100 DAYS OF AFTERMATH: A Citizen's Journal

I lived four blocks from the World Trade Center and was home to witness the attack on September 11, 2001.  The horror and confusion of that day, of watching the second plane hit, people jumping from the burning buildings and the final building collapses, is something I have worked to resolve for sometime after.  To this day I sometimes feel a sense of panic rise when I glimpse a passenger jet flying low at a certain angle.  I often look at a clock right at 9:11, and every time I do, I think of the people killed on that day and in the endless wars we have been in since.  I, for one, will never forget these people.

Following the Attacks in 2001, I took many actions to work through the fallout anxiety, including organizing with neighbors, officials and City agencies to rebuild Lower Manhattan.  I connected emotionally with survivors from the buildings and with families of those killed.  I physically cleaned up my neighborhood, painted pictures, wrote poetry and started playing the piano again.  I took photographs during the attack and of life in Lower Manhattan until I moved back to my home town of Los Angeles in February 2002. 

My primary therapeutic project was this “100 Days of Aftermath: A Citizen’s Journal” remembrance book.  It’s an account of my journey to recovery.   Although it was the events of September 11 that compelled me to start this journal project, my job situation was also a source of high stress for me, requiring further recovery work.  For six years prior to September 11, 2001, I had worked in Internet.  It was that booming industry which took me to New York from Los Angeles in 1999.   For me personally, the dotcom bust hit literally the day before the Terrorist Attacks.

My story is not sensational and definitely not heroic, but I felt very connected to the tragedy of September 11 and to the economic recession of 2001-2002.  The experience opened my eyes to many aspects of life, and allowed me to glimpse what life at war is like.  I can see how living that day repeatedly with no way out, would be like living in a war zone.  

This journal is dedicated to the victims, heroes, witnesses and workers of September 11 in the United States, and to all people of the world affected by the devastating subsequent events.

 [Photo: Rockrose Development Corp]

NOTE:  Most of the following journal entries were written either on the day or within a few days of the entry date in 2001.  However, some entries were written weeks or even a couple of months after, on events that I was still thinking about.  And now while posting the entries more than 10 years later, I have tried to make the verb tenses make sense, but it’s a little rough in parts.  All of the photographs are mine, except where noted otherwise.