the swelling impulse to express what I experienced. As many 
of you have asked what happened here, and wanting to know how I am, I 
thought to offer the following. It may not be the best writing, but I 
wanted to write what my real impressions were, as I can?t remember ever 
feeling like this. I surely hope never to again. Just read what you wish, 
of course.

- - -

Yesterday morning around 9:00, I was working, here, at my computer, 
preparing for some new architectural design projects. I am located near 
10th Street and 2nd Avenue, about 1-3/4 miles northeast of the WTC. I heard 
what sounded like another fast-moving truck bumping on 1st avenue?a distant 
THOOM, ?...KATHOOM. For those of you who have heard sonic booms, it was a 
very similar report. But as that sort of sound  again, due to trucks on 1st 
Avenue  is not uncommon, I thought little of it. Then, in the seconds 
following I heard commotion on 11th Street, which I can see a bit of 
through a small parking lot to my north. My first thought was that the kids 
(there is a school between 11th and 12th Streets) were just playing loudly, 
but I remembered they had just left morning recess to go into their early 
semester classes.

Nevertheless, commotion in NY is not unusual, so I kept working. A few 
minutes later, I heard another sound just like the first, but this time I 
heard men and women screaming/yelling from nearby rooftops. Now it was 
clear that something unusual was happening?.I poked my head out the window. 
I saw a handful of people on rooftops to my north (I have a top floor on a 
5-story building) and west, one fellow with binoculars. But the give away 
was the press helicopter to the northwest. I went up the interior fire 
escape stairs to our roof, climbed out the window into blazing sunlight and 
noticed that there were people all over other nearby rooftops. Then I 
looked up and to my southeast at a 14-story building currently under 
construction, I noticed a number of the construction workers clustered 
together and looking to the south. This crew has been working steadily over 
the past few months. So to see this obvious suspension of activity was 
quite unusual. Then it happened?.in some little synapse collection deep in 
me, all my life suspended. I looked south and saw the north tower of the 
WTC. The top 20 floors or so seemed engulfed in black-gray smoke. All I 
could do was stare. You will all hear this repeatedly in the years ahead 
from other witnesses, but it was simply un-real?I knew that what I was 
looking at was happening in a physical way, but some part of the brain just 
wouldn?t register. I recall survivors of the Titanic sinking saying that as 
they watched the ship slide into the depths, they knew that it was 
happening, but they just couldn?t believe or register what they were 
seeing. I can now, sadly, join the ranks of those who have experienced this 
?dichotometric? impression.

Reflexively, I returned to collect my tripod and astronomy binoculars with 
which I?ve enjoyed some of the most beautiful offerings of nature: night 
stellar compositions and solar eclipses. Now, the experience of their 
exposure was about to be made profane. TV said two airliners struck each 
tower. I called my long-time friend Mark Scott, another architect who knows 
buildings in New York very well. Did you hear what happened? ?Yes  I heard 
a plane fly loud and low over me (he?s near Union Square) ?way lower than 
it should have been. I heard that it crashed into the WTC.?

?Yes  Mark  but a **second** one has hit the other tower?.?

?No  common?are you serious??.

The day was to be filled with these sorts of responses I sensed.

Returning to my roof and setting up my binoculars, I started to feel an 
anxiety that this series of events had a far greater darkness than the 
physical aspects they were displaying. First, I focused on the tower tops. 
The conflagration overflowing my binoculars? field of view made clear that 
already many thousands must have perished. Then the worst, for me, unfolded?.

There, at about the 90th floor of the north tower, between the building?s 
well-known vertical fenestration elements, were irregular, multi-colored 
objects that seemed to be moving. A sickly bile of anxiety welled up in me 
when it was clear that these were helpless human beings. They had no 
chance?and, surely, they knew it. A couple floors under their little 
bodies, huge expulsions of orange flame converted to crematoria what 
minutes earlier were carpeted executive offices, with stunning views of the 
tri-state area. These flames and smoke seemed to move with excruciating 
slowness laterally and up towards these poor people, who must have been 
going mad. I could see them throwing their white dress shirts out the 
windows thinking magical rescue helicopters were en route to pick them up. 
How awful their view of the press helicopters must have been; how awful the 
pilots of those helicopters must have felt; will always feel. And 
paper?reams of typing paper were being expulsed for the same intention, 
surely. Desperation confetti. And the smoke. The smoke was there as surely 
as the perfect blue sky?it was not going away. They must have been going mad?.

Glued to the eyepieces of my capable binoculars, helpless and suffering an 
anxiety I never want to feel again, I could see one man on about the 90th 
floor of the North Tower  how long had he worked there; did he make his bed 
this morning?? - trying to crawl out, and over, then down to the next 
window, perhaps thinking the next floor would provide a route to the exit 
stairs that were blocked on his own floor. Like a little bug dropping off a 
white wall, he vanished from my field of view. I wasn?t seeing this. I am 
breathing, and that man is breathing, but in 3 and a half seconds he will 
enter eternity; suffering over. Then a man in a black suit dropped from 
three windows over and a floor down, where the smoke and flame must have 
forced his decision. His motion was effortless, as if he was stepping onto 
an invisible bus. Then a woman, cart wheeling, her dress alternating in 
exposing- then covering her legs as she pin wheeled to her private, ghastly 
fate. There were others, then, a couple more. And on it went. The silence 
was the eerie thing. Perhaps they screamed, or begged or yelled in some 
unimaginable agony, but the silent neighborhood that seemed to protect me 
from this alien horror had my ears occupied with birds, some traffic, and a 
radio on the next rooftop. A tape recorder at that moment would have 
recorded sounds, uneventfully, and otherwise normal on a quite, beautiful, 
early fall day. These poor things could not even express their final 
anguish to me. They just left, like silent guests?.

