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100facesof.me

Day 46 of 100

Bearded man in olive Patagonia tee and white trucker hat reading 'Stick Around', head bowed toward a black dog, tattooed arm visible
Day 46 / 100 Weight I have no idea still Resigned to life Sony A7R5 50mm f/2.8 1/250 ISO200

“Planes are falling out of the sky!”

It was a morning like any other. I was living in the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland with three roommates in a house that I had to explain my past to rent a room.

“Micah, we ran your background, and something came up.”

I was working at a startup in Emeryville out of an old submarine factory, and it was just another Tuesday morning.

Or so I thought.

I opened the door to my room and saw my roommate in the hall. “Planes are falling out of the sky,” she threw at me like it meant something.

“What are you talking about?” I asked. All she said was “turn on the news.”

At a few minutes to six am I turned on the news to smoke billowing out of the World Trade Center. As I watched trying to figure out what happened, at 6:03am the South Tower was struck by the second plane.

I took a step backwards and sat down on my bed eyes wide and mouth open. What I was seeing made no sense.

As I watched the event unfold, I heard my other roommate yell “Don’t go into the city, they are going to blow up the bridges.”

I remember there being silence as I sat and watched the news. After about an hour, the towers fell and there was news of United flight 93 crashing in Pennsylvania.

I remember the fear we all felt. That something would happen on the west coast. We sat and watched and waited and watched some more, but nothing happened and everything slowly came back in focus.

A few months later I flew to NYC and walked from the Empire State Building to Battery Park through the Financial District. New York always has a buzz and hum that ebbs and flows, but when I got to the site of the World Trade Center everything went silent. Not even a bird chirped or a leaf rustled. There were photos on fences and flowers with candles set among them.

I stood at the emptiness of the World Trade Center for about an hour. People would come and go quietly. I kept thinking of my roommate yelling about planes falling out of the sky.

Then I turned and continued walking until I got to water and breathed.