Still Hazy After All These Years: My Nearly Forgotten Account of September 11th As an NYU Student Near Ground Zero

Pictured:  telephone pole shadows that appear in our street on sunny days, much like September 11th was, that never fail to bring to mind the haunting silhouettes of The Twin Towers.

Curious, on a whim inspired by today’s quarter-century passage from the devastating events on and following 9/11/2001, I literally dusted-off my university diaries for the first time in at least a decade, madly scrawled in ALL CAPS just as we students returned to the dorms of the lower Wall Street area of Manhattan after less than two weeks in compensatory accommodations.  To be fair, that for me was still well below the police-enforced quarantine barricades of 14th street, as I was offered an unoccupied spot at the Hayden residence hall on Washington Square West.

Shown here are a few glimpses of those entries, which I have come to regard with the curiosity and morbid fascination so many of us have regarding those eerie days.  In past years I have shared the few photographs I preserved from my experiences but today I have decided to make it a project to transcribe at least some of the accompanying writing, repurposed for my blog, mostly for my own peace of mind.

"There's a certain area at the base of the neck that acts as the ultimate human blindspot. It is the physicalization of indefensiveness. From behind that point, all actions intimidate, all existence is fierce. It was from behind that point for me that a massive stampede came running from the streets. I think I heard some man shout in a sort of exclamatory warning, "IT'S COLLAPSING!" Everyone yelled to RUN, as just one person could prevent a path to safety if in the way." - September 27, 2001 (8:26 pm), NYC