urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:elfundeb Elfin observations bound to obey and serve 2038-01-19T03:14:07Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:elfundeb:3947 2038-01-19T03:14:07Z 2038-01-19T03:14:07Z Yesterday I happened to turn on the radio at exactly 9:41 a.m., and what I heard was a rerun of the first report of the plane that crashed at the Pentagon. And I remembered where I was when I first heard about the Pentagon attack, in a tiny little carryout in Chinatown where I had stopped to buy a bottle of water, in an attempt to cleanse my parched throat of WTC particles. I had just begun to convince myself that there were no more planes coming, so that perhaps we could stop running now.<br /><br />The Washington Post had stories about some of the forgotten victims - the ones that survived the attack but suffered head injuries from being thrown across the room and who are now brain-damaged and unable to work. And our firefighters, who are now suffering from PTSD. They're now split into three groups: the ones on disability, the ones about to ask for disability, and the ones who need to ask but don't want to admit the problem.<br /><br />When we remember 9/11, we tend to remember the dead and their families. Here's a plea to remember these forgotten victims, who continue to live 9/11 every day. In retrospect, I was perhaps very lucky. I was away from home, and out on the streets away from the television. I saw the North Tower on fire, and I saw it collapse. But only once. I had a moment of terror when we were enveloped by the cloud, but we were able to run. The fight or flight response was in good working order and served me well. I didn't watch the events over and over again on television. And I seemed to bounce back much faster than some who <i>only</i> saw the events on TV. Perhaps television is not such a good thing in a crisis after all.<br /><br />At that point, I decided I needed to visit the Pentagon. The bike path still goes right along the west facade, the one that was hit (it's been moved closer to the highway, and a fence has been installed, but it's still very close). I hadn't been out for a good long ride all summer. There was nobody there except for two tourists reading a plaque about a planned memorial. The rebuilt facade looks much like it always did, though the parking lots and a nearby highway have been shifted and a lot of incidental construction has taken place to make the building inaccessible to truck bombers.<br /><br />And I had a great ride. The bike path on the Arlington side parallels the Potomac, so all the memorials were in view. And where the path passes the airport, I took the traditional cyclist's rest to enjoy the rush of watching the airplanes take off right above my head. Don't ask me why, but all the cyclists stop there before heading south. The planes took off and flew past the Pentagon, as it should be.