All that was in my chest was sickness and frustration that fantasy could 
not accompany me, and I could reach out and catch them like little almonds 
tossed by a playful host. A voice in my head consoled them, attached myself 
to them, these people I (probably?) never knew. Then another, clearly an 
animated human form, flew by the binoculars? field of view from a floor 
above my aim. This was what horror is. This is horror. I hoped they knew 
that millions of eyes belonging to strangers were on them, caring in a 
millions-year-old evolutionary structure of tribal; animal cohesion. But 
one cannot imagine what one thinks in such situations?perhaps simple 
mechanical thoughts: escape flame; better to fall  no, jump... then you 
have control of your last act; dignity - than to burn. Philosophy is 
unlikely a guest at such moments?. I wonder what I would do?.

Enough. I was feeling profane in my separation and helplessness. I began to 
wonder if I should start learning what is going on elsewhere. This must 
surely be an intentional series of acts. Will I, soon, become a version of 
what I?m witnessing, but in some other style? Instinct gave me a nudge. Is 
there more of this to endure in the hours ahead?? ? I folded the tripod 
and, as I was doing so, suddenly heard again the gasps and yells from the 
nearby rooftops. I looked up, now knowing too well in what direction. There 
was the North Tower, still packaging Hell. But a tower of smoke and dust 
was to its left. What happened? Another explosion at the South Tower? 
Wasn?t this enough? I thought it odd that one couldn?t even see the South 
Tower?..I?ll wait a minute until the smoke clears?..I saw sky  sky? The 
South Tower?no. It can?t be. Even a plane can?t do that  besides, the plane 
hit well above the 50th floor, by my estimate.

But it was. One of the greatest assemblies in mass and volume ever 
undertaken by human beings?had vanished. All now is entering Alice in 
Wonderland. All is mere illusion with which greater forces may taunt us. No 
conventional order or orientation has meaning. All is fantasy?blank?ephemeral.

Returning to my television, the replays started to give structure to the 
perfect madness. As if to batter my perceptions when I was already pulp, I 
watched as the one, remaining, North Tower accordioned towards the center 
of the Earth, as if it was taking a leisurely elevator ride. The southwest 
corner of the building  an 80-story dagger, hesitated, as if struggling to 
survive, if only for an instant of defiance against the merciless abyss of 
human evil. But, no. It, too, was inhaled by Earth. It is all sick, 
horrible. How many of those little people whom my eyes communed with 
seconds earlier now were simply, perhaps mercifully, destroyed? Outside my 
windows, I heard the voices screaming ?No! Oh, My God, No!!??. on my 
neighboring rooftops. I was silent. Oddly, my feelings of horror dissolved 
into a sort of calm pool of blank water. I just stared at the repeating, 
lousy videos of that hideous aircraft melting into the south of the second 
tower. Melting.

Today, equally beautiful, is silent. Films and stories are oft sited by 
those struggling to describe these hideous events. Neville Chute?s ?On the 
Beach? comes to mind. Eye contact between New Yorkers is rare. Not today. 
Every pedestrian connects with every other. There is a politeness 
uncharacteristic of the Manhattan stereotype. New Yorkers seem not so 
stunned as aware that some fundamental understructure in the fabric of 
life?s organization is about to change. This was, interestingly, the 
understanding after the Titanic went down. And it was accurate.

We almost never, as a huge tribe of human beings; the civilized world, face 
a fundamental rethinking  collectively  of the structure of our existence. 
When we do, it is usually on the heels of horror and bottomless grief. The 
American Civil War, the sinking of the Titanic, The World Wars, a cluster 
of assassinations, Vietnam, the loss of the Challenger, Oklahoma City. 
Regardless the numerical loss of life, the symbolisms of each of these  and 
other  events, become vortices that challenge our orientation on life: from 
fundamental beliefs to the mechanics of daily life. This will be little 
different. It suggests that the human condition has issues to address in 
its collective behavior. The currency of the impact of these events is 
inescapable. It is death and the circumstances of death. It is the one 
aspect of our existence that, universally, secures our instinctive 
attention. Trying to elevate to a position where our perspective can absorb 
grander subtleties and oblique factors that, in the long run, protect us 
from such horrors, is one of life?s most profound and resistant challenges. 
Our failure to meet that challenge is brought to light by the images 
described above. Yet, I wonder if we cannot squirm, inch and crawl in the 
right direction? Surely the mere effort, regardless our success, counts for 
something? Surely.

And, now, as I finish this text - as if to tweak me - through my open 
windows, the smoke from the remaining ruins downtown are wafting in?the 
winds are beginning to change.


Claudio Veliz
12 September 2001
A very, very New York



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----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Víctor R. Ruiz    | La mente no es una vasija a llenar sino un 
rvr en infoastro.com | fuego a encender -- Plutarco